Let’s start with a scenario. Imagine an individual attending a church. In one service, someone in leadership said something neither wise nor appropriate to this individual. This individual was hurt, and rightfully so, and they left the service seething.
All they could think of was the statement made as they drove home. Upon arriving home, the individual slammed the door, threw himself on the couch, took out his phone, and started scrolling through Facebook.
Scrolling through, he slowed on a reel from the service, highlighting a poignant point from the pastor’s message. Behind the pastor in the ministry seating was the leader who had been the cause of such offense and ire.
“Pastor’s little pet,” the individual thought, blood boiling.
Suddenly, a scripture from his earlier bible reading pops into his mind, which he quickly finds on this bible app; copying the Scripture and navigating over to his Facebook page, he taps and pastes:
Isaiah 32:6 (ESV) — 6 For the fool speaks folly, and his heart is busy with iniquity, to practice ungodliness, to utter error concerning the LORD, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink.
Fingers hovering, he begins to type feverishly.
“There are too many today who sit in prestigious places of leadership, propped up by leaders who are unaware of their hearts that are busy with iniquity, whose lips utter folly and error to those hungry for kindness and thirsty for encouragement. How many people are dying on church pews because of this? How often has someone gone to church to be fed but left hungry because of the folly and error that came out of the mouth of one allowed to sit in a place often reserved for nourishing the flock?”
Hitting “post,” the irritated individual sits back and begins scrolling until, as he scrolls, a notification pops up. Someone has commented on his post! Quickly, he taps back into his post, and a grim satisfaction plays across his face. Someone has agreed with him, and they quoted a few other scriptures.
He begins to type a response…
Tragically, this is all too common. While the individual may be using Scriptures (in this case, a bit out of context), their spirit undermines the use of any biblical text. Why? They are dragging God’s word into their feelings of offense and using it as a prop to “get back” at someone they are harboring animosity toward.
They may have been wronged, but it is NEVER right to use the Bible as a tool to enact cloaked retribution against another individual in the Body of Christ or even those without! How insulting this is to the wonderful Word of God! It is similar to Aaron’s children who brought “strange fire” into the House of the Lord.
Yet, I see this regularly when I am privy to disagreements or issues among saints or various groups in a church. Cloaked attacks that DRAG THE BIBLE into their problems to slice, stab, and set straight their opposition.
Did you know that even POSTING Bible verses based on motives that aim to prove a point or publicly justify or address your irritation or set straight something or someone is wrong? Could you pray? Why not try to make amends? Or how about saying NOTHING at all.
If you refuse to feed a fire, the fire will go out.