The Way Of The Master is Decedant and Depraved
I like Ray Comfort. I like his book, The Way of The Master. He seems a nice enough guy, he’s got a great compassion for the lost and he has some good lessons to teach on evangelism.
Ray Comfort stated on his blog that I am an “obvious non-Christian” and potentially a mass murderer. Why? Because I mentioned in a blog post of “random facts about me” that I want to do something I’ll be remembered for. It was a throwaway remark.
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that Living Waters has been moving worryingly away from the true gospel. Ray spends most of his time arguing about evolution – worse, presenting unscientific facts and fabricated “evidence” to try and not only argue against theories such as natural selection, but to try and claim that no true Christian can hold to such facts – he’s openly stated multiple times that theosophic evolutionists are idolatrers.
If I may quote Augustine of Hippo at this juncture, I feel that my words cannot summarise the problem as well as those found in The Literal Meaning of Genesis;
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writer held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions.
Now, arguing about evolution isn’t in itself a problem – it’s not essential to the gospel, and other than his mistaken view on its importance Ray isn’t really doing anything wrong here. No, the problem is that Ray’s “Way Of The Master” method of evangelism has moved from what is at heart a very good and valid point – the use of the law in evangelism to reveal that we are all sinners – to a cultish and worrying insistence on the use of a specific method – the “good person test”, which can lead potentially lead to the exact situation Ray claims to be trying to avoid – the creation of “false converts”. Indeed, one of the reasons I recently decided to distance myself from Ray’s School of biblical Evangelism and its community was that I was observing there an unashamed loyalty to Ray and the taking of his views as gospel, along with what seems to be an inability to think critically and indpendantly analyse what one is saying, a reliance on quoting verbatim the words of others being preferred. Indeed a number of members rather proudly stated their closed-mindedness when challenged on the issue.
Indeed, ray’s biggest crime, and one to which his entire minsitry by nature needs to be held accountable, is his insistence that his is “the only biblical method of evangelism”. This is a view that I’ve heard stated by many fo his followers, and one which I feel requires special attention.
Point the first: Ray states that the only biblical method of evangelism is “the law to the proud, and grace tot he humble”. Fair enough you say, but wait? What does Ray tell us in regards to the challenging questions we may be asked? This brings us nicely onto
Point the second: Well, what he says is to “bypass the intellect”. Ray doesn’t believe in apologetics, and whilst he supplies plenty of “evidence” for the bible (to be honest a lot of it isn’t really worth quoting. Ray cites urban legends, takes passages of scripture out of context, and quote mines) he also makes it clear that one should avoid getting into apologetics and instead insist on using the law to make sinners speechless. I’m sure that works in some places, Ray, but let me assure you there’s a good reason that you don’t tend to impress people in academic debates with that attitude.
Point the third: Whilst Ray’s argument that the presenting of the law is definitely “the way of the Master” holds ground – the examples given of Christ using the law to talk to people in the gospel are for the most part acurate – his argument begins to slip when we realise it isn’t “the way of the apostles”. Throughout the book of acts we see evangelism through miracles, we see evangelism through apologetics, and we see evangelism throught he reading of prophetic scriptures. The use of the law is most certainly not the main method of evangelism used, if we can say that one “main method” does exist.
Which leads us nicely onto our final point, point the fifth: Do the scriptures really contain a step-by-step outline for evangelism? Is there actually an instruction manual there? Can we actually state that any “method” is “biblical”? In the two years that I’ve been actively going out of my way to reach out to the lost, I’ve yet to see two encounters that followed the exact same pattern. Different people have different questions, different thoughts, different needs. All we can ask is that the holy spirit guide us and show us what we need to do.
The Way of the Master is fast becoming dangerous, inadvertantly spreading a view that leads Christians to judge each other, question the salvation of those who may struggle or not follow the perfect definition of a good, conservative, evangelical protestant. Attracting largely those who lack the skills to properly think things through for themselves, those who are easily lead, those who find something missing in modern evangelism but make the mistake of trusting what on the surface appears to be the answer but don’t quite delve in deeply enough.
For all that, Living Waters produce some of the best gospel tracts I know of. Ray’s book, the Way of The Master, is still one of the best evangelical resources available and the first series of the TV show at least is highly reccomended. Maybe satan siezes upon potentially good things in order to pervert them into furthering his agenda?