Okay folks! It's time to play "Stump the Pastor". Ask me anything dealing with the Bible and/or Theology and I will try to answer it. I will collect questions all this week and then respond to them on the blog, one-by-one.

This new book by Andrew Farley, "The Naked Gospel", purports to be an assault on the churchy jargon and double talk especially filling Western Christianity today. Now, anyone who knows me realizes I applaud such efforts. I deplore "chrstian-ese". Christians who resort to comfort phrases often have no clue what they are talking about.

"The Naked Gospel" wins no applause from me. Rather than help Christians explore the Middle Eastern context of the New Testament, Farley falsely insists that we have ignored the context of the Bible's teachings. We have failed to ask, "Who is the intended audience?"

Many of you reading my blog would expect me to immediately agree with Mr. Farley. I thought I would when I first satred examining the claims of this book. I fully expected to find in it a resource that I could excitedly pass on to others. What I found, however, is an ancient error cloaked in modern jargon. Farley's accompanying videos on YouTube, explaining his philosophy and approach to the Bible are alarming.

In "The Naked Gospel", Andrew Farley claims that much of Jesus' teachings are not applicable to us in the church today. Instead, he claims they were taught to Old Testament Believers, with no exact application for the Church age. 

Farley exempts Christians from following many of Jesus' teachings. He does the same with many of the great teachings of the Old Testament. For example, the Ten Commandments, Farley argues, can not still be true for Christians. Why? Because we pick and choose which of God's "Top Ten List" we will obey and which we will quietly ignore. When it comes, for example, to worshipping and keeping Saturday holy, even the Apostle Paul eliminates the Sabbath.

"The Naked Gospel" suggests that the reason we feel like such failures in our closeness to God is because we are trying to keep God's Law (Old Testament ideas) and not living under God's Grace (New Testament ideas). This sounds OK until you see what Farley suggests. He says we need to Focus particularly on the Apostle Paul's explanations of salvation which he believes replace much of what even Jesus taught.

When I attended Theological School, some of my professors taught that we did not need to pay attention to such passages as "The Sermon on the Mount". Why? These teachings, they said, were not intended by Jesus to be lived in the Church age. Farley has made the same tactical error. 2 Timothy 3:16 clearly states that ALL Scripture is not only given by God, ALL Scripture is also profitable for showing us the truth and correcting our errors (among other things). That means the Sermon on the Mount as well as the Ten Commandments are still directly applicable today.

Farley is right about one thing. Many Christians today feel beat up at Church. They leave the Sanctuary feeling farther from God than when they walked into the building. Farley may also be correct in identifying the legalisms common in Christian teachings today that kill the spirit while doing nothing to help us live more Christ-like lives. But although Andrew Farley taught Linguistics at Notre Dame and may be an expert in Biblical Languages, he falls short in understanding Scripture from a Middle Eastern cultural context. This encourages people to follow not the full counsel of God but only that which they feel is relevant today.

Allow what some readers of "The Naked Gospel" have expressed in their own words to demonstrate the danger of this book's teachings:

I'm glad to find more of this getting out there to today's church. I am sick of Trinitarianism and the complications it causes. Just give us Jesus! PLUS NOTHING!"

From someone who has only read snippets of the book: "Even as a 6 year old in Catholic catechism class I wondered why they kept emphasizing the old testament when they said "Jesus died for our sins".

Another confused customer comments: "...we are learning that there is a whole spiritual realm beyond Jesus, with God the Head. Our focus should be on worshipping God. Jesus simply shows us how."

And to think, all these years, I thought Jesus WAS God. It is why I have been content worshipping Him! Now, I imagine Mr. Farley would be dismayed at anyone walking away from his book thinking that we worship GOD not JESUS (he is, After all, a solid Evangelical), but these words came from the website promoting his book: http://www.thenakedgospel.com/Default.aspx?p=4216G85798533h87Fg&beid=e437D2226GeheI302

If we follow Jesus' own teaching about the Law in Matthew 5, we will understand that even now, in the Church age, Jesus fills full (fulfills) the Law. Jesus fills the Law with meaning for Christians today. When we understand Jesus' teaching, for example, about the Sabbath, we understand we are to take one day a week and dedicate it to God, family and friends, not to our labors and work.

Let's return to a Biblical understanding of ALL Scripture. We are to be, as Islam correctly noted many, MANY years ago, "People of the Book"; the WHOLE Book. We are Biblical Believers, not just New Testament Christians.