I’ve had the opportunity to meet people from many church traditions—from strict fundamentalists to self-proclaimed prophets and apostles and everything in between.

One of my favorite stories is when a well-known pastor (he called himself a “bishop”) explained to me that he possessed an even greater level of “genius” than T.D. Jakes, because he was born under the same astrological sign, but that his birthday was several days before that of Jakes.

Another TV evangelist explained to me that, if one could master the proper formula, he or she could possess absolutely anything they asked for in prayer. “It works like a charm,” he noted.

Someone else described how, on a trip to heaven, she had seen warehouses with aborted baby parts that were reassembled by angels and distributed to childless couples.

Several times, I’ve been asked whether I thought there is a common denominator among those who cling to religious fairy tales—and successfully convince others to believe them through their teaching.

There is. The common denominator is that these people do not accept the “authorial intent” of Scripture. In other words, they don’t believe that the text means today the same thing the author intended it to mean to his original audience. Since there is no anchor, when they “study” Scripture, virtually any meaning can be injected into the text.

Often, odd interpretations are attributed to the Holy Spirit revealing a “deeper” or “revelatory” meaning to the reader, since the plain meaning of the text is simply too mundane. Additionally, this model of hermeneutics creates a special class of interpreter who is able to mine insights from the Scriptures that are inaccessible to the average Christian.

Someone once explained to me the concept of “sympathetic magic” that they said they had observed in deliverance ministry. I questioned them as to where in Scripture they had seen this idea. This person admitted that there was no direct reference to sympathetic magic in Scripture but said, “Everything can’t be put to Scripture. It’s got to be rhema, not logos. Napoleon sailed across the water, but you can’t find that in the Word.”

I don’t think the answer to this problem is more book exposés, more theological education or more heresy hunter “ministries”. This battle is fought on a local level as pastors model good Bible study methods and these methods are reproduced in families and small groups in the church. I’m thankful for every pastor that fights this fight, laboring in the gospel by properly handling the text.

A recent Newsweek article suggests that Americans are more Hindu than Christian in their worldviews. I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise. Hinduism is essentially a pluralistic religion, so as the West migrates toward pluralism, its religious views will be more and more compatible with Hinduism—regardless of the fact that the average Joe knows nothing about the nuts and bolts of Hinduism and thinks “dharma” is the business venture behind the mysterious island in the TV drama, LOST.

“Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for ‘the divine-deli-cafeteria religion’ as ‘very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You’re not picking and choosing from different religions, because they’re all the same,’ he says. ‘It isn’t about orthodoxy. It’s about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that’s great, too.’”

The problem is not that this divine deli exists—it always has. The problem is that the church has decided to sell its products at the same deli. Unfortunately, our “product” is too costly, the flavor is not always appealing to the palate and the rewards of “using” the product are often not realized until the death of the user.

Grace is so big and so undeserved.

While I was walking the dog last night, I listened to a message on John 5, in which Jesus healed a crippled man by the pool of Bethesda. Along with the fact that Jesus performed this miracle on the Sabbath (and instructed the man to carry his bed on the Sabbath), the story highlights the absolute helplessness of the man’s condition. The man did absolutely nothing to receive his healing. In fact, the man didn’t even recognize that Jesus was a healer until it was “too late”—while he was busy complaining to Jesus about not having anyone to put him in the pool, Jesus healed him!

Contrast that with this little video clip, in which “Prophetess” Christina Glenn, soon to be the third wife of “Bishop” Thomas Wesley Weeks III, informs her listeners that the loudness of their screaming will determine the size of the miracle they get.