Red Flags

Recently, a friend loaned me a copy of Emmet Fox’s  The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life. Knowing that this book is often used as a resource or as study material by people in 12-step programs, I was happy to take a look.

I was shocked by what I found.  It breaks my heart that well-meaning and sincere people might be reading this book to discover the truth about themselves and God.  As I read, red flags sprouted in my mind like poppies on lapels in Canada on Remembrance Day.

Here are just a handful.

Red Flag #1: With a stroke of the pen, Fox summarily dismisses the vast majority of two millennia of historic Christian thought, prayer, study, worship, and practice. He writes:

It will startle many good people to learn that all of the doctrines and theologies of the churches are human inventions built up by their authors out of their own mentalities and foisted upon the Bible from outside; but such in the case (3, emphasis mine).

In other words, everyone else has gotten it all wrong, but not Fox.  Oh, no.  He has it right, but the rest…”do not have the spiritual or metaphysical key” (3).   First Red Flag: Despising the people of God in preference to one’s private interpretation.  In other words, Fox, without using the word, is declaring himself to be heretic.

Red Flag #2:  Fox apparently  trivializes and even mocks the significance of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.   Speaking of the development of doctrine, he writes:

Then a farfetched and very inconsistent legend was built up concerning original sin, vicarious blood atonement…

I don’t know whether Fox refers at this point to Scripture or the development of doctrine subsequent to the closing of the canon.   At any rate,  several Scripture passages come to mind

1. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).
2. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).
3. Many more could be mentioned from both Old and New Testaments.  Think here of Romans 3. Isaiah 53, etc.  The list goes on and on.  I am astonished at Fox’s audacity and can only think that me meant that John, Paul, and the other apostles fabricated their doctrines in contradiction to Jesus himself.

Red Flag #3:  Magic thinking. Here is one example of many:

If you want material prosperity, you must first think prosperity thoughts, and then make a habit of doing so, for the thing that keeps most people poor is the sheer habit of poverty thinking (32, emphasis in original).

Needless to say, this is very orthodox in some circles, but hardly does justice to the systemic evil and crushing burdens that afflict the poorest of the poor.

Why am I bothering to criticize this book, published in the 1930′s?  I don’t want people I know and love to fall over the cliff of this false teaching.

Best to put up some warning flags instead.  See 2 Peter 2:1.

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