I never felt as small as I did that day.

I mean, I’d felt bad before. I had second-guessed myself before.

But, this was ridiculous.

I had just told somebody I wasn’t a fan of Jesus Culture’s music… and all hell broke loose. Figuratively, of course.

I was bashed for it. Apparently, my not being a fan of their music actually OFFENDED people. I had struck a nerve with those around me and it was unforgivable.

But, I just wasn’t a fan of a band. A BAND. That’s all. Why was that so controversial?

I mean, there were other bands that I despised. Not necessarily for the same reasons, but I just wasn’t a fan of some bands. So, was I supposed to give Sinead O’Connor, Baha Men, and Limp Bizkit a second chance? They’re terrible!

Was I not allowed to not like A BAND?

Or was Jesus Culture worth more of my attention? I mean, everybody around me flocked to catch them on YouTube or their website. Everybody just flat-out liked their music. And they bugged me for not agreeing with them.

So, I sat in my room and wondered silently if I did something wrong. Maybe I should like the band? Maybe I just wasn’t thinking right? Maybe I just wasn’t hearing the right songs?

I sat in my room and wondered silently about what the heck all the backlash was all about. And then it hit me.

Like a ton of bricks. Like a baby grand tossed off the roof of a skyscraper. Like a truck slamming into a wall…

People had just ceased being rational. People had stopped THINKING. To the people around me, it was ICKY that somebody could disagree with them about their favorite worship band/church/pastor… People had just traded in their rationality and tolerance for heavy doses of infatuation and blindness.

And I quickly realized that this was about more than just merely liking a band. Or music. Or chord progressions.

**

I was involved in a conversation thread on Twitter last night. Jesus Culture’s home church and home pastor became the topic that was being discussed. People didn’t like them. People liked them. There were two sides of the fence.

I made some points.

And fell asleep.

When I woke up and weaved my way through wave after wave of 140-characters-and-less posts, I realized that somewhere along the way, the discussion became tense. And I wasn’t sure why.

I’m not even gonna sit here and tell you that I’m writing this so that I can convince you that it happens to be possible to NOT AGREE with everything somebody else believes in. Because that might seem outrageous to some people.

And when it comes to churches and pastors, it’s a whole other story.

Hate me for being a Yankee fan. For being a LeBron James fan. For being from the University of Miami.

Don’t hate me for not blindly accepting the views of a church or pastor you steadfastly and stubbornly refuse to critique and test.

Be a fan of sports teams and athletes. Not churches and pastors.

And this brings me to my point…

**

But here are some ground rules before I begin.

Be open-minded.

There are 2 extreme sides you may want to take in this discussion. Don’t do it. I’m just letting you know now.. if you’re on either of the 2 sides of the proverbial fence, you’re probably wrong. That’s just how it usually goes with stuff like this. The right answer is usually somewhere in the middle.

The FIRST side? “My church/pastor can never, never, ever, ever, ever be wrong about anything, can never have wrong interpretations of scripture, and can never have arguable stances on any topic. Ever.” … [You can add as many “nevers” and “evers” as your heart desires, depending on how staunchly you stand here.]

The SECOND side? “I don’t feel comfortable with the way this church/pastor worships God or interprets scripture, so they’re OBVIOUSLY wrong about EVERYTHING. Always. Forever… Oh, and that church is definitely a cult. And that pastor is definitely a false prophet.”

Either of these 2 sides is ridiculous. I hope you can immediately see why. And, honestly, among all of you who are reading this, there will definitely be a few of you who will find yourselves on either side of this fence.

Get off the fence immediately.

Thank you.

**

There are reasons why Rob Bell’s latest book, “Love Wins,” was/is the subject to much argument, scorn, criticism, and resistance.

It’s because he took entire Bible passages out of context.

It’s also because he took centuries of accepted and semi-accepted and reasonable and semi-reasonable theological truths and theories and completely neglected them or grossly misinterpreted them or wholly misstated their tenets.

And, above all, it’s because he’s a PASTOR. Of a major church. And people look up to him. And people “buy into” what he speaks about when he’s on the stage. When he’s in front of a pulpit. When he looks straight ahead at the audience and opens his mouth to utter the points of his message.

People buy into that stuff. So, whether Rob Bell likes it or not, he has a responsibility to actually take scriptural context seriously. And he has a responsibility to take centuries of accepted theological truths and theories seriously.

Just because he’s a pastor/writer/thinker/speaker does NOT mean he HAS to be right.

And just because he happens to be a sort of “rockstar pastor” (i.e. an uber-popular and in-demand pastor) does NOT mean he’s devoid of erroneous thinking and interpreting.

And by no means does criticizing HIM mean you’re criticizing God. When Hebrews 11 talks incessantly about blind faith, I promise you that it’s not telling us to accept everything that our favorite pastors tell us without testing them first. There’s a context to that verse, too. (And, in case you’re wondering, it’s specifically talking about blind faith in God.)

It’s just not enough to say “Well, Pastor Relevant McAwesomePants has been right about 99 theories before, so he’ll be right ALL the time.”

Because, [this is all hypothetical, btw] maybe his 100th sermon demands his church to go to their local PetSmart superstore, purchase dog bowls, fill the bowls with water, and have their friends and family drink out of the bowls like dogs. Because we are all what the hip, cool pastor calls “The Gideon Generation” and that’s what Gideon made his soldiers do before their battle… And, according to Pastor McAwesomePants, we need to go down to Mexico and kill all the Mexicans we come in contact with because they are stealing our American jobs and their drug cartels are infiltrating the subtle nuances of God-upholding communities and, to a larger degree, American Christendom. So, we all MUST buy into his 100th sermon about “The Gideon Generation” and a need for a “Holy Genocide Movement” because that’s what God told Gideon to do.

Duh.

That makes sense.

Wait… what??

We have to draw the line SOMEWHERE, right?

**

I can sit here and confidently say that most people in our culture/generation would agree with the following line immediately.

“Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s NOT legit.”

There are those of you reading this and nodding your heads at that line. Because you believe it. You absolutely believe it.

And that’s fine.

But, that implies that nobody has to ever draw ANY line ANYWHERE. Ever.

And that’s very, very dangerous.

So, I would rectify it by re-stating it: “Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s NOT legit.. BUT you should test it against scripture anyway.”

Because, all over the Bible, we are commanded to test the words of our spiritual leaders and prophets. Not because false prophets/prophecies and wrong interpretations are PROBABLY gonna arise eventually, but because the Bible implies that these things are INEVITABLE.

I’m not bashing Bethel (Jesus Culture’s home church). Or Bill Johnson (Jesus Culture’s home pastor). Or Rob Bell. Or Kris Vallotton. Or anybody else.

But I will call them  ”rockstar churches” and “rockstar pastors.” I mean that in the sense that a lot of people just buy into them withOUT testing them against scripture. And that’s incredibly dangerous… And downright irresponsible.

My friend, Albert, recently texted me about something and he referred to our generation as the “disabled body of Christ.” And, my goodness, it seems so ridiculous true.

We don’t even bother asking questions anymore. We just hear it, absorb it, and believe it to be unequivocally true. No matter what. Whenever I choose to apply it to the real world.

But that’s completely irresponsible.

It’s not enough that Matt Chandler goes on stage and preaches to us. It’s not enough that Joel Houston speaks about a verse before leading an altar call song. It’s not enough that Kim Walker-Smith cries out passionately about the Holy Spirit and utters verses from Ezekiel and Hosea and Isaiah at us.

We, as the BODY of Christ, have a responsibility to be vigilant in what we take in. We have a responsibility to go back to our homes and reflect on what was spoken. We need to flip open our seemingly-archaic paperback Bibles or launch the Bible apps on our phones in order to test what was spoken. We need to Google some of the tougher concepts and theories that were doled out freely from the pulpit. And, in this day and age, testing everything based on context is absolutely possible and nearly instantaneous.

It is utterly irresponsible for us to just “buy into” everything. Just because it’s a rockstar pastor. Just because it’s a rockstar church.

We need to make sure that the message we heard from our pastor about “The Gideon Generation” and the much-needed “Holy Genocide Movement” is based on CORRECT context of scripture and that it’s not just some passionate, tainted rambling from a speaker-with-an-agenda.

It’s not enough for us to say “just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s not legit.”

Test them to see that they ARE legit.

Because we need to draw the line SOMEWHERE.

**

So, for example, [and this will absolutely ruffle some of your feathers- so to speak].. when a pastor uses verses in Acts, out of context, to explain some phenomenon in his church, and we just accept it because it makes us feel good or because it sounds good or because it’s OBVIOUSLY of God… there’s a huge problem.

Because, at some point, when another rockstar pastor writes a book about his church and a phenomenon he calls “Holy Wall Punching” and explains that people get violent and break stuff and punch walls when they’re drunk… AND he uses the same verses from Acts, out of context, to back up what it means to be “drunk in the Spirit”… well, then we kinda sorta HAVE to believe that, too. Because we didn’t bother to bat an eye when the other rockstar pastors preached about the other based-on-Acts phenomena.

We have to draw a line SOMEWHERE.

And, for me (and a whole lot of other people), the line is drawn at context.

And, drawing a line and taking a hard stance on something does NOT mean you don’t believe in the Holy Spirit and its ability to move in a church or in a generation. Testing out a phenomenon doesn’t make you a God-hater or a Holy Spirit-hater or a really terrible human being.

It just means that you’re taking the Bible seriously.

If the verses in Acts are really talking about how people heard many different languages spoken/yelled/shouted/cried by a bunch of people simultaneously (who otherwise wouldn’t/didn’t know the languages they were uttering), seemingly in a drunken stupor… it doesn’t green-light EVERY OTHER symptom of drunkenness. Incoherent babbling definitely is a symptom of drunkenness, but that doesn’t mean that EVERY OTHER symptom is allowed to be extrapolated from those verses in Acts.

Does that mean that “Holy Wall Punching” is wrong? Not necessarily.

But is it SO absolutely, unequivocally right that it can never, ever, ever be challenged? No.

Because the defense of the phenomenon is out-of-context.

If that doesn’t hit home for you, here’s another hypothetical. There’s a passage in the Bible that mentions that the disciples fell asleep in the Garden when Jesus told them to stay awake and pray… Your favorite rockstar pastor spins this passage into a chapter in his/her latest book. In it, he/she writes about how “Holy Snoring” (i.e. when you randomly snore in the middle of a worship service or experience) is a gift from God that warns us of impending doom or gloom.

At some point, we have to just admit that we have to draw a line somewhere.

Not because snoring makes us feel uncomfortable. Or because snoring just seems, at surface level, NOT legit. But because the context used to defend this notion is completely out-of-place.

Context is a big deal. It’s absolutely essential.

So, Rob Bell SHOULD be criticized if he screws up and butchers a passage’s context and gets it wrong. So should Bill Johnson. And anybody else.

That doesn’t mean that they’re ENTIRELY false and ENTIRELY negligible and just plain moronic. It just means that they probably just got something wrong.

We have to draw the line SOMEWHERE.

And I’m not ONLY blaming pastors/writers/thinkers/speakers and absolving the rest of the church from anything.

The Bible constantly tells us to test everything we’re hearing.

So, in some sense, it’s a “shame on him” approach that we have to take with Rob Bell for his controversial writings. And for the speakers that just have it kinda sorta wrong.

But, in another sense, it’s a “shame on US” approach we have to take for us just “buying in” to Bell’s message (or others’) without testing it out first.

**

Test EVERYTHING.

Not because you want to be more intelligent than the rest of your Sunday School classmates.

Not because you want to get to a point where you understand God for all of His complexity.

If that’s your motivation, you’re in for major disappointment.

Test EVERYTHING because falsehood is INEVITABLE.

It happens. Pastors fall. People deceive. Bible concordances get misread.

It happens.

And that’s exactly why you absolutely NEED to start being responsible.

Not because you mistrust the moves of the Holy Spirit, but because you want to make sure it’s ACTUALLY the Holy Spirit that’s at work at all.

Fancy lights and waved flags and cool guitar licks and attractive lead singers and mesmerizing drum solos and hip pastors that use iPads and super-happy greeters at every entrance/exit of the church.. NONE OF THESE THINGS MAKE US CHRISTIANS.

I fear that they have, instead, merely made us FANS.

And that’s completely irresponsible.

**

I’m not a fan of Jesus Culture’s music. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be. I don’t expect you to despise Sinead O’Connor, Baha Men, or Limp Bizkit with me, either. And that’s fine.

You don’t have to.

Your beliefs and subscriptions are YOUR beliefs and subscriptions. I can live with that.

But don’t frown at me when I admit to you that I don’t completely buy into your favorite worship team or your favorite pastor or your favorite church.

Don’t frown. Don’t get mad.

And, above all, don’t be disappointed in me.

Just do me a favor and take notes the next time you’re at your church.

Because I’ll be disappointed if you choose not to test what you’re hearing.

And, contextually-speaking, I think God will be disappointed, too.