Tag: andy stanley

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Andy Stanley Says There’s No ‘Clear Divine Standard’ of God Revealed to Mankind

North Point Community Church ‘impastor’ Andy Stanley continued his wretched job of unhitching the church from all the scriptures by offering a curious take on the perspicuity of scripture, claiming there’s no “universally defined standard” and there’s no “clear divine standard” that’s been revealed to mankind of what ‘good is.’

You’ll recall that Stanley previously said that it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable, and that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible. In 2018, he got shellacked from all sides for saying that Christians needed to unhitch themselves from the Old Testament and in a recent sermon told Christians not to follow Jesus through the Old Testament, but only through the Gospels.

During his October 30, 2022 sermon, Stanley seeks to rebuff the notion that “good people go to heaven” by making some curious claims and approaching the subject in a very Stanleyesque way:

The first thing that kind of undermines this whole idea that you know, ‘good people go to heaven and I’m a good person’, is that ‘good’ is a moving target historically.

What was considered ‘good’ 1000 years ago is considered evil now. What was considered evil 1000 years ago in some capacity is actually considered ‘good’. So depending on when you drop into history, the history of mankind, gosh, the definition of ‘good’, it’s kind of all over the place.

And it’s a moving target culturally, I mean, right now you can go to different parts of the world and what’s considered good in some parts of the world we consider evil, and what we consider evil in some parts of world they consider good. So who’s right?

And if good people go to heaven, again, there’s no universally defined standard and there’s no clear divine standard that’s been revealed to all of us otherwise everybody in the world would know exactly what good is and we would measure it the same way. And good is a moving target personally, right?

As stated in the aforementioned links, Stanley has said Christians need to “unhitch” themselves from the Old Testament on account of its troubling morality, and other minimizing of the OT. He later notes in this sermon:

This is kind of a western thing too, well we say ‘wait a minute but the Bible, the Bible tells us what’s good and bad and the difference between right and wrong’ and so some people want to use the Bible as the standard. And as we said last time, that’s a terrible idea.

Because if the Bible is the standard (Ed. note. he’s referring to the NT here) , you in fact don’t make the cut. You aren’t a good person. And I’m not judging you, I’m just telling you if you hold your standard of behavior up against the Bible’s standard of you know, right and wrong, good and bad, you’re not all that good.

And as we said last time, the Old Testament, the Jewish scriptures the Hebrew scriptures doesn’t even mention Heaven. People just all went to sheol, right? So there’s no theology. And of course they had some beliefs about the afterlife but there’s no coherent theology of heaven or of the afterlife in the Old Testament…. If you’re looking for an answer to the question ‘how good is good enough’ the Bible is really of no help because we’re not that good.”

Stanley is correct in much of his sermon. Still, because of his idiosyncratic theology, he repeatedly goes out of his way to de-emphasize the authority of the bible and instead emphasize the person of Jesus. It’s why in last week’s sermon, he goes out of his way to say strange things like ‘just because Jesus believes something, that doesn’t make it true.’

Hear me, for the moment. Don’t hear me saying what I’m saying because it’s necessarily true. Just hear me saying what I’m about to say, because this is what was said (in the bible.)

According to Jesus, good people don’t go to heaven. According to Jesus, it’s the very opposite of what most people who believe there’s a heaven actually think and believe. And the fact that Jesus didn’t believe that good people go to heaven, that doesn’t necessarily make it true. That’s just what He taught. And that’s what he said, and clearly, it’s what he believed.

But at the same time, and here’s the gotcha, here’s the strange thing, here’s the sit up straight and pay attention. Here’s the ‘wow’, you know, ‘that’s something to consider’: Jesus did not teach that good people go to heaven, but Jesus instructed his followers to be good, and more than that to do good.

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Stealing Andy Stanley: Is there Another Megachurch Plagiarism Scandal Brewing?

A year after former SBC President Ed Litton resigned after being embroiled in a plagiarism scandal, bringing to the forefront of the evangelical mind the question of the morality of stealing sermons, new accusations are being lobbed against Pastor Josh Howerton of the multicampus Lakepointe Church in Dallas Texas.

Shelia Wray Gregoire of the Bare Marriage podcast has accused of Howerton of lifting material from Andy Stanley, Steven Furtick, Mark Driscoll and Rick Warren without attribution, which can be seen examples from the 4:20-12:30 mark.

They hosts elaborated more on the Stanley case, offering this tweet and then the video to show that Howerton was aware that he was monkeying about with murky things. (Ironically, in his defense provided below would go on to quote trinity-denier TD Jakes)

Howerton has responded to the allegations, offering in part these points:

1. “Permission & Understanding. Because they have a heart to help, almost every pastor tells other pastors to use anything from his sermons that’ll help them. “If my bullet fits in your gun, shoot it!”: I’ve heard Adrian Rodgers, JD Greear, Craig Groeschel, Chris Hodges, Bob Russell, Rick Warren, etc all say this.

2. Differing industry standards. A church-sermon is not an academia-dissertation or a book/journalism-publication. I freely give away my notes to bivocational pastors and church-planters, because pastors aren’t preaching to make themselves look good, sound smart, or sell something proprietary. We’re preaching for life-change and to grow the kingdom. Those differing goals of written communication in journalism or academia vs. the goals of verbal communication in preaching lead to very different standards

3. It is understood that TEACHERS aggregate whatever content best helps their students. Guys, stop and think for a second: Pastors are TEACHERS. In schools, 0% of people assume every sentence their teacher says is their teacher’s 100% original thought and they never heard it from anyone else. 

4. Many words / phrases / illustrations are common-source in preaching

5. The Bible. I’m not gonna go here, but if you REALLY want to get salty, know who didn’t always cite sources? Bible writers. Gospel writers and other epistles borrow liberally from the Old Testament, sometimes citing, but often just saying without citation because in preaching what really matters is that people are helped with the truth.

h/t The Dissenter

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Andy Stanley Preaches Conspiracy Theory about the Origin+ Content of the Creeds

North Point Community Church ‘impastor’ Andy Stanley continued his wretched job of unhitching the church from all the scriptures by offering a novel take on ancient Christian creeds, such as the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed, by claiming they had to be approved and signed off by the Emperor to ensure there was no command to love or mention of behavior, he could have the freedom to affirm them while still sinning an acting however he wants.

You’ll recall that Stanley previously said that it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable, and that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible. In 2018, he got shellacked from all sides for saying that Christians needed to unhitch themselves from the Old Testament and in a recent sermon told Christians not to follow Jesus through the Old Testament, but only through the Gospels.

Engaging in some old old-fashioned conspiracy theory that he preached on February 15, 2015 as part of his Brand: New sermon series, he explains:

The problem with that creed along with other creeds is that there is no mention of love. In fact, there’s no mention of behavior at all. You could subscribe to that creed and basically do anything you wanted. There was a reason the creeds were that way. It’s because the creeds were generally signed off on by the Emperor. And the emperors had bad behavior, so the church leaders who were being funded by the emperors had to be very careful what they put into the Christian creeds.

https://twitter.com/cs_layman/status/1558450956672667648

h/t the Dissenter

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Andy Stanley Slams ‘Immature’ Christians Who Criticize ‘Those They’ve Never Met or Had a Conversation With’

North Point Community Church ‘impastor’ Andy Stanley continued his wretched job of smarmily assessing what’s wrong with Christendom and then explaining why he and his church are nailing it 24/7. This time, declaring that it is a sign of immaturity to publicly criticize anyone you’ve never met or had a conversation with, including politicians, public figures, and other Christians.

Stanley, who has mastered the art of clucking his tongue, shaking his head, and speaking in an exasperated tone like everyone should come to his conclusion, has been on our radar recently after saying it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable’, saying that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible, and opening up his church service with a Led Zeppelin concert.

He appeared on Supreme Lending Southeast (SLS) and gave an interview, where he rebuked political extremists on both sides of the aisle and bemoaned the notion that someone can just fire off criticism or rebuke of the other side without talking with them first, despite any public statements they may have said about a matter. His method, he explains, is the mature thing to do:

When we lead with criticism, we’ve abandoned values and again, there’s no nuance and the conversation ends. And then the other thing I would say is this…and to be honest I’ve not asked you this off-camera so I hope you give me the right answer, but I think I know you well enough to know the answer.

Pat, who would you go on social media- Twitter, Instagram, Facebook- who would you go on any of those three platforms and criticize publicly by name that you’ve never met or had a conversation with?

(Pat: “No one.”)

No one. Every time I ask a thoughtful, mature person that question, they just pause and say, ‘No one’. Well, social media is full of people who don’t know the people they’re criticizing. And I mean… just stop one day and read the mentions of any famous person on Twitter.

So the people who criticize other people by name, people they’ve never met, and this sounds judgmental, I think that is evidence of extraordinary immaturity. Because whenever I ask people I respect “who would you criticize by name on social media that you’ve never met?” Everybody says, “No one, I would never do that.”

I wouldn’t either. So the hypocrisy in a lot of this, is that if you would not be willing to walk up to that person in public, and say to them to their face, what you said about them on social media, you’re the hypocrite, you’re the hypocrite. You may be right, and your worldview may be correct and your opinion and your political persuasion may be right. But if you wouldn’t have the courage to say it to their face, then why in the world would you expose such extraordinary immaturity by posting it on social media?”

Bonus Context: Stanley has said before that everyone is a little racist, claimed that ‘you have to offend white people’ or else they’ll never repent of racism, said from the pulpit “here’s an uncomfortable fact: white people fear black men” and went on a woke Critical Race Theory tirade by arguing “it’s not enough to be ‘not racist,’ you must be ‘anti-racist,” before telling them that they’re all racists in their hearts.

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Former SBC President J.D. Greear Endorses False Teacher Andy Stanley’s Book

Proving time and time again that he has no discernment, former Southen Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear has endorsed Andy Stanley’s objectively wretched new book “Not In It To Win It” saying that the Northpoint megachurch impastor has “championed the primacy of reaching people as the task of the church” and that we should ‘wrestle with the questions” he raised in his book.

Stanley has been on our radar recently, after saying it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable’, and saying that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible.

He’s said before that everyone is a little racist, claimed that ‘you have to offend white people’ or else they’ll never repent of racism, said from the pulpit “here’s an uncomfortable fact: white people fear black men” and went on a woke Critical Race Theory tirade by arguing “it’s not enough to be ‘not racist,’ you must be ‘anti-racist,” before telling them that they’re all racists in their hearts.

None of that matters to Greear, who apparently wants to promote him and give his blessing to Stanley, writing:

“‘For as long as I’ve known Andy Stanley, he has championed the primacy of reaching people as the task of the church. As he often says (quoting James, a first-century leader of the church), ‘We ought not make it hard for the gentiles who are turning to God.‘ I believe the issues Andy raises in this book are the most pressing questions facing the church right now, and they get at the heart of the Great Commission itself. I invite you to wrestle with them thoughtfully and prayerfully, as I have. If we are to represent Jesus in this generation, we must be people full of grace and truth, and that is no small challenge. Even in places where you come to different conclusions than Andy, you’ll be richer for having wrestled through these issues.’

Note that Greear repeats Stanley’s out-of-context butchery of Acts 15:19-20 “Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.” One of the ways Stanley has made it easy for the gentiles to turn to God is basically writing off the whole old testament, saying we need to “unhitch” our faith from it, and opening up his church service with a Led Zeppelin concert.

As previously stated, in his book Stanely, who has mastered the art of clucking his tongue and speaking in an exasperated tone like everyone should come to his conclusion, makes the case that choosing sides in the current political and social war only sidelines the church. Instead, he says churches should remain neutral so as not to alienate anyone, using his own church’s response to the pandemic, (he closed down for a year and routine blasted Christians and lamented the fact that churches were fighting the government to stay open and have their services, saying he was embarrassed by it.) the death of George Floyd ( who he called “this generation’s ‘Samson‘ in a since-deleted tweet) and the 2020 election, where he’s said Christians can vote Democrat and run as Democrats all the want, and that there’s nothing wrong with it, repeatedly claiming an absolute equivalence of the current political parties.

Apparently, Greear feels much the same way and points to Stanley as the one to get the message out.

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Andy Stanley Praises Being a ‘Fence Sitter’ in New CNN Interview

North Point Community Church “impastor” Andy Stanley continued his wretched job of smarmily assessing what’s wrong with Christendom and then explaining why he and his church are nailing it 24/7, this time in an interview he did with CNN about his new book Not in It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines The Church.

Stanley has been on our radar recently, after saying it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable’, saying that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible, and opening up his church service with a Led Zeppelin concert

Stanely, who has mastered the art of clucking his tongue, shaking his head, and speaking in an exasperated tone like everyone should come to his conclusion, makes the case that choosing sides in the current political and social war only sidelines the church. Instead, he says churches should remain neutral so as not to alienate anyone, using his own church’s response to the pandemic, (he closed down for a year and lamented the fact that churches were fighting the government to stay open and have their church services, saying he was embarrassed by it.) the death of George Floyd ( who he called “this generation’s ‘Samson‘ in a since-deleted tweet) and the 2020 election, where he’s said Christians can vote Democrat and run as Democrats all the want, and that there’s nothing wrong with it, repeatedly claiming an absolute equivalence of the current political parties.

Thankfully, the interviewer pushes Stanley on the consistency of his position of not wanting to get involved in political or controversial issues (nowhere in his book does he mention abortion for example) but by and large, Stanley stumbles through the interview, getting caught multiple times in the inconsistency of his own passiveness.

Q- You said in the book that when churches take a political side, they’re already alienating half of the country. Are there political issues where a pastor shouldn’t be neutral even at the risk of being identified with a political party? The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. worked with the Democratic Party and a Democratic president to get the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed. Was he being too political? Was he wrong to align with the Democratic Party?

When a cultural issue intersects with the teachings of Jesus, we definitely should say something. The problem is when we do that — which we should — we do that knowing that … if I take a more left-leaning position on gun control — which I wouldn’t, because in my mind that’s a very complicated issue — but if I did, then I realize that the Republicans in my church are going to put me in the bucket of everything that the Democrats believe, because there’s no middle ground now. There’s no nuance. It’s tricky.

As a pastor I’m responsible for preaching the whole counsel of God. But talking about an issue is different than aligning with a party or aligning with a candidate. Even to say: ‘This is what Jesus teaches on this particular issue, this is what we should do, and that’s why I’m voting for…’ Nope. We should just stick with those specific issues without wholesale buying into a political party.

When pressed about whether he would have spoken out against Jim Crow segregation laws of the 1950s, Stanley is forced to acknowledge that given his ideology, he probably wouldn’t have done anything.

When I hear you talking about pastors being neutral on political issues, I think of history. There were a lot of White Southern Baptist pastors in the South who said they wanted to be neutral when civil rights leaders started holding protests in the 1950s. They didn’t speak out about Jim Crow segregation because they didn’t want to seem political, but it was really moral cowardice.

I understand that pressure. I’m not going to be arrogant enough to say If I’d been one of them, I tell you what I would have done — because I don’t know, and nobody does. But they were wrong. And many of them looked back later and were ashamed, as they should be. I would like to be better than that, but I don’t know.

Despite Stanley wanting to always ride the fence, the fact is that the devil owns the fence. Not all sides are equally righteous, as he seems to think, but one side must be unrighteous and should be avoided. Plus there are some areas where he has clearly chosen sides. Take the George Floyd situation he chided people on., Apart from saying this about the man:

He also went off haranguing and scolding people on the issue. He’s said before that everyone is a little racist, claimed that ‘you have to offend white people’ or else they’ll never repent of racism, said from the pulpit “here’s an uncomfortable fact: white people fear black men” and went on a woke Critical Race Theory tirade by arguing “it’s not enough to be ‘not racist,’ you must be ‘anti-racist,” before telling them that they’re all racists in their hearts.

Stanley chooses sides all the time, it’s just that he picks the wrong one while pretending he’s not at all.

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Phil Johnson Destroys Andy Stanley on Twitter

Pastor Andy Stanley of Northpoint Church, no stranger to taking the occasional peckish potshot at those he disagrees with, ran up against the wall that is Phil Johnson of Grace Community Church after taking exception to the complementarian position.

Responding to claims by Virgil Walker, the Executive Director of Operations for G3 Ministries and co-host of the always-excellent ‘Just Thinking Podcast, that women pastors aren’t real pastors but rather mere feminists who ignore the scriptures, Stanley chimed in that Walker’s assertions were “rude and incorrect, leading Johnson to make the following astute observation:

If someone stands up every Sunday and tells stories and makes remarks that constantly attack the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, he’s not a pastor, either.

Fact check: true. What Phil is referring to here is a 2006 interview Stanley did with Leadership Journal, where the corporate Pastor made the following comments:

Leadership: What is distinctly spiritual about the kind of leadership you do?

Andy Stanley: There’s nothing distinctly spiritual. I think a big problem in the church has been the dichotomy between spirituality and leadership. One of the criticisms I get is “Your church is so corporate.” I read blogs all the time. Bloggers complain, “The pastor’s like a CEO.” And I say, “OK, you’re right. Now, why is that a bad model?

Leadership: Should we stop talking about pastors as “shepherds”?

Andy Stanley: Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Jesus talked about shepherds because there was one over there in a pasture he could point to. But to bring in that imagery today and say, “Pastor, you’re the shepherd of the flock,” no. I’ve never seen a flock. I’ve never spent five minutes with a shepherd. It was culturally relevant in the time of Jesus, but it’s not culturally relevant any more.

Nothing works in our culture with that model except this sense of the gentle, pastoral care. Obviously that is a facet of church ministry, but that’s not leadership.

In the aftermath, Stanley didn’t have much to say- sending out a couple more feeble tweets on peripheral issues, then he was done.

and

Sadly for Stanley, things have not gotten any better since that 2006 interview came out.

For a brief reminder of the various theological controversies surrounding Stanley, he made waves for encouraging Christians to essentially throw out the Old Testament, arguing that believers should “unhitch” themselves from portions of Old Testament scripture. He went on the warpath against doctrine in general, claiming that “unity is more important than theology.”

Stanley argued that Jesus’ birth and the events surrounding the nativity don’t really matter, thus casting doubt upon his supernatural birth by saying “If somebody can predict their own death and then their own resurrection, I’m not all that concerned about how they got into the world” and “Christianity doesn’t hinge on the truth or even the stories around the Birth of Jesus.”’

Stanley has been on a roll since the pandemic hit, telling members that the “foundation of our faith is not the whole bible,” that the Lord does not require them to meet for church, that George Floyd was “this generation’s Samson,” and told his congregation to “sleep late and skip church” during Father’s Day.

Stanley continues to be in our spotlight due to his theologically bankrupt behavior. Recently, he claimed, “here’s an uncomfortable fact: white people fear black men” and went on a woke Critical Race Theory tirade by arguing “it’s not enough to be ‘not racist,’ you must be ‘anti-racist,” before telling them that they’re all racists in their hearts. This was a few months after he lamented the fact that churches were fighting the government to stay open and have their church services, saying he was embarrassed by it. 

Oh, and most recently Andy Stanley said that It doesn’t matter if the Bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable’

Women pastors are basically spiritual lesbians. They’re trans-pastors. Ie: not real pastors, but some garbled, cobbled together monstrosity, possessing approximations of biblical appendages and authority, but never the real thing. They can get their whole undiscerning congregation to call them pastors- to use their preferred spiritual pronouns, but in the eyes of God and men, no amount of seminary training can overcome the created order and the clear words of scripture on the matter, no matter how they look.

This is something Stanley would know, if he were a real pastor.

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Andy Stanley Says It Doesn’t Matter if the Bible is True, so long as it’s ‘Mostly Reliable’

North Point Community Church “impastor” Andy Stanley continued his disastrous attempts to shoehorn his idiosyncratic hermeneutic into a Christian apologetic for the deity of Christ and the truth about the Christian faith, picking up where he left off last time by arguing that in our presentation of the veracity of Christianity, it doesn’t matter if the bible is true, so long as it’s ‘mostly reliable.’

Yet as always, this is woefully misguided. Everything we know about Jesus is from the Bible. Everything we know about the identity of Jesus is relayed to us in the scriptures. If they are not infallible and inerrant, giving us the absolute truth about Christ and what he did and who he is, including his resurrection, we would have nothing and would know nothing. How would you know all the things about Jesus if you can’t depend on the Bible’s reliability to tell you about Jesus? For Stanley, he is undaunted, explaining in his March 20, 2022 sermon:

Whether you’re leaning in, or leaning out. The question I would encourage you to wrestle with because it is really the only question worth wrestling with, is not Does God exist? I mean, that’s fun to talk about, you know, there’s things on both sides of that written on both sides of that, that’s fun to talk about, I love all that stuff. But that’s not the real question.

Neither is it ‘Is the Bible True?‘ Because for some of you, the reason you’re exiting faith is you’ve decided you don’t believe the whole Bible is true. Well, we could talk about that as well. But that’s not even the critical question. Neither of those are the critical questions. The critical question is a question that unfortunately, the church- its not your fault. It’s a question that you haven’t been challenged to ask in any kind of critical way or significant way, because the church hasn’t challenged you to ask it and that’s the fault of people like me, it’s the fault of the church.

But the issue when it comes to leaning toward faith, or moving away from faith, the issue and the question to ask is this question: ‘is Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John a reliable account of actual events?’ That’s it. It all comes down to this. Is the Gospel- we call them gospels, the good news of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,- these four ancient first-century documents that depict the life and teaching of Jesus, if any one of these, not even all of them, if any one of these is a reliable account of actual events, even if it’s mostly reliable, then if that’s true, then you need to, and I need to sit up straight and pay attention.

Because at the end of these four accounts of the life of Jesus, they all culminate with the same end, there is an event that makes his story worth telling.

Editor’s Note:

For a brief reminder of the various theological controversies surrounding Stanley, he made waves for encouraging Christians to essentially throw out the Old Testament, arguing that believers should “unhitch” themselves from portions of Old Testament Scripture. He went on the warpath against doctrine in general, claiming that “unity is more important than theology.”

Stanley argued that Jesus’ birth and the events surrounding the nativity doesn’t really matter, thus casting doubt upon his supernatural birth by saying “If somebody can predict their own death and then their own resurrection, I’m not all that concerned about how they got into the world” and “Christianity doesn’t hinge on the truth or even the stories around the Birth of Jesus.”’

Stanely has been on a roll since the pandemic hit, telling members that the “Foundation of our Faith is not the Whole Bible,” that the Lord does not require them to meet for church, that George Floyd was “This Generation’s Samson,” and to “Sleep late and skip church” during Father’s Day.

Stanley continues to be in our spotlight due to his theologically bankrupt behavior. Recently, he claimed, “Here’s an uncomfortable fact: white people fear black men” and went on a woke Critical Race Theory tirade by arguing “it’s not enough to be ‘not racist,’ you must be ‘anti-racist,” before telling them that they’re all racists in their hearts. This was a few months after he lamented the fact that churches were fighting the government to stay open and have their church services, saying he was embarrassed by it. 

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Andy Stanley Molests the Bible’s Authority in a Now-Deleted Tweet

North Point Community Church “impastor” Andy Stanley continued his seemingly lifelong goal of using an idiosyncratic hermeneutic that rips Jesus away from the scriptures, telling his 40,000-member church in a sermon and repeated in a since-deleted tweet:

There is one glaring flaw that must be pointed out upfront: everything we know about Jesus is from the Bible. Everything we know about the identity of Jesus is relayed to us in the scriptures. If they are not infallible and inerrant, giving us the absolute truth about Christ and what he did and who he is, including his resurrection, we would have nothing.

Stanley explains, however:

“The truth is, Christians are not expected to believe what we believe based on a collection of ancient manuscripts written by men who never met each other over the course of hundreds of years in a time when everybody was superstitious, and everybody believed in the gods and there was no modern science…The foundation of our faith is far more substantial than that. It’s far more sustainable than that.

That is one hell of a way to describe the God-breathed scriptures. He continues in the same vein:

The Christian faith does not rise and fall based on the accuracy or the inerrancy of 66 ancient documents that we call books of the Bible. It rises and falls on the identity of a single individual, Jesus of Nazareth. (Editor’s note. Which we only know about from those 66 books)

Then, Stanley makes the point multiple times that even if three of the gospels are wrong and are not true, so long as at least one of them is true, then we’re good to go:

“Here’s the question that you’ve never been invited to ask- and it’s not your fault at all. It’s the church’s fault- the question to ask when it comes to ‘Is Christianity something even worth taking seriously or even worth considering?’ The question is this: Is Matthew, Mark, Luke, or, not and, or John, are reliable accounts of actual events? This is the issue.

This is the question when it comes to Christianity: is the gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John any one of the four, a reliable account of actual events? Because if any one of these four is an actual account, a reliable account of actual events, then what they say about Jesus of Nazareth is true. ….As we’re gonna see, the Bible only became a collection of these extraordinary ancient documents because of what happened in the church in the 300 years following the first century. So if even one of the Gospels or the accounts of Jesus’ life is true, then you need to lean in.

He makes this curious claim:

I think in Luke’s case, like many of us who write, he wrote and rewrote and wrote and rewrote the first line of his account of the life of Jesus, over and over and over, in fact, it’s so good that the very first word has historical relevance.

Then finally says this:

“Luke is not writing the Bible. Luke didn’t have any idea there would ever be a ‘the Bible’. Luke didn’t know if his document would survive the first century. Luke had no idea if anyone would read it, other than the person he’s writing it for. He’s not writing the Bible. The Gospel of Luke isn’t part of the Bible. The Gospel of Luke is something that… was included in the collection of documents that was eventually titled ‘The Bible’, because of what the story contained when it was written, who wrote it and what it said about Jesus.

Luke was documenting the life and teaching of Jesus, which means we shouldn’t take Luke seriously because it’s in the Bible. We shouldn’t take the Gospel of Luke seriously because it’s in the Bible. Luke’s account, Luke’s account of the life of Jesus was written 300 years before the Bible was assembled, as we said a minute ago. So Luke’s account- this is important- his account of the life of Jesus didn’t become reliable when it was placed in the collection of documents we call the Bible. Luke’s account of the life of Jesus was included in the Bible because Luke’s account was considered reliable.”

Stanley spends the rest of his sermon obsessing over Luke’s attention to detail and almost seems to hinge the truthfulness of Luke’s account on the fact that the author recounts the care in which he investigated everything and for which purpose, but this hermeneutic he’s using would not apply or transfer over to the rest of the scriptures. You’re not going to open up the book of John and make that argument fit. Still, this lines up with other speculation and assertions he’s made about the bible in the past, such as his belief that Christians needs to “establish the Gospels as the text that informs their faith, not the entire Bible” and “The Christian faith did not begin with Genesis. The Christian faith began with Jesus.”

For a brief reminder of the various theological controversies surrounding Stanley, he made waves for encouraging Christians to essentially throw out the Old Testament, arguing that believers should “unhitch” themselves from portions of Old Testament Scripture. He went on the warpath against doctrine in general, claiming that “unity is more important than theology.”

Stanley argued that Jesus’ birth and the events surrounding the nativity doesn’t really matter, thus casting doubt upon his supernatural birth by saying “If somebody can predict their own death and then their own resurrection, I’m not all that concerned about how they got into the world” and “Christianity doesn’t hinge on the truth or even the stories around the Birth of Jesus.”’

Stanely has been on a roll since the pandemic hit, telling members that the “Foundation of our Faith is not the Whole Bible,” that the Lord does not require them to meet for church, that George Floyd was “This Generation’s Samson,” and to “Sleep late and skip church” during Father’s Day.

Stanley continues to be in our spotlight due to his theologically bankrupt behavior. Recently, he claimed, “Here’s an uncomfortable fact: white people fear black men” and went on a woke Critical Race Theory tirade by arguing “it’s not enough to be ‘not racist,’ you must be ‘anti-racist,” before telling them that they’re all racists in their hearts. This was a few months after he lamented the fact that churches were fighting the government to stay open and have their church services, saying he was embarrassed by it. 

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Andy Stanley in Pure CRT Mode: ‘It’s Not Enough to Be ‘Not Racist.’ You Must be ‘Anti-Racist’+ You’re all Racists

Andy Stanely, doing his very best Angla Davis/ Ibram X Kendi impression, demonstrated in a newly unearthed sermon that in his words, it’s not enough to be not a fan of Andy Stanley, but rather you must be Anti-Stanley.

Speaking to his congregation during June of 2020 as part of his This Human Race series, the Northpoint Church pastor revealed his belief that white people fear black people. Later in the sermon, he went on a tear against white folk for harboring unexamined racism towards black folk, explaining that people need to stop claiming that they ‘love everybody’ and rather must specifically love people of color.

Furthermore, in the purest form of Critical Race Theory imaginable, Stanley argues there is no middle ground on the subject: being non-racist is in fact, a form of racism, where unless you are active, practicing ‘non-racist,’ then you’re worst than a racist, because you’re a racist in denial.

Stanley explains:

So what does the Jesus brand of love look like in our current context? How should it shape how people who don’t look like you experience you? How should it shape how people who don’t look like us experience us? First, and this is certainly not original with me:

It is not enough. It is not enough NOT to be a racist. It is not enough NOT to be a racist. ‘Non-racist’ is not the goal. Being non-racist does nothing to address racism. Practically speaking, it amounts to indifference toward racism.

If you’re a Jesus follower, you must be, we must be anti-racism. Just like you’re anti-child abuse. Think about it. You, you wouldn’t walk by somebody abusing a child and think to yourself, ‘I’m not a child abuser.’ You wouldnt walk by and think to yourself, ‘I’m not a child abuser’ and say nothing or do nothing. We must be anti-racist, like we’re anti-bullying, like we’re anti-voter fraud, like we’re anti-whatever it is that gets you worked up.

I mean, think about it this way, if you’re a parent, as a parent, I wasn’t content to simply be non-liar. I was anti-lie. I did not put up with it in my children in our family, right? I wasn’t content with being non-disrespectful to Sandra, I was anti-disrespect to Sandra. There was zero tolerance for disrespecting Sandra in our household.

When you are anti-something, you address it when you see it. You speak up when you hear it, and to carry somebody’s burdens is to get up underneath the weight of their burden. And when we decide to carry the burden of anyone who has been discriminated against for any reason, we won’t be silent. Because now it’s our burden.

But I gotta warn you, speaking from personal experience, I’ll own this, whether you’re white or brown or black. When you shift from non-racist to anti-racist, you may discover something disturbing about you.

You may discover a racist in the mirror. You may discover subtle versions of racism that have been hiding, even masquerading as virtues, buried in the recesses of your heart. Racism, racism, you were completely unaware of until you decided to say something, correct something, or apologize for something.

For some of us, the truth is, when it comes to our hearts, racism will never be routed out until we are willing to speak out. And honestly, there’s probably a little bit of racism in all of us. And who knows, perhaps it will never be completely erased from our hearts, but it must certainly be erased from how people experience us.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but suffice to say Stanley conflates several different categories. He first supposes that someone who is “not racist” but is also not an ‘anti-racist would not directly intervene when blatant and discriminatory racism is presented, when that is simply not true. Furthermore, other than asserting earlier in the sermon that “white people fear black people” he doesn’t give us examples of racist behavior that non-racists would let slide but ‘anti-racists’ wouldn’t. He concludes:

Would you, regardless of the color of your skin, decide not to be content with merely being a non-racist? Will you decide to make the shift to anti-racism, anti-discrimination? Will you stop?

And I’m sorry to push so hard, but would you please stop with all the ‘but I love everybody’ and would you go out and love somebody who doesn’t look like you? Who doesn’t experience the world the way that you do? In other words, will you follow Jesus?