Misrepresenting God

I have not been to Peter Enns; website for a while so In looking for something to write about, I went to his blog and found what I needed to talk about. When people become Christians they enter God’s kingdom and it is God and his words they represent. Sadly, too many people, like Enns, have opted to misrepresent God while still claiming to be part of God’s kingdom. This bad stewardship of the office God has granted them has its impact as evil gets an opening into the lives of vulnerable believers. When I read these people, like Enns, I am often reminded of the verses where Jesus was talking about the faith of children and how it is better for the person to commit suicide than for them to ruin the children’s faith in Jesus.

People like Enns ruin the faith people have in Jesus with their misrepresenting of God and his work. We will address a few of his posts here

#1.3 reasons why did God not create the earth and cosmos with “apparent age”– http://www.peteenns.com/3-reasons-why-did-god-not-create-the-earth-and-cosmos-with-apparent-age/

Apparent age” means that God created the cosmos to look billions of years old when in fact it is only a few 1000 years old. This is seen by some* as a solution to why the earth looks so old when the Bible says it is so young.

We are not looking at his reasons why  although we should. What we are addressing is this idea that there is apparent age in the universe when God created.everything. The idea of ‘apparent age’ i snot a Christian teaching. That comes from secularists who have decided that to determine the age of the universe and earth one must look at starlight and life development.

But there is no instruction anywhere telling any human to use those items as criteria or evidence for when the universe and earth came into existence.The idea of apparent age is read into the whole issue by unbelievers. it is a misleading argument because you cannot really create something that does not look like it is older than its actual age.

Try building a room with furniture. You may have built it in 6 hours the day before but it looks older than one day old, especially when you apply false criteria to the construction. You place a lamp in the room and someone will say, you couldn’t have built this yesterday because it takes 7 days for the light from the lamp to reach the room.The people doing the criticizing will use any unrealistic argument to discredit your work because they do not believe you.

This is the way it is with evolutionists and big bang supporters. They do NOT believe God and will use any unrealistic argument to discredit the Bible. They use starlight as their main example for apparent age but the astronomer cannot measure how long light takes to get from a star to the earth because starlight has always reached the earth. There is nothing to measure.

The same with geological layers. That formation is a creation of unbelievers not God. Geologists have yet to prove that the layers were laid down as they have said. They have read into the layers a time frame that does not exist, one that fits their theory but not reality

The world shows evidence of age and evolutionary development.

We will address this reason. This is a prime example of the eisegetical work anti-Genesis people do. They read into the evidence what they want it to say and take nothing out of it. Fossils do not show age or life development, but that doesn’t stop evolutionists from reading those ideas into the fossil record. Nothing in this world shows an evolutionary development.

#2.selling God short when evangelicals talk about evolution— http://www.peteenns.com/selling-god-short-when-evangelicals-talk-about-evolution/

The real problem isn’t evolution. There is a deeper problem: evangelicals tend to expect from the Bible what it simply isn’t set up to deliver.

Too often evangelicals start out the evolution discussion assuming that the biblical story of origins simply must have some clear historical validity, at least enough to draw it into a discussion over how the Bible and science are “compatible.” After all, this is the Bible, God’s word. Surely it must do more than just tell ancient stories! It must tell us at least something of what actually happened!

Then according to Enns’ logic, Jesus sold God short when he talked about creation.  No the problem is not with the Bible believer but with evolution. It sells God short, calls him a liar, a sinner, a deceiver and incapable of having the power to create as he said he did. The theory of evolution doe snot bring glory to God or display his glory but diminishes it and makes God look weak and incapable of handling life’s problems or powerful enough to overcome evil, which according to Enns, is who God now is.

Genesis is historical and true and God represents it as such. Enns and people like him misrepresent God by saying that it isn’t. We find no biblical verse supporting Enns’ conclusion there but we find a lot supporting Genesis’ historical validity.

So, maybe we need to think more about how the Bible works and whether we are creating a problem by beginning with false assumptions.

The only people who are making false assumptions are those who say that evolution was the method God used to create life. God does not say that he used a process, He says he spoke and it was. If Enns wants to claim there are false assumptions then he must say that God did it as well and that idea makes God in need of a savior. He is also saying that God is a bad communicator of his own actions and who wants to serve and follow such an inferior inconsiderate God?

But too many expect the Bible to give the final word on all sorts of things—as if it were an owner’s manual or some sort of reference work that speaks to any and every issue. Thinking this way creates problems—like the kind we often see when evangelicals talk about evolution.

But it does speak to every issue or it wouldn’t be God’s word nor would the Bible be our guide. Enns has yet to produce any alternate divinely inspired, apostle taught manuscripts providing further instructions from God than the ones we have received from the Bible. When people say things like the content of that quote they are actually confessing that they do not believe God, will not obey him and want their own way instead of God’s.

#3.reading Genesis like adults— http://www.peteenns.com/reading-genesis-like-adults/

A child, indeed, unable to distinguish between reality and poetry, loses something when it is told that its dearest stories are “not true.” But the modern theologian should be further developed. The evangelical churches and their chosen representatives would do well not to dispute the fact that Genesis contains legends—as has been done too frequently—but to recognize that the knowledge of this fact is the indispensable condition to an historical understanding of Genesis

It is sad to read these type of words for they lead so many people away from the truth.  The first question we must ask is who are people like Gunkel and Enns in that they have so much omniscience, and truth that they get to correct God and tell us the Bible is not true?

To make a long story short, before Gunkel, Old Testament scholars on Genesis focused largely on an internal analysis of the Hebrew text—things like the literary style, usage of certain words and phrases, and what all of this tells us about when Genesis (and the other books of the Pentateuch, Torah) were written—which is what we in the field call source criticism (we like our code words).

Yet none of those points in style are actual criteria to determine what is or isn’t true. If you want to read Genesis like an adult then you will see that being hypocritical about your love for God is not the way to accomplish that objective. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 13 that love believes all things. He does not say that love cherry picks what it will believe. Enns cherry picks as do so many other people and their claims that they love God fall short and miss the mark that Paul set.

Telling a sinless and holy God that he lied and misrepresented the facts is not love but hate.Such words demonstrate a disbelief, not belief in God and his word. Disbelief is not of God but evil.Genesis cannot contain legends for then that would mean that the Bible is not God’s word and there is no salvation for anyone. Enns just does not see the ramifications of his or Gunkel’s words.

#4.careful: thinking can be damaging to your faith (but do it anyway)— http://www.peteenns.com/careful-thinking-can-be-damaging-to-your-faith-but-do-it-anyway/

Wolterstorff is talking about Christian scholarship, but his comment holds for all Christians who undertake a serious and honest study of their faith, the world around them, and how in heaven’s name the two can get along.

It is okay to think but for the believer, their thinking must not lead them to disobey God, ignore his instructions or call him a liar. We can think but we cannot forget the biblical instruction about listening to the ungodly, how deceived they are, that there are false teachers out there bringing a false message or how these unbelievers will pretend to be believers then lead people away back to imprisonment in sin.

Enns leaves a lot out of his encouraging believer to think. he is telling them to ignore what God has revealed to us and adopt deceived, blind secular teaching from those who have no idea how our origins took place and no hope of ever observing it. Real thinking does not remove God and his sinless ways from the process.Jesus’ instruction was for us to follow the holy Spirit to the truth not to adopt and follow secular ideas and ways. Thinking helps us get to the truth and avoid those false secular ideologies that destroy our faith

Misrepresenting God does not lead us to the truth nor is it following the Holy Spirit to it.  It allows for false teaching to enter into a church and destroy it and its impact for Jesus. Enns and people like him are not doing the church any favors by encouraging its members to follow after false teaching. They are being neither scholarly nor Christian. They are tools for evil.

We can say that because telling people that God got it wrong in Genesis is not representing God as he represents himself. Saying that Genesis is a human effort and not a divine one is also misrepresenting God for Jesus told us that if we do not believe Moses how can we believe his words. Jesus set the bar concerning the book of Genesis and the Christian faith, man did not.

What kind of God is Enns serving who betrays his followers by not giving them the truth in Genesis then lets unbelievers discover the truth about what he did in the beginning? That is not the God of the Bible or of our salvation,