When I was a new convert to Christianity, it was within a church fellowship that would be considered "enthusiasts" by the Lutheran Reformation. Spirituality was largely to be developed by looking within yourself. The "true believers" were those who had a vivid and experiential faith. Thankfully, over the course of about 25 years, I was confronted with the power of the written Word of God. Gradually, through a number of steps, I ended up in what we might call "confessional Lutheran" circles. I can wholeheartedly say, with the apostle Paul, that "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone believing" (Romans 1:16a, personal translation). The concept of salvation in Scripture is incredibly rich. It indicates being taken from one location to a desired destination, and arriving safely. In this biblical faith, as Paul wrote, "he transferred us from the power of darkness and established (us) into the kingdom of the love of his son" (Colossians 1:13, personal translation).
During some periods of my Christian life, the idea of worldview evaluation has been a hot topic. One could argue that it is right now, as I work in the collegiate community, often assisting people in articulating their hope and confidence, trying to help them see things in a more biblical way.
A friend recently asked me about a book by author and speaker Jamie Winship. Though I have approximately enough books on my "read this next" list to set off a seismograph if they fell off the shelves all at once, I looked up the author on the internet, checked an audio version of his book out from my local public library, and gave it a listen. The book in question was what appears to be his definitive volume, Living Fearless from 2022.
Winship's website gives no hint of a theological orientation. That's the first red flag I found. He doesn't make a clear signal that he and his teachings would be subject to any recognizable type of peer review or theological authority. Though he presents himself as a Christian, it isn't clear what kind. This may not always be a problem, but it does raise a red flag. Is there something he is trying to hide? The orientation does matter. His wife, who works along with him, has a theological degree. Then again, there are theological schools that have all sorts of views, many of which are not readily reconciled with the Scripture.
From the outset, Winship says that God never communicates with people using formulaic patterns, therefore we should also not use formulas. He extrapolates (from somewhere??) that anything which could seem to be a formula is devoid of meaning and is spiritually suspect, therefore we would never consider praying in a way we have seen before. He views formulas as useless at best, but more likely harmful. Therefore, we always need a new revelation. Except when we don't, as he illustrates in practical terms by using Bible verses (formulas) to back up his ideas and to fill out his prayers, which appear to be premeditated, or they would not be used in a book.
While we are thinking about using Bible verses, we should note that Winship selects individual verses from a wide variety of Bible translations. I first ran into that tendency with Rick Warren, though it's surely been around longer than Warren. The use of the different translations is not explained in any way. I can only assume that he finds that particular translation and only that one works in the setting he is imagining.
Winship tells stories well. However, they are cloaked in anonymity. He's always the hero of the story, and it's always about some strange, barely known people in desperate trouble, in some place that is war-torn but is never mentioned clearly. This is the typical methodology of the faith healers who are never able to produce actual people who have been healed. Again, a red flag which raises a good bit of suspicion about his credibility.
At the end of each chapter, Winship provides a prayer and then tells the reader to be quiet and listen to what God might be whispering, to write it down, and to use it as the reliable record of the reader's true identity. This builds our hope on our feelings rather than on God's definitive word. There is no significant exposition of the Bible demonstrating that our hope is to rest on Christ crucified for us, raised from the dead, and living in us. Rather, Winship wants to know what we are sensing or hearing from God. There are three extrapolations which I am led to from this tactic.
Possibly, Winship is saying that if I don't experience miraculous feelings and outcomes, it is my fault. I didn't hear well. I didn't cooperate well. Winship even says that if we think of ourselves in an incorrect way, God can't or won't communicate with us. This entirely discards the idea that the Bible is God's word that does communicate with us, letting us know what we are by nature, who God is by nature, and how the two are reconciled. Ultimately, I am left as responsible for my salvation.
Because Winship is leading us through this walk, despite what we may think (he mentions that clearly in chapter one), we need to stay with him. He becomes the expert. He is the guide, and the mediator between God and man. This is a job the Bible describes as Jesus' work. Yet Winship exalts himself as the paradigm of true spirituality. Nobody else through all Christian experience has understood how to live in the freedom given by God. This, of course, is similar to the claims of the Gnostic teachers throughout the history of Christianity.
In Winship's portrayal, then the "gospel" is not the good news of God's work in Christ to forgive sins. Rather, it is my work of finding an identity that will seem to produce miracles and victories. This teaching urges us to revisit the reformational descriptors of Law and Gospel. Law is what God demands of his people. Gospel is what God has done on behalf of his people. Winship views the gospel as something we do as we find out what our true identity is.
I earlier mentioned theological categories. In part 3 of the book, Winship uses an etymological fallacy to say that a "category" is always an accusation. This may seem to be a small point. If he is saying that we must willingly allow for people and ideas that are not immediately in our comfort zone, he's right. However, if he is saying that categorizing something immediately serves to accuse and exclude it, he is barking up the wrong tree altogether. Though in its earliest usage, the Greek term that gives us the word "category" is used as an accusation, by the time of Aristotle it was universally accepted as a non-pejorative term that would be used to distinguish between one and another, for instance, between animals and minerals. Winship's scholarship, when it surfaced in this etymological fallacy, proves seriously suspect.
The identification of God's people is a problem. In Winship's stories, Muslims remain Muslims even when they believe Jesus. What is he saying here? Is he saying that the "god" of Islam is the same as the triune God of the Bible? They are not the same character. Which one is rescuing people from sin and death? Which one is reconciling the world to God the Father? Winship is not clear on this.
The issue at hand boils down to what Jesus is for. In this book, Jesus seems largely unnecessary. He may be the one who gives you a life in accord with your true identity. Really? How are you going to know? And is it possible that you have a number of different identities at the same time? The Lutheran doctrine of vocation and the dignity of the work God has given us comes to mind as a corrective to Winship's view. In his view, it seems that God establishes your identity as you have discerned it and you release it to him, by making confession of who you are really supposed to be. Again, you are left as the one who is responsible for your success or failure.
Confession is also a major problem. Winship views the only type of confession to be your choice to agree with God about your real identity. You seem responsible for creating this reality by saying who God really wants you to be. There's no hint of the other types of confession that we might engage in, such as admitting our sin and failure (and asking for Jesus' forgiveness and restoration), or such as proclaiming the truth of what we believe (for example, through creedal statements). Then again, because someone has written or said these before, they must be formulaic statements, therefore they cannot possibly be genuine.
So, did I like the book? You can answer that easily by now. I would consider the teaching of Winship and others who would be similar to him in their ideas to be dangerous. At its root, it is a type of Gnostic Enthusiasm, saying that you need to develop the god within you and that you will only do it by listening to the authoritative teacher, who has hidden wisdom that nobody was able to discern ever before. This is a dangerous type of worldview. It leaves you in charge of your salvation, and it presents law as gospel. It asserts that salvation is found in your understanding, rather than in Christ's work. It leads down a path of hopelessness.
This is the kind of teaching from which I fled many years ago. I saw it wreaking havoc in many lives. It is not biblical. It does not stand the test of history. It should be rejected entirely and out of hand.
During some periods of my Christian life, the idea of worldview evaluation has been a hot topic. One could argue that it is right now, as I work in the collegiate community, often assisting people in articulating their hope and confidence, trying to help them see things in a more biblical way.
A friend recently asked me about a book by author and speaker Jamie Winship. Though I have approximately enough books on my "read this next" list to set off a seismograph if they fell off the shelves all at once, I looked up the author on the internet, checked an audio version of his book out from my local public library, and gave it a listen. The book in question was what appears to be his definitive volume, Living Fearless from 2022.
Winship's website gives no hint of a theological orientation. That's the first red flag I found. He doesn't make a clear signal that he and his teachings would be subject to any recognizable type of peer review or theological authority. Though he presents himself as a Christian, it isn't clear what kind. This may not always be a problem, but it does raise a red flag. Is there something he is trying to hide? The orientation does matter. His wife, who works along with him, has a theological degree. Then again, there are theological schools that have all sorts of views, many of which are not readily reconciled with the Scripture.
From the outset, Winship says that God never communicates with people using formulaic patterns, therefore we should also not use formulas. He extrapolates (from somewhere??) that anything which could seem to be a formula is devoid of meaning and is spiritually suspect, therefore we would never consider praying in a way we have seen before. He views formulas as useless at best, but more likely harmful. Therefore, we always need a new revelation. Except when we don't, as he illustrates in practical terms by using Bible verses (formulas) to back up his ideas and to fill out his prayers, which appear to be premeditated, or they would not be used in a book.
While we are thinking about using Bible verses, we should note that Winship selects individual verses from a wide variety of Bible translations. I first ran into that tendency with Rick Warren, though it's surely been around longer than Warren. The use of the different translations is not explained in any way. I can only assume that he finds that particular translation and only that one works in the setting he is imagining.
Winship tells stories well. However, they are cloaked in anonymity. He's always the hero of the story, and it's always about some strange, barely known people in desperate trouble, in some place that is war-torn but is never mentioned clearly. This is the typical methodology of the faith healers who are never able to produce actual people who have been healed. Again, a red flag which raises a good bit of suspicion about his credibility.
At the end of each chapter, Winship provides a prayer and then tells the reader to be quiet and listen to what God might be whispering, to write it down, and to use it as the reliable record of the reader's true identity. This builds our hope on our feelings rather than on God's definitive word. There is no significant exposition of the Bible demonstrating that our hope is to rest on Christ crucified for us, raised from the dead, and living in us. Rather, Winship wants to know what we are sensing or hearing from God. There are three extrapolations which I am led to from this tactic.
Possibly, Winship is saying that if I don't experience miraculous feelings and outcomes, it is my fault. I didn't hear well. I didn't cooperate well. Winship even says that if we think of ourselves in an incorrect way, God can't or won't communicate with us. This entirely discards the idea that the Bible is God's word that does communicate with us, letting us know what we are by nature, who God is by nature, and how the two are reconciled. Ultimately, I am left as responsible for my salvation.
Because Winship is leading us through this walk, despite what we may think (he mentions that clearly in chapter one), we need to stay with him. He becomes the expert. He is the guide, and the mediator between God and man. This is a job the Bible describes as Jesus' work. Yet Winship exalts himself as the paradigm of true spirituality. Nobody else through all Christian experience has understood how to live in the freedom given by God. This, of course, is similar to the claims of the Gnostic teachers throughout the history of Christianity.
In Winship's portrayal, then the "gospel" is not the good news of God's work in Christ to forgive sins. Rather, it is my work of finding an identity that will seem to produce miracles and victories. This teaching urges us to revisit the reformational descriptors of Law and Gospel. Law is what God demands of his people. Gospel is what God has done on behalf of his people. Winship views the gospel as something we do as we find out what our true identity is.
I earlier mentioned theological categories. In part 3 of the book, Winship uses an etymological fallacy to say that a "category" is always an accusation. This may seem to be a small point. If he is saying that we must willingly allow for people and ideas that are not immediately in our comfort zone, he's right. However, if he is saying that categorizing something immediately serves to accuse and exclude it, he is barking up the wrong tree altogether. Though in its earliest usage, the Greek term that gives us the word "category" is used as an accusation, by the time of Aristotle it was universally accepted as a non-pejorative term that would be used to distinguish between one and another, for instance, between animals and minerals. Winship's scholarship, when it surfaced in this etymological fallacy, proves seriously suspect.
The identification of God's people is a problem. In Winship's stories, Muslims remain Muslims even when they believe Jesus. What is he saying here? Is he saying that the "god" of Islam is the same as the triune God of the Bible? They are not the same character. Which one is rescuing people from sin and death? Which one is reconciling the world to God the Father? Winship is not clear on this.
The issue at hand boils down to what Jesus is for. In this book, Jesus seems largely unnecessary. He may be the one who gives you a life in accord with your true identity. Really? How are you going to know? And is it possible that you have a number of different identities at the same time? The Lutheran doctrine of vocation and the dignity of the work God has given us comes to mind as a corrective to Winship's view. In his view, it seems that God establishes your identity as you have discerned it and you release it to him, by making confession of who you are really supposed to be. Again, you are left as the one who is responsible for your success or failure.
Confession is also a major problem. Winship views the only type of confession to be your choice to agree with God about your real identity. You seem responsible for creating this reality by saying who God really wants you to be. There's no hint of the other types of confession that we might engage in, such as admitting our sin and failure (and asking for Jesus' forgiveness and restoration), or such as proclaiming the truth of what we believe (for example, through creedal statements). Then again, because someone has written or said these before, they must be formulaic statements, therefore they cannot possibly be genuine.
So, did I like the book? You can answer that easily by now. I would consider the teaching of Winship and others who would be similar to him in their ideas to be dangerous. At its root, it is a type of Gnostic Enthusiasm, saying that you need to develop the god within you and that you will only do it by listening to the authoritative teacher, who has hidden wisdom that nobody was able to discern ever before. This is a dangerous type of worldview. It leaves you in charge of your salvation, and it presents law as gospel. It asserts that salvation is found in your understanding, rather than in Christ's work. It leads down a path of hopelessness.
This is the kind of teaching from which I fled many years ago. I saw it wreaking havoc in many lives. It is not biblical. It does not stand the test of history. It should be rejected entirely and out of hand.
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