A couple Christmases ago, I received
John Eldredge's Waking the Dead. In the beginning of this book, Eldredge takes us to Genesis' account of
the four streams that flowed out of the Garden of Eden. Citing a theologian I had never heard of (which does not necessarily make him a quack), Elderidge says the streams represent the four "streams" of Christianity that we are to live our faith out of. I forget what the "streams" were- but that's really irrelevant.
Yesterday, the pastor of the church we were visiting got up after the worship/song set and did the same thing. Without citing any other theologian or teacher/etc, this pastor read each of the verses about the rivers and then proclaimed a "river" he was releasing on his people.
The first river is Pishon, which flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. That is the river of provision, we were told. The second river is the Gihon, the river of peace. The third river is the Tigris, protection. And the fourth river is the Euphrates, power. Maybe I don't know my Hebrew well, but unless these river names mean these four things (which were not what Eldredge took them to mean- I do remember that much), this is just wrong.
In a moment of irony I have never before experienced at a corporate worship service, the person actually preaching yesterday got up behind the pulpit and paid the pastor a "complement" about his knowledge of Scripture saying she had never seen that in that passage before.
There's a good reason... it's not really there. Are there other passages we have done this to? Where else have we pulled hermeneutics out of a hat?
Tonight I heard a youth pastor at a non-denominational Bible church say this to some junior high kids:
A couple Christmases ago, I received John Eldredge's Waking the Dead. In the beginning of this book, Eldredge takes us to Genesis' account of the four streams that flowed out of the Garden of Eden. Citing a theologian I had never heard of (which does not necessarily make him a quack), Elderidge says the streams represent the four "streams" of Christianity that we are to live our faith out of. I forget what the "streams" were- but that's really irrelevant.
Of the 7 channels we get without cable, one is a local Christian station. Occasionally I find Tony Evans preaching, but beyond that it is pretty much a channel dripping with unintentional comedy. A couple days ago I stumbled upon a program featuring a man teaching a small group of adults about the evils of music, particularly rap. It turns out the program was taped around 1992, when MC Hammer had released his single "Pray." I remember having the "MC Hammer has a song called Pray he must be a Christian!" argument with my youth pastor- so I had to stop and watch. Besides making it abundantly clear that he felt MC Hammer was not a Christian he made it no less than abundantly clear that he felt rap music was not only fleshly, worldly music but that it also could not be "Christianized." Not even by DC Talk! Anyway, here was his best line of the 10 minutes I watched...