Fighting Error With Truth

I've probably never used a title for a paper or post that is more likely to make readers go, "Well, duh!" In light of some comments I've seen relating to some current issues, however, I think it is an important reminder. When combating error, we need to begin from a base of knowing and understanding truth, rather than trying to pick apart little snippets of falsehood and fighting them like a series of brushfires.

I worked for a while in a retail store cash office. As a result of my job, I got to handle a lot of cash. (Sadly, very little of it was my own.) I couldn't even guess how many paper bills I handled during my time there. Only once did I encounter a counterfeit bill. (And trust me, if we were passing along counterfeits, our bank would have let us know!) How did I know it was counterfeit? Because I handled a lot of genuine currency. This bill didn't feel right as I counted, and upon inspection it didn't look right either. It wasn't an obvious fake, but I knew it was counterfeit because I knew what the real thing was like. (And yes, our bank did confirm it was a counterfeit bill when we sent it to them with a note explaining our suspicions.)

There is a lot of falsehood in our world today, and even a lot of falsehood in the church. How can we as pastors and teachers prepare people to deal with the false teaching they will encounter? We need to ground them in the truth of God's Word, and train them in how to study the Bible. Armed with truth, we can battle falsehood without having to study in minute detail every possible error we will encounter.

I have been listening to some excellent lectures on the early church fathers from the Theology Network web site. (I would recommend this site for the serious student of theology and church history; I'll add a link to my "favorites" box.) In his lecture on Irenaeus, Mike Reeves points out that Irenaeus' magnum opus, Against Heresies, is often seen as an attack on all heresies. It deals primarily with an attack against Gnosticism, especially Valentinianism, but in his work Irenaeus spends time dealing with orthodox teaching, and in attacking the Gnostics he also deals with the roots of many other heresies.

This reminds us of two points. First, while there are indeed many kinds of error, falsehood tends to fall into a few repeated areas. In a slightly different context, Josh McDowell has said that when answering objections to Christianity, knowing the answer to about twenty standard questions takes care of over 90% of what he is asked. Dealing with error generally involves dealing with world view questions, and those questions at their base fall into just a few categories.

The second point is that it is truth that wins the day. If you can successfully convince a person that what they believe is wrong and they should change their mind,  yet give them nothing to change to, what have you accomplished? We need to do more than point out what is wrong; we have to hold out the truth for people to believe. Our primary mission as Christians is to present the truth, the good news of Jesus Christ, to our world.

So arm yourself with truth. If you have the time and inclination, by all means acquaint yourself with the errors you are likely to encounter. We need informed teachers to tell us what we will face. But as your primary weapon in this battle, arm yourself with God's truth.