Outing Joel Osteen
I was sitting in the waiting room this morning at the Toyota dealership, having my Corolla serviced, when perky Katie announced that The Today Show would be having an interview with Joel Osteen. “This should be good”, I thought, and as much as I could stand of it, I watched. Scary. Having written a post in December about the dangerous new kid on the block, Joel Osteen, I am very gratified to see that Michael Spencer is challenging the evangelical blogosphere to expose this man for what he is. Michael’s crusade is not about ugliness, but about truth, and I commend him for showing leadership. No one can judge Joel Osteen’s heart, but we are required to judge his message, and there is no question about it: this man is not preaching the gospel of Jesus nor contending for the “faith once delivered”. People who believe his message stand the significant risk of being inoculated against the truth of Jesus. In the name of Jesus and for the cause of discernment, I encourage all who blog as evangelicals to flood the blogosphere with the warning. Joel Osteen is not one of us.
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One Response to “Outing Joel Osteen”
I refuse to argue with you, Jonathan, but I have studied what he has written; no phone call is necessary, for what he has written is plain to read and understand, and I will stand by everything that I have said. As I make plain in each of my posts, I do not judge his heart. That is not my place. But I can and must, to be faithful to Jesus, judge his teachings. If reading what the man says, and judging it in light of what Jesus says, amounts to “hatred and falsehoods”, then so be it; at the same time, those who read this blog can judge whether my words about Mr. Osteen are more “hateful”, or whether your response to my words is.
It is never a popular thing to exercise discernment; it will draw condemnation such as yours. I accept that. It is also difficult in light of the fact that all of us, myself first of all, have feet of clay, and none of us are perfect. The alternative, though, is to sit idly by and allow a false teacher to be accepted as one who is “one of us”, when his teachings are anything but “the faith once delivered to the saints”. If evangelicals in the blogosphere can prevent this happening, then a great service is being done.
Byron ~ Feb 2, 2005 at 10:17 am