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Tag: Intellect

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Intellectualism Comes From Satan by Jesse Lee Peterson

Bruce Gerencser 0 Comments

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This is the one hundred and twenty-first installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section.  Let’s have some fun!

Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of a sermon preached by Jesse Lee Peterson. Peterson is “president and founder of BOND (the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny), an American religious nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to “Rebuilding the Family by Rebuilding the Man.”

Excerpt from video:

I notice that the people who are really into the intellect are nutcases. Absolute nutcases. Because of this intellectual thing taking over and the people rule us, we now have so-called same-sex marriage. That wouldn’t happen if we weren’t into the intellect. Common sense would dictate that is not going to happen and common sense wouldn’t care what you thought about it because we would know that that’s wrong.

Intellectuals are also responsible for the fact that we now have drag queens running around in the military. Can you imagine jumping down in a foxhole, running from bin Laden, and there is a man in there with a dress and lipstick on? It would shock you. You would rather be out with bin Laden,” Peterson stated, apparently so dedicated to being anti-intellectual that he’s totally unaware that Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

….

People simply need to rely on the intellect of God, because human intellect is a tool of the devil, which is why all intellectual people are insecure people … because their father is weak, their father Satan is a deceiver.

Video Link

Martyn Lloyd Jones Asks, Is Jesus Lord of Your Intellect?

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments
bible literalism
Drawing by David Hayward

Or to put it another way, do you parse every thought you have through the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God?

Martyn Lloyd Jones, a 20th century Reformed pastor, who is quite popular among fundamentalist Calvinistic/Reformed Christians, had this to say on the matter:

‎”My thinking, if I believe that Jesus is the Lord, must be governed entirely by the Bible. In other words, I am not governed by modern thought. If I am governed by that, then Jesus is not the Lord of my intellect. So I cannot be governed by modern thought or by recent knowledge or by the latest discoveries of science. The moment I begin to be governed by those things, then Jesus is no longer Lord to me. I am putting myself in a superior position. I am making myself the lord.”

It should come as no surprise that Lloyd Jones rejected evolution. In his book, What is an Evangelical? , Lloyd Jones wrote:

‘We accept the biblical teaching with regard to creation and do not base our position upon theories of evolution, whichever particular theory people may choose to advocate. We must assert that we believe in the being of one first man called Adam, and one first woman called Eve. We reject the notion of pre-Adamic man because it is contrary to the teaching of the Scripture.

‘Now someone may ask, “Why do you care about this? Is this essential to your doctrine of salvation? Are you not falling into the very error of over-particularization against which you warned us at the beginning?” I suggest that I am not, and for these reasons. If we say that we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, we must say that about the whole of the Bible, and when the Bible presents itself to us as history, we must accept it as history. I would contend that the early chapters of Genesis, the first three chapters of Genesis, are given to us as history. We know that there are pictures and symbols in the Bible, and when the Bible uses symbol and parable it indicates that it is doing so, but when it presents something to us in the form of history, it requires us to accept it as history.

‘We must therefore hold to the vital principle, to which I have referred earlier, of the wholeness and the close interrelationship of every part of the biblical message. The Bible does not merely make statements about salvation. It is a complete whole: it tells you about the origin of the world and of man; it tells you what has happened to him, how he fell and the need of salvation arose, it then tells how God provided this salvation and how He began to reveal it in parts and portions. Nothing is so amazing about the Bible as its wholeness, the perfect interrelationship of all the parts.’

Let this be a reminder of how the Evangelical doctrine of inerrancy and Bible literalism cripples a person’s ability to think and reason. When inquiry begins with an inerrant, infallible, inspired text there can be no hope of a satisfactory answer. Every answer must be fit into the Bible box and anything that doesn’t fit in this box is rejected out of hand. This kind of thinking breeds ignorance and keeps a person from seeing the world as it is.

Now I Know Why Many Evangelicals Have Empty Heads

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
don't think 2
Drawing by David Hayward

Snark Ahead

Mike Ratliff, writing for the Christian Research Network, had this to say about faith:

…Human faith is not the same thing as Genuine (saving) faith, which is a gift from God. The former is based in Human reason and intellect. The latter is supernatural. What passes for faith in many professing believer’s “Christianity” is a belief based in who preaches to or teaches them. This is not Genuine faith because it is not a belief in the Word or in God through the Word. These are “believers” who will eventually fall away. Some may last a lifetime, but as soon as the fires of tribulation come upon them they slide into apostasy because their faith is not of the substance that endures…

In one short paragraph, Ratliff reveals WHY so many Evangelicals have empty heads, why they lack any sort of intellectual acumen. Why, you ask? Because God has replaced their human faith with genuine faith. According to Ratliff, genuine faith is a gift from God. Human faith is not from God and is based on reason and intellect.

There ya have it . . . God gives Evangelicals faith and BOOM! out goes reason and intellect. In comes a God-given faith, a faith that leads people to believe things like the Bible is inerrant, the earth was created in six days 6,024 years ago, Adam and Eve were real people, and Jesus really, really did walk on water and resurrect from the dead.

Ratliff’s post is a reminder of how preachers like him keep people enslaved by telling them that their human intellect and reason should never be trusted. Instead, trust the pronouncements of Ratliff, the man of God and the inerrant, infallible words of the Bible.

Ratliff and others like him know that if people really begin to use their intellect and reason they are likely to exit stage left. Thinking Evangelicals often don’t stay in Evangelical churches. Once they see that they have been snookered by their church and pastor they move on to places where reason and intellect are valued and appreciated.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Bruce Gerencser