Happy New Year! The new year is off with a bang after John Piper’s Desiring God Twitter account published this tweet:
Say What???
The tweet links to an article by Desiring God’s Executive Editor, David Mathis, and is based on the following words written by John Piper:
Satan devotes himself 168 hours a week trying to deceive you and fill your mind with junk. He has seen to it that you are surrounded almost entirely by a Christless culture whose mood, and entertainment, and advertising, and recreation, and politics are shot through with lies about what you should feel and think and do.
Do you think that in this atmosphere you can maintain a vigorous, powerful, free, renewed mind with a ten-minute glance at God’s book once a day? The reason there are church people who are basically secular like everyone else except with a religious veneer is that they devote 99% of their time to absorbing the trajectories of the world and 1% of their time to absorbing the trajectories of God’s word.
If you want to bring forth the will of God in your life like a mother brings forth a child, you must marry the Bible. For some of you, it is a stranger that you greet on the way to work but never have over for a relaxed evening of conversation, and seldom invite along to spend significant time with you on vacation. Do not, then, be surprised if you are ill-equipped to read the trajectories of God’s will for your own life. (“He Will Send His Angel Before You”)
Obviously, the point of the tweet is to encourage people to place a high priority on the Bible in their daily lives. But, as typical with John Piper, he uses words in a way that cause people to scratch their heads. He also tends to write things that have a sexual undertone. As you can imagine, people are not holding back their responses (the comments still continue as I am writing this – nearly 12 hours after the tweet was posted).
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The next tweet is an old one from John Piper in June of 2017. You’ll need to read it in order to understand the context of the following two tweets.
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Jeremy has good words of wisdom!
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Thanks for coming along for the ride in 2019 as we discuss spiritual abuse and other words or actions church leaders have done to harm innocent lives, and cause pain and confusion. We are glad you are here. Julie Anne (and Kathi)
Spiritual Sounding Board 
UUMM…….Pretty weird. Even for the Pied Piper from the kingdom of LUNACY.
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Reblogged this on Truth2Freedom's Blog.
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What is more troubling is this quote from John Piper: “No Christian can be sure that he is a true believer. Hence, there is an ongoing need to be dedicated to the Lord and to deny ourselves so that we might make it.”
John Piper and Pastoral Staff, TULIP: What We Believe about the Five Points of Calvinism: Position Paper of the Pastoral Staff (Desiring God Ministries, 1997), 25
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Poor choice of words, and it ends up being a dangerous metaphor. Spend time with the Bible? Check. Marry the Bible? Nope. We’re the Bride of Christ, not the Bible.
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By coincidence, I published a post on reading scripture on this morning’s blog. Perhaps Mr. Piper could gain from spending time with it: https://timfall.com/2019/01/02/top-year-end-lists-and-faith-by-the-numbers/
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Wow – that is horrible. Because every good and loving father wants to keep their beloved children guessing and worrying about their eternal destiny – NOT!! 🤦♀️
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Marry the Bible?
1) With a Big Wet Sloppy KISS on the altar?
2) Isn’t “Marriage” Christianese Purity Culture-speak for “Getting Laid”?
3) One Step Beyond “Jeesus Is My Husband/Boyfriend/Edward Cullen”?
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Another unwanted peek into a ManaGAWD’s sexual fantasies…
DICK MARTIN: “That’s OK. I have a pornographic memory.”
DAN ROWAN: “You mean photographic memory.”
DICK MARTIN: “You don’t know me that well, do you?”
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Dick Martin is one of the funniest people I ever saw on TV.
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Also, it denies 1 John 5:13 (ESV): 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.
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It sure does deny it! He has no excuse – it’s even in the ESV translation!
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Also, I read the article linked in DG’s tweet. It’s problematic in more ways than just the line about marrying the Bible.
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John Piper is a very interesting creature who just got a little bit more so. My pastor has said “he gives us something to talk about” but this goes beyond that. I am so glad I never bought his books or anything of the sort
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Noel! Hello? Please put John in the time out chair for this next year. Is this the year the driver of his increasingly weird and sexual fixations are revealed? This is not normal-or appropriate.
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Is she allowed to do that, Deborah?
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T2F re: Piper: “No Christian can be sure that he is a true believer. Hence, there is an ongoing need to be dedicated to the Lord and to deny ourselves so that we might make it”
This is ironically the same thing the Catholic church did when they realized that “faith alone” wasn’t producing the same sort of “piety” they wanted from congregants, so they introduced salvation = faith + works because they believed that members living in a constant fear of not making it would be more interested in doing the will of the priests.
It was the Reformation that reassured Christians that only faith was required, and that salvation could never be lost, and also, that some Christians can be assured of their salvation. So, Piper lost his Reformed card saying that.
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Too funny, Julie Anne! What was I thinking. I think she might have stopped the madness years ago if she were in charge.
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I wouldn’t be too hard on Piper. He seems to have had a ministry of faithfully expounding the bible over a long period of time, although I have not read a large amount of his output, and barely ever listened to him.
There is no obligation to believe any one line of interpretation he gives.
His increasingly bizarre comments seem to me to coincide with his getting old, and being post cancer treatment. I wonder if that left its mark. He had surgery, but did he also have any chemical treatments?
I knew a pastor who came out with strange sayings from time to time, and a friend pointed out this only happened after he fell and was knocked unconscious. Seems to have left its mark.
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That did enter my mind. Someone get him an evaluation and see if he even SHOULD keep on with social media. All it does is make him complain-about-able. Oh yeah, is there a Mrs Piper? I need to pray for her
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@ KAS,
You stated, “He seems to have had a ministry of faithfully expounding the bible over a long period of time, although I have not read a large amount of his output, and barely ever listened to him.”
Not trying to be a reviler here as I have sat under many a minion, for they are legions, however, how can one say “He seems to have had a ministry” when one has not done their homework in stating their own “facts?” I listened to JP’s “ministry” for a couple of years via the internet while sitting in a Baptist church with a woman hustling Assembly of God pastor who preached ESS. And after listening to the pied Piper for a couple of years too long…..I almost…..restated for emphasis….I almost turned away from my faith in Jesus Christ, alone, for salvation, as I believed that Jesus hated women due to the satanic complementarian view of Scriptures.
And as far as “ministry” goes…..I can honestly and truthfully say this….”John Piper’s jesus is NOT the Jesus of our Holy Scriptures for he is promoting another jesus that bears no resemblance to my Savior, my Good Shepherd, my Redeemer, and my Friend.”
NOPE. John P. worships the god of himself, and the trash that comes out of his own mouth/heart, not the LORD of our Holy Scriptures.
Please note……JP is not being persecuted because he is teaching and preaching Jesus Christ…..he is actually receiving push-back because he is a confirmed “fool = Nabal.”
KAS, I have literally “done the math,” thus I can honestly label him a heretic.
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I admire you compassion for Mr. Piper but feel it is misplaced. He has been fomenting false doctrine for a long, long time. Then came the weird sexual metaphors and harsh condemnation for others not in his genre. Personally I’m pretty fed up with the Mark Driscoll / John Piper technique of enflaming (with sexual talk for attention) to make up for lousey preaching.
His assertion that no Christian can be 100% certain of their spiritual standing before God is beyond troubling. It’s flat out false and unscriptural.
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@KAS:
I think it’s mostly “getting old”, Hardening of the Attitudes, mid-life-crisis, and all that. (I’ve heard speculation that that other Open Mouth Insert Foot CELEBRITY Pat Robertson may be showing early-stage Alzheimers.)
Pious Piper had PROSTATE Cancer, which these days only has a 1-2% kill rate with current treatments. Your only better bet is Basal-Cell Skin Cancer.
As a carcinophobe with a bum prostate myself, I can tell you that “chemical treatments” for prostate cancer followup are primarily hormone-based, testosterone blockers with additional chemicals to offset the side effects of the first. And followup hormone treatments are only done if there are indicators that the surgery didn’t catch it all. (The key would be his Gleason score from biopsy (scale of 2-10, with 6 being the cancer threshold); most prostate cancers these days are caught at Gleason 6, and it takes Gleason 7 before it can spread outside the prostate itself.
Depending on the type of surgery Pious Piper had (most likely robotic laparoscopic, the current standard for someone with his assets), there is a chance of impotence as a side effect. (Before nerve-sparing microsurgery, impotence was near-certain in prostate removals.) That might be a factor for someone so sexually-obsessed with his Manhood.
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@JudgeTim:
You bet your sweet bippy!
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@Mark:
Yet these days you find that more among the Evangelicals and Truly Reformed than you do among Catholics. Guess the Catholic Church learned from their mistakes and these Reformers have yet to do the same. (That tends to happen when you Return to Year Zero and start reinventing the wheel over and over.)
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@KAS said: “His increasingly bizarre comments seem to me to coincide with his getting old, and being post cancer treatment. I wonder if that left its mark. He had surgery, but did he also have any chemical treatments?”
David Mathis, author of the article, points to Piper’s use of the words, “you must marry the Bible” from a 1982 sermon. These words were stated when he was 36 years old, so this is nothing new.
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Truth2Freedom wrote,
From 1 John 5:13:
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KAS said
I will not cut Piper any slack.
Piper is a misogynist tool bag who promotes the enabling of Domestic Abuse against women under the pretense of teaching “biblical gender roles,” aka “gender complementarianism.”
_John Piper: Wives should “endure” abuse “for a season”_
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“Marrying the Bible?”
As a never married woman past the age of 40 – what is up with the Christian obsession with marriage and comparing anything and everything to it? Come up with new analogies, marriage-obsessed Christians!
Desiring God tweet:
I mean no disrespect to you Christians here who are still very gung-ho about the Bible, but as someone who has been veering away the usual evangelical view of the Bible in the last few years…
I did a post about this on my Daisy blog, but – seeing as how even conservative, pro-inerrancy, “sola scriptura” Christians cannot and do not agree on all the Bible says, and they don’t agree on when and how to apply its teachings, (rhetorical question coming up), what is the point in placing that much value or emphasis on the book? ❓
If you follow the biblical interpretations of certain Christians, (the gender complementarians, as for example), if you are a girl or a woman, you’ll end up with the impression that God values men more than women, and that you should remain in an abusive marriage, no divorce allowed.
No thanks.
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Good catch, Kathi!
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Nicely stated, Katy.
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Daisy, interesting about the Bible. I was very gung-ho about the Bible when I knew every argument about every passage in my former church. Now that I realized I was fed a lie about what the Bible says, it’s very hard for me to read it because it’s hard for me not to fall into the abusive interpretations. That said, I hope some day that I can read it and not feel continually condemned.
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I am joining this discussion late but I wonder if John Piper has ever considered this passage of the bible John 5:
This is quite an interesting passage where Jesus was chastising the Pharisees. Here the Pharisees where searching the scriptures which could possibly be paraphrased “married to the bible” and yet Jesus was saying that even with that they weren’t willing to come to Jesus and have life. Thus it sounds like one could be “married” to the bible but not willing to come to Jesus.
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Everything I read from Piper and Desiring God from now on will be viewed through new lenses.
Here’s the latest on DG about only having an hour a day to read. Poor Jeff’s marriage isn’t going to work out well if he needs to know if 15 minutes of quality time is enough with his loved one. I mean, he’s actually pondering about cheating with other books!
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Regarding Kathi’s post right above, with the question from the guy to DG site saying, “I only have an hour to read per day, how much of that should be devoted to the Bible and how much to other books?”
SEVERE EYE ROLL.
Even when I was a very devout Christian, I found that sort of anal retentive, super duper pious type devotion, obsessive worry over the trivial, and spiritual attention to little details to be very weird and pretty dippy.
To the guy who wrote DG with that question:
Just read however much of which ever book(s) you want and don’t sweat it.
It’s not like God is going to zap you dead for Zero Percent Bible reading and 40% Nancy Drew, and 60% Louis L’Amour or whatever.
DOUBLE EYE ROLL.
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@Daisy – If Ned Flanders wrote a letter to John Piper this is exactly what I would envision!
I’ve always wondered if these letters were actually real. Who really needs to write to John Piper about how much time he should spend reading the Bible and if it’s okay to read other books? Only someone who thinks that John Piper has that much authority over his life, I suppose.
Jeff, if you’re a real person, please think for yourself! God gave you a brain and you’re allowed to use it!
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