Faith in Faith

 Here's a devotional by Kenneth Copeland I stumbled upon which--quite frankly--gave me the creeps. Ever since I wrote a research article on the Word of Faith movement back in high school, teachings like his make me shiver...

I've talked about idols before, and specifically the human tendency to decide what kind of attributes they want God to have before worshiping Him, instead of looking for what He's really like.  This happens when we stray from the truths of Scripture and start imagining what WE would do if WE were God. Many of our ideas probably would have a taste of the Word. But the less we consult our Bibles, the more likely we are to pollute its message, little by little, over time. Inevitably, if we continue to accept and believe fractured pieces of truth, we will end up not worshiping God at all--but something of our own creation.

In the case of Kenneth Copeland and other proponents of the Word of Faith movement, their creation is a god called Faith.  Oh, they will use Scripture to back up their teachings, and they will approach the Truth so closely that, sometimes, it's difficult to detect the problem. In fact, 90% of the above devotional is perfectly fine.

But then he slips in things like:

Faith is a powerful force. It always works. It’s not that our faith is weak and needs strength, but without the power of patience, we stop its force from working in our lives because of our negative words and actions. It’s our faith, and we can either put it into action or stop it from working.

When you start saying, "Faith is a force," and (he has been quoted as saying) "It is spiritual substance which has the ability to effect natural substance" things start to get hazy. And, pretty soon, "faith" is given so much power it trumps God Himself.

Copeland has said in other places, "God cannot do anything for or against you apart from faith" and "God's on the outside looking in...he doesn't have any legal entree into the world. The thing don't belong to him."  In the above devotional, he hints at these beliefs when he says:

Without the substance of faith, that kind of praying will not produce results. You can see that in a critical situation this would be dangerous. We need to have our thinking straightened out according to the Bible, so we can use these forces properly and produce God’s perfect will in our lives.

 In other words, it's up to us to make things happen. God has nothing to do with it. It's the human's job to use faith (the REAL power) to get what we want. And, if we do it wrong, it can even be "dangerous!" We could accidentally cause bad things to happen, through the power of our faith-filled words. Faith is a tricky, unforgiving god...

*Shiver*

Here is a pretty good video outlining the problems with Copeland's theology and others of the Word of Faith movement. (Ignore the annoying host, and listen to the guy he's interviewing.)  :)   As for me, I choose to put my trust in the one true God, who answers to no one--especially not a fictitious god called "faith."