Over at Pyromaniacs, Phil Johnson has a good post on countering Modernism\Post Modernism. He posits 5 strategies for this. Number 2 especially resonates with me: “Recover the role of teaching in the church. The church desperately needs to get back to the Word of God and sound doctrine. Not only are lay people these days untaught; most pastors are grossly ignorant of basic theological principles which earlier generations would have considered essential, foundational truths. The church is filled with teachers who invent their own doctrine on the fly and see nothing wrong with the practice. No wonder the church as a whole today is ill-equipped to fend off even the rankest of heretics.”

The reason it resonates with me is something that happened last week in my church, a conservative, Southern Baptist church.

One of our women’s “Bible study” groups has engaged in the study of a new book. One of my Sunday School class members brought in copies of some of the pages for some of us to look at. It was disturbing. The writer is more of a Platonist than a Christian, and the sections we read were very much the ideas of Plato, not the ideas of the Bible. Yet, the class continued merrily along absorbing the teaching.

The way you teach someone to spot counterfeit money is by studying real money very closely. Not everyone will have time or the mental ability to study Plato. But, every Christian is supposed to take the time to know the Bible. In addition, every preacher and teacher must preach and teach the word so their congregations know it. Preaching every Sunday on the family or on how to succeed in life will not accomplish this. If you don’t learn the Word, you will not recognize the counterfeit word.

The Post Modernist in the class will complain that we do not have the right to ascertain and insist on the truth, because it is just “our truth”. Actually, there is probably no one in the class brave enough to say it that clearly. Instead, they will say this is just your interpretation of scripture, and this writer has her own (which just so happens to coincide with Plato’s). However, I’ll take the stance of the Psalmist, who said (Psalm 119:30 NIV) “I have chosen the way of truth…”