Comments on: Prooftexting

By: David Bychkov

David Bychkov — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:27:17 +0000

this thing made me leave few years ago UBF style daily bread practice in order to look more what the Bible really is talking to me rather then just obey every single passage like it the only isolate teaching.

By: briank

briank — Sat, 05 May 2012 12:37:57 +0000

Yes, Vitaly. Recently I discovered one reason why I could not “unite” my Bible studies and messages. I was looking at the Bible through the eyes of Confucian obedience and loyalty. When I see Scripture from the eyes of grace, through the Holy Spirit, I then see love and peace and all things marvelous.

By: Vitaly

Vitaly — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:30:29 +0000

We chanted the same thing, Brian. And I can say that I tried many times to unite passages in my testimonies. I saw that quite often the conclusions from different Bible passages in UBF Bible study were opposite. But when I tried to understand the Bible I was always rebuked and was taught that I must meditate upon one passage at a time and forget other passages lessons while writing a testimony. Now I see that so many things in UBF are prooftexted, especially the 100000 missionaries sending prayer topic. Such prayer topic is unbiblical and I believe God is never going to answer the UBF prayers. Still it is a public UBF prayer! Thay are not ashamed to publish it! I wonder what kind of Bible they “study” and what kind of God they pray to in UBF…

By: BrianK

BrianK — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:59:52 +0000

Chris, a growing number of people in UBF have been questioning the "preconceived mind" of UBF, which is filled with undocumented slogans like "man equals mission". I remember chanting such slogans at many meetings and conferences. At the last conference I attended in UBF (in April 2011), we were all asked to chant this slogan: "Father, glorify me [insert your name] so that I may glorify you!" Quite a few people were very uncomfortable with applying this part of Jesus' prayer in John 17 to each of us individually. It was a surreal moment that helped open my eyes to see the self-glorification ideology I was upholding.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 06:10:27 +0000

Good point and unfortunately, only too true.

This problem is worsened by the fact that UBF exclusively uses passage based Bible study, where every passage is studied independently and separately from the other passages. So they never see the whole picture, like in the Indian story of the blind men and the elephant. Since all of them touched different parts of the elephant, they all came to different conclusions what it was.

Prooftexting using the Bible it would be easy to conclude both that Jesus was man and Jesus was God. But often the truth is more difficult and has complementary aspects which both need to be accepted.

One important corrective is to always check principles you learned from the Bible against the “higher” principles. Like the principle that God is love, or that you should love God and your neighbour.

It’s also important to be open. If you have a preconceived mind like in UBF where the mission statement is as given constant, you end up only prooftexting this preconceived worlview.