In an age of relative truth and false teachers, no one should be surprised that a growing number of young Protestants doubt the Bible’s accuracy and believe that cultural changes make certain biblical teachings obsolete.
What happens when false teaching and outright heresy proliferate in Christian churches? Well, you get research findings showing that a growing number of young Protestants believe that the Bible is flawed.
A recent survey from Lifeway Research, for example, found that 55 percent of Protestants between the ages of 18 and 29 believe that cultural changes can make some biblical truths obsolete, while 34 percent said they “accept some truths from the Bible, but others do not fit what they believe.”
Meanwhile, data released last year by Barna Group and Gloo as part of their “State of the Church” initiative discovered that while Bible reading among American adults had reached its highest level in 15 years, only 44 percent of self-identified Christians said they believe the Bible is 100 percent accurate.
Clearly, twisted theology and self-serving teachers don’t stay contained within the walls of churches.
Nowhere is that more obvious than in mainline Protestant denominations, which have been at the forefront of spiritual drift for more than a century. What started with rejecting the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible and the narrow path to life has led its followers to step directly onto the wide path and its promised destruction (Matthew 7:13).
How bad has it gotten? Just consider the undercover footage of the Rev. Babs Miller of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, insisting that Jesus “didn’t die to save our sins,” questioning the virgin birth, and even saying, “We have no way of knowing if Jesus really existed.”
Then there’s the Episcopalian Rev. Flourish Klink (a female who identifies as a man) standing in the pulpit and preaching that, “God is beyond boy and girl. God was assigned a gender at birth and later on it became clear that that gender wasn’t quite right…. If you’re going to deny God is trans, I think you’re going to be denying the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is blasphemy, and it is clearly intended to lead churchgoers away from biblical truth and eternal salvation.
Paul summarizes the Gospel by declaring that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” was buried and “rose again the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Matthew 1:18-25 affirms the virgin birth, while 1 Corinthians 15:14 warns that “if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.”
These are not secondary theological disagreements. The virgin birth, Christ’s atoning death, and His bodily resurrection are essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Abandoning biblical authority therefore places far more at stake than one’s position on a particular cultural issue; ultimately, the Gospel itself is at stake.
Miller, Klink, and figures like them are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and it’s time to stop describing them, or their followers, as Christian. They preach a different religion that exalts the self, and they are exactly the kind of false teachers that Peter, Paul, John, and Jesus Himself warned against (2 Peter 2, Colossians 2:8, 1 John 4:1-5, and Matthew 7:15-20).
As Paul states in 1 Timothy 6:3-5:
If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.”
The real damage in all this isn’t just that there are false teachers spreading lies, it’s that self-described Christians are so quick to treat biblical truth as something that changes with culture or can be interpreted and “reconstructed” to justify their own selfish desires and whims.
The reasons behind this mentality aren’t because they have questions about hard doctrines. It reflects a fundamental question of authority: Does Scripture judge the beliefs of Christians and the culture around them, or do Christians use their own beliefs and cultural assumptions to decide which parts of Scripture are true?
Making a decision to “take what you like” from the Bible “and leave the rest,” as the Rev. Babs Miller instructs, is nothing more than a modern-day version of Satan’s question of Eve in Genesis 3:1: “Did God really say?”
Culture should never act as the basis on which the Bible is interpreted; rather, the Bible should continue to be the criterion by which Christians assess culture, their own personal beliefs, and even the teachings they receive from pulpits. Once Christians grant themselves the authority to decide which biblical truths remain applicable, Scripture ceases to function as the final authority and instead becomes subject to the judgment of the reader.
Believers must know the Bible well enough to recognize when Christian teaching is being separated from historic Christian doctrine and twisted to suit a personal or ideological agenda. Acts 17:11 commended the Bereans for examining the Scriptures to test what they were taught. Christians today need the same discernment.
This is particularly important when error and rebellion comes from inside the Church, where a pastor, priest, or teacher may speak with religious authority while contradicting what Scripture plainly teaches. It may not be as obvious as a “pastor” questioning Jesus’s existence or the Virgin birth; it could be a leader suggesting that the Old Testament is no longer relevant, that only the “red words” are inspired, or that Jesus “just wants us to be happy.”
We live in a world where people are daily manipulated by slogans and experts. This is why nothing replaces a sound knowledge of the Bible. The Lifeway and Barna findings should remind Christians that regular church attendance or selective Bible reading do not guarantee a biblical worldview. Christians must carefully study all of Scripture (not just the easy parts); test what they are told or taught against God’s Word; and remain firmly rooted in the Gospel, which was delivered “once for all to the saints” (Jude 3).
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