THE BIBLE IS NOT MAGIC
When I was trained in evangelism, I was told to quote the exact words of the Bible and then let the Word of God do its work. I was rebuked more than once for trying to put things into other words. My words, I was told, had no power. God’s Word saved people.
I struggled to understand how my trainers viewed this. What difference did it make which words I used, so long as they conveyed the truth and so long as the one listening to me understood them?
My trainers seemed to think the Bible was “magic”. The hearer didn’t have to understand. He just had to hear the magic words and those words had the power to ‘make him believe’ without him understanding what he had heard. My responsibility wasn’t to help him understand. It was to get the sound of the magic words to his ears.
When I asked my trainers, “What if people ask questions about heaven or hell or sin or Jesus? Shouldn’t I help discuss those things?” My trainers told me that discussing such things was a colossal mistake in evangelism! They told me to keep the hearer on the only important subject: getting eternal life. Your hearers don’t need to understand those other things, I was told. All they need to do is trust to be saved. Speak the words, lead them to trust in the “sinner’s prayer”, and you have done your duty.
I began to understand why, after a sermon on, say, Leviticus, a pastor felt compelled to utter the “magic words” at the end of the sermon, inviting people to ask Jesus into their hearts and be assured of heaven. This had always confused me because the sermon didn’t offer any understanding of Jesus, hell, or heaven. The sermon was unrelated to those topics at all. Why give an invitation to go to heaven when you didn’t talk to the listeners about going to heaven?
Then I understood that these people believed that the sermon didn’t have to be related to the call to be saved from hell. The response to the invitation that the pastor expected was not related to sermon and it didn’t require understanding the sermon. Rather, the pastor expected a response because he expected the magic words – a one or two minute “gospel commercial” tacked on to his unrelated sermon -- to work their magic.
Hearers didn’t have to understand anything. Merely hearing the magic words could create the faith necessary to get that soul out of hell. That faith only needed to last for a moment. Later the ‘spell’ might fade, but its brief effects would last forever. The new “believer” could then go home to his regularly scheduled life because Christianity was not about following Jesus, but about using Jesus to get to heaven.
None of this sounded right to nineteen-year-old me. It sounded like a cheap substitute for genuine faith, and I rejected (with not a little vehemence) these ideas and the practices that came with them. And I still reject them.
I deny that the Bible is magic or that it works in a magical way.
I affirm that the Bible is God’s Word and in it, God communicates truth to our minds.
I deny that the words of the Bible can have any effect on a hearer without having an effect on that person’s understanding.
I affirm that a hearer must understand the message of God’s Word for his heart to be affected by it.
And because I believe these things to be true, I affirm that Christians must speak the truth to the extent necessary for a hearer to understand the message.
But speaking to that depth might take time. It might take more than one sermon for a person to understand the truth. He may have many questions he needs answered. Maybe weeks’ worth of questions. Maybe years’ worth of questions!
“But what if there isn’t time for all that?” my bewildered evangelical friend asks. “What if he is going to die in a car accident on the way home from church, and you don’t give an invitation after your sermon? Aren’t you to blame for his entering eternity without Christ? Didn’t you deny him the opportunity to be saved? Isn’t that a reason to give an invitation to be saved after every message, even if the message is about Leviticus?”
Great questions, but I’m out of space. Next week...
I struggled to understand how my trainers viewed this. What difference did it make which words I used, so long as they conveyed the truth and so long as the one listening to me understood them?
My trainers seemed to think the Bible was “magic”. The hearer didn’t have to understand. He just had to hear the magic words and those words had the power to ‘make him believe’ without him understanding what he had heard. My responsibility wasn’t to help him understand. It was to get the sound of the magic words to his ears.
When I asked my trainers, “What if people ask questions about heaven or hell or sin or Jesus? Shouldn’t I help discuss those things?” My trainers told me that discussing such things was a colossal mistake in evangelism! They told me to keep the hearer on the only important subject: getting eternal life. Your hearers don’t need to understand those other things, I was told. All they need to do is trust to be saved. Speak the words, lead them to trust in the “sinner’s prayer”, and you have done your duty.
I began to understand why, after a sermon on, say, Leviticus, a pastor felt compelled to utter the “magic words” at the end of the sermon, inviting people to ask Jesus into their hearts and be assured of heaven. This had always confused me because the sermon didn’t offer any understanding of Jesus, hell, or heaven. The sermon was unrelated to those topics at all. Why give an invitation to go to heaven when you didn’t talk to the listeners about going to heaven?
Then I understood that these people believed that the sermon didn’t have to be related to the call to be saved from hell. The response to the invitation that the pastor expected was not related to sermon and it didn’t require understanding the sermon. Rather, the pastor expected a response because he expected the magic words – a one or two minute “gospel commercial” tacked on to his unrelated sermon -- to work their magic.
Hearers didn’t have to understand anything. Merely hearing the magic words could create the faith necessary to get that soul out of hell. That faith only needed to last for a moment. Later the ‘spell’ might fade, but its brief effects would last forever. The new “believer” could then go home to his regularly scheduled life because Christianity was not about following Jesus, but about using Jesus to get to heaven.
None of this sounded right to nineteen-year-old me. It sounded like a cheap substitute for genuine faith, and I rejected (with not a little vehemence) these ideas and the practices that came with them. And I still reject them.
I deny that the Bible is magic or that it works in a magical way.
I affirm that the Bible is God’s Word and in it, God communicates truth to our minds.
I deny that the words of the Bible can have any effect on a hearer without having an effect on that person’s understanding.
I affirm that a hearer must understand the message of God’s Word for his heart to be affected by it.
And because I believe these things to be true, I affirm that Christians must speak the truth to the extent necessary for a hearer to understand the message.
But speaking to that depth might take time. It might take more than one sermon for a person to understand the truth. He may have many questions he needs answered. Maybe weeks’ worth of questions. Maybe years’ worth of questions!
“But what if there isn’t time for all that?” my bewildered evangelical friend asks. “What if he is going to die in a car accident on the way home from church, and you don’t give an invitation after your sermon? Aren’t you to blame for his entering eternity without Christ? Didn’t you deny him the opportunity to be saved? Isn’t that a reason to give an invitation to be saved after every message, even if the message is about Leviticus?”
Great questions, but I’m out of space. Next week...