bAny student who attends a ubf event can see right away that the group is all about Bible study. Let’s examine that study more closely. Today’s article focuses on the new Bible that students are presented with. That Bible study with a ubf shepherd has little to do with the entire Bible and there is not much study going on, in the academic sense. The group likes to call their method the inductive study method. I call the ubf Bible study method repetitive reductionism. I was not surprised then to read in the new 2015 chapter guidelines how a leader must study a set of about 12 books of the Bible, and focus on those books more than the rest of the Bible. This is at the heart of the unbalanced and incomplete nature of UBFism and the theology of sacrifice found at ubf chapters around the world.

Repetitive Reductionism: A New Bible

“I know of a long time UBF man who has his UBF Bible study material filling two 8 foot tall bookcases in his living room. Of course, this material just rehashes the same UBF ‘canon’ (Lee’s interpretations of Genesis, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Romans) year after year and decade after decade. He also seems to get up early every day and pray for a good while. But this same man has been fiercely loyal to Samuel Lee and the Lee family to this day, even after living in fear of Lee for years, even after witnessing Lee’s abuses against so many others and even against his own children. He has a daughter who has a chronic health condition and whose son has autism. I guess he prays earnestly nearly every day for her and her son. But what comes of this prayer? One day he tells his daughter that he has had an epiphany: If she has another child (though she’s already had two C-section births) then her chronic health condition will go away and so will her son’s autism. Is this what decades of faithful UBF Bible study and prayer is supposed to produce?”

–Anonymous, former Chicago UBF member

A quick scan of the Bible study section of the UBF Press website [www.ubfpress.org] in 2015 shows the books of the Bible that UBF Bible teachers, called “shepherds”, have traditionally emphasized. The website shows notes that are published—mainly from the two co-founders Lee and Barry—on these books:  Genesis, Exodus, Timothy, Acts, Romans, the Gospels and Corinthians. This lines up rather well with what we studied in the two and a half decades that I participated in the ministry. While we did read the entire Bible, and have lectures on many books, we emphasized about 12 of the 66 books, repeating the same teachings from the same books year after year.

The Bible, as seen through the UBF worldview, is reduced in three ways: in quantity, in quality and in effectiveness.

The quantity of books emphasized is reduced in number. When I joined in the late 80’s, the Bible teachers were almost exclusively teaching from Genesis. We covered all 50 chapters of Genesis four times, for example. So the older UBF members are steeped in a Genesis-centric world void of the Messiah, but newer UBF members may not have this issue.

The quality of the Bible study is reduced by the lack of Christian theological training, which is almost always non-existent. Nearly from the start, without any seminary training, I was promoted to be a Bible teacher. I was promoted based on my obedience and loyalty to UBFism.

The effectiveness of the Bible is reduced by a kind of magical thinking. UBF members display an infatuation with linking their actions with the weather, for example. They often take credit for having sunny weather at their conferences, imagining that their God is blessing their Bible study. Each year, UBF members choose a “New Year Key Verse” to guide them throughout the year. In fact, we chose key verses for almost anything we did. Every endeavor had to have one verse that approved of the activity. This leads to taking those “one words” out of context and misapplied. The Bible becomes a spell book in such an environment.

Example of Flawed Bible Study

“When we begin the life of faith, we must break away from our past lives. Family, home, my own country are not necessarily bad. But when we depend on these human things, we cannot wholly trust and obey God. For some people, to go from our own country and our father’s house is a spiritual decision which results in a new and better relationship with our human families. We become independent by becoming dependent on God. For others, it means actually leaving physically, breaking human ties. In every case, however, the earthly things which we once trusted and to which we once clung for security and help must be surrendered as we take hold of God’s word and begin a new life of obedience to him.”

[http://sarahbarry.org/messages/book/Genesis/1992/35]

A new Bible student who is exploring new life in college and forming their own adult identity easily believes this teaching that they must join their new family at UBF to be blessed by God. This is the bait UBF Bible teachers use to hook students and reel them into UBFism.

The UBF lectures are riddled with this idea that the student’s past life before UBF is sinful and their new blessed life at UBF is good and pleasing to God. The promise of what God might do in a person’s life is turned into a command that the student must follow to earn God’s blessing.

“In hope to make us a blessing, God commands us today, “Leave and go to the land I will show you.” Again, how can we enter the covenant relationship with God? The answer is this: “So Abram left, as the Lord had told him.” Because of his glorious hope to make us a blessing, God commands us to leave our old life that we built up in this world. God commands us to leave from our sinful environment, sinful habits, and bad friends. What should be our response to this calling of God? May God bless all of us to accept God’s calling upon our life so that we may enter the covenant relationship with God by faith!”

[http://dupage-ubf.org/?p=5057 20137]

Thus begins the slow binding of a student’s life to UBFism. No one wants to displease God or make God angry. What is the solution UBF Bible teachers give us? They say we must accept God’s calling and that our relationship with God begins with our obedience to leave behind our family and friends. This is a false teaching. A student does not have to cut ties with family to be a man of God. This idea is void of the grace of God and Jesus’ finished work on the cross. The gospel of peace and grace and the kingdom of God are absent from UBF teaching materials. The best question for a new Bible student to ask their UBF Bible teachers, then, is this: What is the gospel?

Instead, the UBF shepherds like to ask, What is your Isaac? The question still haunts me. The next “one word” a new student is typically introduced to is the command to find your “Isaac” and sacrifice it. This is a horribly flawed and false interpretation of Genesis chapter 22. Some of the UBF lecturers seem infatuated with all the gory details of this Bible passage. Year after year, a new student hears the excruciating details of how we must sacrifice our life to God to please Him. Even when the student studies other books of the Bible, the reference to Genesis 22 is made, cementing the idea that God requires us to sacrifice. A new student’s identity becomes bound to the identity of a servant who must keep sacrificing in order to appease God.

This 2010 UBF lecture reveals this emphasis on passing the test, entitled “God Tested Abraham”:

“Look at verses 11,12. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” God stopped Abraham and declared that Abraham feared God. Thus Abraham passed God’s test.

Then, what was Abraham’s faith that the LORD acknowledged about? It was faith that feared God. Abraham’s “fear God faith” was proved when he actually sacrificed Isaac his only son whom he loved for the Lord. Indeed, Abraham feared God more than anything in the world even more than losing his own son. This was God’s best blessing even to Abraham the ancestor of faith.”

[http://www.yorkubf.org/XE/Message/480?ckattempt=1]

Again, a new student at college will have no problem adopting this pass-the-test kind of faith. Students are familiar with taking tests and often fear failing exams at their classes. The UBF lecturers use Genesis 22 to play on this fear:

“What is “fear God faith”? In one word, it is to obey God absolutely. This is not blind obedience or unwilling obedience. Abraham acknowledged God’s absolute authority and sovereignty. Abraham obeyed God with reverent fear and love and trust. Even though God’s command was hard to accept and obey, Abraham believed that what God was doing was good. This fear and obedience is the evidences that Abraham honored God as God. This fear and obedience is the basic relationship between God and His creatures.”

[http://www.yorkubf.org/XE/Message/480?ckattempt=1]

The Old Covenant idea of fear and obedience are heavily emphasized. Where is the idea of love and grace that Jesus died for? Love is a word often used by UBF Bible teachers, but it means fear and obedience in their minds. The student becomes lost in a fearful view of God who demands constant sacrifice.

The UBF Bible teachers do not consider what actually happened in Genesis 22. The point is that Abraham did not sacrifice his son Isaac. He did not go through with killing his son. Instead of noticing this point, the UBF lecturer just says Abraham passed God’s test. The Bible story says that Abraham started out with what seemed to be a following of the customs of those around him who sacrificed their children to appease God. Indeed, it was God who told Abraham to do this, but God was leading him to challenge this horrible practice, not to encourage it! God provided a ram for Abraham instead of his son. The point of Genesis 22 is just what Jesus emphasized: “God desires mercy, not sacrifice” (see Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:1-13, Matthew 12:1-8).

—Identity Snatchers: Exposing a Korean Campus Bible Cult pg. 128-130, 86-88