Open Letter to Fellow Believers Accusing Pastor Rick Warren of False Teaching

[NOTE: This letter addresses a complex debate. If you plan to respond, please understand that many misunderstandings and false accusations arise out of taking words or things people have said out of context, so I ask that you read the letter in its entirety to get the proper context of everything being communicated before responding. Thank you!]

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Social Media

Just this week, I shared on Facebook about how great social media is in that one can join together with fellow believers to lift up a friend in need in prayer at any moment during the day. But I’m sure we have all experienced “the other side” of social media, too, and in fact, we each have probably at some point regretted sharing or saying something ourselves in such a public forum.

This letter is to address a debate I was involved in on Facebook, which I have come to realize, as you will from this letter, that the debate reaches far beyond Facebook and appears to be ongoing. This is why I decided to write and publish this letter, since I came to understand how broad the debate has become.

It involves the mega-church pastor and best-selling author, Rick Warren. Prior to Facebook, I had no idea this debate was happening in Christian circles! I first ventured into the “Facebook World” several years ago, long after many had already begun using it.

No Conflict of Interest or Personal Agenda Here for Me

Image Credit: Andy Cornejo via Flickr

Honestly, I have never followed Pastor Warren closely. I have read his book, The Purpose Driven Life, years ago. I believe I follow him on Twitter, but I follow a couple thousand people currently and I don’t stay on Twitter all day, so I rarely see his tweets. I can’t really even remember ever seeing one come through my feed! All of that just to make the point that I’m not a die hard Rick Warren fan coming to his defense, as has been suggested.

Who am I then and why do I care?

Well, I am first and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ. I seek to live a life under the direction of the Holy Spirit daily. I’m not always successful at this but it is the goal. I also love facts and am very analytical.

I love the Word of God and His Church, “church” referring to the larger group of those throughout the world who have decided to follow Jesus. I have been a Christ-follower myself for over 25 years, during which time God has been faithful in the process of “completing the work” he started in me (Philippians 1:6), a process that will continue until I go Home to Heaven.

During the recent debate on Facebook, I was asked by someone about my “church background” … to help know where I was coming from in my perspective on the topic. I thought it was a valid point, so I’ll share just briefly that I became a Christian when I was 11 or 12 years old. It happened in the Southern Baptist church in which I grew up. I don’t like getting “hung up” on denominations, though, as I stated before I do understand “the Church” to include ALL of those who have a personal relationship with God through faith/trust in Jesus Christ as personal savior and Lord … in a nutshell.

How this all started for me

So this debate on Facebook happened in a group with thousands of members. The group is for those who believe in the Pre-Tribulation Rapture and exists for discussion mainly around that topic. Someone shared a link about false teachers in the last days, and Pastor Rick Warren was pictured and mentioned.

I have seen other information on this shared before on Facebook by personal friends. It surprised me and I was not sure about the validity of the information, but I did not look further into it at the time to “verify or discount” it for myself. On a separate occasion, however, I began questioning the “label,” as I’ll call it, of Pastor Rick Warren as a false teacher.

I’ve always tried to be objective in “debates”. Remember what I said before about being analytical and facts? I think it’s important to establish facts and be sure of those, especially if a debate involves another person who is not involved in the conversation. The two main “issues” that I was seeing in the most recent discussion from those taking the side against Pastor Warren, which were the majority of those involved in the discussion, were:

1. That he had prayed to “Isa” in the Inaugural Prayer in January 2009;
2. That he has said that the Christian God and Muslim God, “Allah”, are the same God.

I had researched #1 in the past when in a different discussion, and I had come to a conclusion that the problem people were having was perhaps from a lack of knowledge of language differences. And in fact, one of those involved in this recent debate, Dale Weaver, M. Div., and a teacher in my church, stated:

The Arabic name “Isa” is simply Jesus IN ARABIC. Muslim Christians refer to Jesus as “Isa,” just as Jewish Christians call Him “Yeshua” or “Yehoshua,” just as Greeks refer to Him as “Ioesus.”

The Inaugural Prayer by Rick Warren

Before I get any deeper into this letter, if you have not heard the Inaugural Prayer at the root of this debate, you can listen to it here (start at about 3:55 if you only want to hear the closing part of the prayer that is the focus of the #1 concern mentioned above):

Or if you would prefer to read it, you can read a transcript of the entire invocation prayer here.

Now regarding the #2 issue above, I have not found any evidence of this claim people were making, that Pastor Warren has said Allah and the Christian God are the “same God”, meaning I could find no exact quotes in text or video of Pastor Warren himself. When I asked for sources from those who had been involved in the debate, no one could provide a single one.

A few pleading “caution”

There were probably less than a handful of people on what I will call the side of “caution” against publicly labeling Pastor Warren a false teacher. I put it this way because of the approach being taken. Myself and one other person pointed out that Jesus gave us specific instructions about how believers should handle sin in the church in Matthew 18:15-17:

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

The concern about false teachers/prophets

Some of those on the other side of the argument presented scripture about warning others about false teachers/prophets. One such passage is from Matthew:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? (Matthew 7:15-16)

From what I have seen in the discussion in which I was involved as well as in the material I found online with accusations against Pastor Warren, it seems that this label of false teacher/prophet is being misused. What exactly is a false teacher/prophet? I found this article, “How can I recognize a false teacher/false prophet?, very helpful, with three main points of consideration:

1. What does this teacher say about Jesus?
2. Does this teacher preach the gospel?
3. Does this teacher exhibit character qualities that glorify the Lord?

To my knowledge, Pastor Warren does preach the gospel and has never taught anything unscriptural about Jesus. I do not know him personally but the way he has handled this controversy shows character qualities that glorify the Lord. I have no reason currently to believe otherwise on that point.

I did read an article that was criticizing him for not sharing the gospel in a particular public situation. Again, I think we should be very careful about using those types to things to label someone as a “false teacher/prophet” or “heretic”. As believers we are supposed to be guided by the Holy Spirit in our lives and ministry. We cannot know how the Holy Spirit has directed someone in any given situation, and therefore even if I may be uncomfortable with how someone responded or reacted in a given situation, I hope I would not publicly criticize them for it. If I truly believed the response to go against Scripture, then I believe the best thing to do would be to follow Jesus’ command in Matthew 18.

Context, Context, Context

Here is where context is also important. If I see that someone has been quoted in something I am reading, my first thought usually is wondering what other context there may have been before or after the direct quote that could give better and more complete understanding of what the person meant by the exact quote. Sometimes there can also be situational/circumstantial context. These are all things I think we are wise to keep in mind before jumping to a conclusion about something someone has said and potentially interpreting it in a way other than what they actually meant.

People have differing interpretations all. the. time. including with the Bible itself! Those who know the Bible well are quick to point out when something is recognized to have been taken out of context … we don’t like it when this happens. I think we should treat our brothers and sisters in Christ the same way.

Contacting Pastor Rick Warren through his Ministry

I mentioned previously that I and another person involved in the debate suggested the best thing to do about all the concerns over Pastor Warren would be to contact Rick Warren himself about them, and that is what we did.

In the email I sent, I asked in the subject line, “Why did Pastor Warren pray in the name of ‘Isa’?” I explained the situation and the concerns about the inaugural prayer and also about the other issue:

There are also concerns about his “work” to “merge” Christianity and Islam and Pastor Warren is often cited as heavily involved in “promoting Chrislam”. Those who use this as “proof” that Pastor Warren is a false teacher say that if his true motive was to build bridges between religions to try to reach people for Jesus he would still never suggest that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God” as their Allah is not the same God of the Bible of Christianity.

Response #1

Following is the response I received from Pastor Warren’s ministry staff:

Dear Anne,

Thanks for your email.

Isa is the name Arab Christians call Jesus. Pastor Rick said Jesus’ name four times in four different languages in his inauguration prayer. Christians in the Middle-East have called Jesus by the name Isa for hundreds of years.

Per Wikipedia: Persian-speaking Christians use Isa as name for Jesus; sometimes spelled Esa.

Jesus has many names Yehweh, Yeshua, Yasu, Christos, ….Jesus is the name the English speaking world uses.

Bottom line: Pastor Rick was praying to and about Jesus and Jesus only!

As for as the Muslim matter, the rumor is called “Chrislam.” Saddleback Church and Pastor Rick are not involved in “Chrislam” in any way. Pastor Rick is not the promoter of “Chrislam,” the Koran is not placed in our worship center, we are not reading from the Koran, we are not interweaving the faiths, and have not taken crosses down. (We have crosses all over the church property—three crosses on a small hill in front of the children’s building; atop the church building; and at our San Juan Saddleback three fifty foot crosses are illuminated on a hill that commuters can see for miles.) Also, we are not a part of a “one world religion,” are not “New Age,” and Pastor Rick would NEVER deny the deity of Christ! We believe the Holy Bible is the only inspired, inerrant Word of God. Pastor Rick was quoted as saying in his interview with John Piper when asked if the Muslim God and the Christian God are the same, “My God looks like Jesus Christ…if your God doesn’t look like Jesus then the God we worship cannot be the same….sorry.”

You can also read what Pastor Warren says for himself below. This is an answer he posted in the comment section of a blog where others had attacked him:

“Several of the above comments are completely incorrect, based on believing 2nd hand false rumors instead of finding out the facts before speaking up. ‘Only a fool believes all he hears.’ Proverbs 14:15

“The so-called ‘Chrislam’ rumor is 100% false. If the guy who started this libelous myth, or anyone else who passed it on, had obeyed our Lord’s command (Matt. 18:18-20) to come directly to me, and then asked what I actually believed - they would have been embarrassed to learn that I believe the exact opposite. As a 4th generation Christian pastor, my life & ministry is built on the truth that Jesus is the only way, and our inerrant Bible is our only true authority.

“As an evangelist, I spend much of my time speaking to non-Christian groups. You cannot win your enemies to Christ; only your friends, so we must build bridges of friendship and love to those who believe differently so Jesus can walk across that bridge into their hearts. Besides, it is not a sin, but rather COMMANDED by Jesus that we love our enemies. In the past 10 years, Saddleback Church has baptized over 22,000 new adult believers- simply because we express love to those who don’t know Christ yet.

“It is nonsense to believe that you must compromise your beliefs, or water down your convictions in order to love someone, or even just treat them with dignity. Jesus was called ‘the friend of sinners’ by the legalistic Pharisees because he hung out with (and clearly loved) unbelievers. I HOPE YOU will: 1) Always believe that EVERYONE needs Jesus as their Lord & Savior; 2) Have the courage to associate with nonbelievers in order to love them and bring them to the Savior; 3) Consider being called ‘a friend of sinners’ a Christ-like compliment; and 4) Refuse to pass on rumors until you’ve checked for the truth with the person accused. The false statements above should be removed.”

We are an Evangelical church that believes in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as the ONLY way to reconciliation with God. We stand for the truth.

If you’d like to know more about Rick’s sound doctrinal beliefs check out his recent interview with John Piper at this website.

Thanks for following God’s Word (Matthew 18) and coming to us directly for the truth! I hope this helps.

Blessings,

Dennis

Volunteer Assistant to Pastor Rick

Further clarification requested

Now I was satisfied with the response, personally, but felt like it would be better to see if I or those involved in the debate could find some exact wording where he supposedly had stated the two Gods are “the same.” As I mentioned previously, however, no one in the debate was able to provide a single source where those words were said to have been used!

I did, however, find something that I thought was close enough to go back for further clarification.

An article at OCRegister.com stated:

The men presented a document they co-authored outlining points of agreement between Islam and Christianity. The document affirms that Christians and Muslims believe in “one God” and share two central commandments: “love of God” and “love of neighbor.”

I said that I could not find anything more than this two-word quote of him having said they are “one God”, asked if the context of that particular quote was known and if further clarification could be given on this one point.

Response #2

This was the response I received back:

Dear Anne,

I’m going to step in for Dennis, I hope you don’t mind.

I appreciate the conversation so I want to give you more background on the OC Register interview. First, Pastor Rick was not interviewed by the OC Register. The ‘one God’ quote came from a Happy Birthday Jesus dinner we had where we invited local Muslims to attend. At the dinner they were sharing similarities and differences between the faith of Christianity and Muslims. (basic historical doctrines). This is where the ‘one God’ misunderstanding happened. Both Christians and Muslims are ‘monotheists’. They both believe in ‘one God’.

Later after this misquote grew Pastor Rick was asked if he believed the God Christians worship and the God Muslim’s worship is the same and he said, “My God looks like Jesus Christ…if your God doesn’t look like Jesus then the God we worship cannot be the same….sorry.”

A friendly outreach dinner in celebration of Jesus’ birthday has grown into a ridiculous rumor; like the old telephone game that is passed on and on. Pastor Rick calls it ‘the lie that won’t die.’

The sad part… and this breaks my heart. Muslims were coming to Christ here at Saddleback Church. Now we don’t meet with them anymore… the outcry from Christians made the Muslims withdraw from us. Some of our Muslim friends will not have eternity because of this.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for using Biblical practices and following Matthew 18 and coming to us for the truth!

Blessings,

Linda

Minister-Office of the Pastor

This broke my heart, too. Wow.

Now what?

Like me, you may have never even heard about this controversy, and this may completely satisfy any question that may have been raised as you began reading this letter. However, if you have further questions or concerns about Pastor Warren or in the future any teachers God puts in your life, please follow what the Bible teaches about how we are to handle issues between ourselves as believers.

Feel free to share this post if you ever come across a discussion on this. As the “lie that won’t die” it is possible this will not be your only encounter with it.

I believe we should be very careful, even hesitant, about “labeling” a fellow believer … in any way, especially publicly. The Bible says we are to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” (James 1:19)

This is difficult to practice in the world of social media, isn’t it? It’s so easy to type up our thoughts about something and wait for the “likes” to see how many people are in agreement.

There are many, many other verses that are applicable here. We are told to be wise and blameless and to speak truth in love:

Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise … because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:15)

And this is my prayer: that your love may about more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ. (Philippians 1:9-10)

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. (Ephesians 4:15)

Notice that the balance of truth and love in our speech is a part of growing to maturity as His church. Jesus also commanded us to love each other as He has loved us, and that by this love we show each other, all men will know we follow Him:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

There are certainly times when teachers are in error. I am sure that Pastor Rick Warren could be in error on some things, and we should definitely always check everything that is said with Scripture, but keeping in mind:

• We will not all agree on everything, including the correct interpretation or application of certain passages, worship styles, ministry styles, etc.; and
• Teachers will be judged (by God) more strictly. (James 3:1) If they know the Bible as well as they should to be teaching it, they understand this.

I try to give the benefit of the doubt until I have enough facts, words from the person’s own mouth, to establish the concern I had as valid. Things are misunderstood, misinterpreted or taken out of context all the time. I would never want lies to be spread about me because people had done this with something I had said or done, so I should be very careful not to do the same. We know from Galatians 6:7-8 that we reap what we sow.

Prominent Pastors and Christian Leaders Are Often Accused

One final point before closing this letter … I have seen other pastors who have become well-known being accused of the same thing as Pastor Warren, being a false teacher. One of those is someone I do follow and there is absolutely no concern in my mind, from the things I have heard him preach/teach, that this man is a false teacher.

I understand that we have seen plenty of pastors or Christian leaders rise and fall … and I think this should only serve to encourage us to pray for pastors and Christian leaders we follow, that they will stay close to Jesus and continue honoring Him in all they do.

Honestly, for me, especially after having now gotten a response from Pastor Warren’s ministry and knowing the nightmare, eternal impact this controversy has caused for what God was doing through this man for the Kingdom, when I hear in the future any accusation that such and such pastor/preacher is a false teacher, a big red flag will go up in my mind!

Final thoughts

I think an appropriate close to this letter would be Scripture itself, speaking again on the utmost importance of love in our approach as well as a humbling reminder of how much we are always lacking in what we think we know:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. (1 Corinthians 13:1-10)

COMMENT POLICY FOR THIS POST – If you wish to leave a comment, we welcome it and enjoy feedback from readers, but please do not slander anyone in your comment. This debate has gone on for way too long, and this blog will not contribute to the dishonoring of a fellow believer. If you take issue with any part of the response from Pastor Warren’s ministry, you may email them directly yourself at: info {at} saddleback {dot} net

We reserve the right to remove or not approve any comments that do not follow these guidelines. Thank you in advance!