In what would be a truly insufferable sermon to sit through, Laura Toggs, Hillsong Church’s “Young and Free Pastor” and daughter to Brian Houston, gave a mother’s day sermon last year where she shared “inspiring scriptures and impactful lessons from the movie to encourage us to make a difference in the world around us.”
A mother’s day sermon based on a movie from a disqualified pastrix? There are few things worse in the world.
Toggs, who goes through bible translations faster than Hillsong Church goes through scandals, initially quotes the Passion translation, then NKJV, then the NIV for John 3:16, then the next verse over, for John 3:17, the Message Bible Paraphrase because apparently, the NIV didn’t say what she wanted it to say in order to make a point not in scripture.
I am so privileged to be able to bring the word tonight. I’m going to bringing a message around the movies, and the movie I have chosen is Wonder Woman…
I’ve been thinking about perhaps the world’s most famous passage of scripture. In John 3:16, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ (NIV)
And in verse 17 it says this: ‘God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.’ (MSG)
(Editor’s note: Actual verse 17: ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.‘)
My first point is this about Wonder Woman, she has a conviction of calling. And this is a direct quote from Wonder Woman, she says this: ‘If no one else will defend the world, then I must…’ Do you know that you are called? And our calling is exactly that, to help. To help put the world right again.
Rather than exegeting the scriptures, she is quoting them alongside scripture and exegeting them instead. The scriptures say that God sent Christ to save the world through him…where the MSG says Jesus came “to help, to put the world right again.” These are NOT the same.
She then uses these verses which are about Jesus to explain how Wonder Woman also defended the world, and that we are called to do likewise according to the scripture. This demonstrates the inability of Hillsong to treat the scriptures fairly or carefully, giving us a new calling that is not the great commission, but rather helping the world in some vague way. This is particularly blasphemous when we consider the verse is about what God has done, not what we must do.
