REVIEW: LOUIE GIGLIO’S SIMPLE PURSUIT: A HEART AFTER JESUS (A DAILY PASSION DEVOTIONAL)
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Simple Pursuit is a
daily devotional book that comes out of Louis Giglio’s Passion
Movement. Merely containing an introduction by Giglio, with brief
commentaries by “Christian celebrities” Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, and
Matt Redman, the daily devotionals are written by 68 “Contributing
Writers” drawn from the book’s target millennial audience of 18-25 year
olds.
Following Giglio’s brief introduction, the book issues its “268
Declaration,” a five-pointed mission statement for the Passion Movement
that is sourced in Isaiah 26:8.
The crux of the statement is drawn from John Piper’s Christian Hedonism
theme, “The heart of Passion is God’s glory, and God is most glorified
in us when we live lives that are fully satisfied in Him.” The outlined
five points of Passion are:
- A Passion To Know God Above All Things
- Love For The Local Expression of His Church
- Unity Among Believers That Amplifies His Name
- A Desire To See Christ Celebrated Where I Live
- Willingness to Shine The Gospel To All People
It is from this outlined premise that the writers of the daily
devotionals have penned pithy summaries primarily of “you can do it with
God” sorts of encouragement that read with a tone that implies “knowing
God” is more an experiential function for the believer than it is one
of apprehending and understanding Scriptural truth. (Colossians 1:9-10, Philippians 1:9)
This Christian hedonism approach to faith is inherently dangerous.
It encourages the experience of pursuing the joy of God for ourselves
above that of the apprehending and understanding of God’s written
revelation of Himself. Christian hedonism, as popularized by Piper, and
echoed throughout this devotional guide, elevates the pursuit of one
fruit of the Spirit – joy- above the others and, by emphasizing the
pursuit of that experience, relegates all other aspects of ongoing
sanctification in the believer to a lesser-than status.
Dr. Peter Masters’ analysis of Piper’s hedonism would be appropriate in response to the similar theological premise of Simple Pursuit’. (Masters
is, btw, pastor of Metropolitan Tabernacle whose pulpit was previously
occupied by the prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon.)
“God’s Word does not provide a single organising
principle to govern and drive all the component duties of the spiritual
life. ‘Christian Hedonism’ is not drawn from the teaching of the Lord,
nor of Paul. However, the Bible does provide a clear prescription for
the Christian life, listing a number of spiritual and moral duties, all
of which must be given direct and individual attention. We are given
famous lists (such as the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, and the
lists of 1 Timothy 6.11-12 and Galatians 5.22-23
– see footnote 3) and we must set our minds to accepting a
multiple-track righteousness. We will pay a high price for any kind of
clever system that reduces biblical duties to an artificial formula,
however sound and inspiring many of its elements may seem to be.” Dr.
Peter Masters (Source)
Simple Pursuit
faces the same challenges of any devotional book: brevity, Biblical
integrity, and believer edification. Most devotional books do not pull
this trifold challenge off with any success; Simple Pursuit hasn’t either. (A perpetually reliable, and recommendable, devotional guide would be Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening.)
The format of Simple Pursuit is
a page-per-day devotional in which each is headlined by a singly
plucked verse of Scripture accompanied by a one, two, or maybe very
brief, three-paragraph commentary of encouragement or explanation,
concluding, on most days of the books’ entries, with a one or two
sentence, suggested summarizing prayer.
Obvious exegetical risks accompany any such endeavor with so limited a
scope of intent. The contextual fullness of singly-plucked verses is
difficult to responsibly divulge to the reader. The poor exegetical
performance of Simple Passion
is evident by its clear lack of pastoral oversight or theological
insight that exhibits concern for, and consistency of, sound doctrine.
Verses are plucked, often out of context, presumably because of their
particular importance to the unidentified author and exposited in a
Scripturally-illicit “what’s this verse mean to me” sort of manner.
The theme of “unity,” as highlighted in point three of the five
points of Passion, runs through a number of the daily entries.
Commenting on this in the book, contributor Chris Tomlin writes, “Jesus
said that the world would know we are His by our love (John 15:35).
Interestingly, He did not say ‘by our doctrine’ or ‘by our
denomination,’ but by our love.” This “doctrine is divisive” narrative
echoed by Tomlin is not unknown, and, ironically, it is most often
offered by those who “don’t know” what Scripture teaches in its fullness.
The popular suggestion that doctrine divides is a vehemently
anti-Scriptural claim. The Apostle Paul, through whom the Holy Spirit
inspired and wrote much of the Jesus-approved New Testament defined
division in the church.
I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who
cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you
have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord
Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they
deceive the hearts of the naive. Romans 16:17-18
Another example of doctrine-avoiding unity is from the devotional on
Day 182: “What is one thing that every denomination has in common?
Despite stylistic differences, we reach out to God in prayer. If we are
going to see Jesus at work through our generation, then we need to be
united around a clear purpose.” That mechanism of unity, for the Simple Pursuit writer, is not the Jesus of Scripture, but the Jesus of prayer.
While the “stylistic differences” may exist between those, for example, praying at Hillsong, or Bethel, or the nearest Catholic
parish, or the Baptist church down the street, one thing is certain
among all of those congregations – each is praying to a very different
“Jesus.” The actual Jesus of Scripture, however, gave us His focal
point for Christian unity in His high priestly prayer to the Father:
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17)
Scripture – and the sound doctrine it contains – is the point of
unity for believers. According to the writer of this day’s devotion,
with no agreement on the correct Jesus or God of Scripture, Christians
could theoretically be found in spiritual unity with any religion that
prays. But it’s a certainty the Muslims are praying to a decidedly
different “God” than Christians do. Appeals for unity outside the
boundaries of Scripture are dangerous to the believer, toxic to sound
doctrine, and may rapidly become blasphemous to God. Indeed, for those
not adhering to sound doctrine and proclaiming illicit variants of it,
the apostle is quite clear: “Avoid them.” (Romans16:18)
The prevalent “Gospel” contained in Simple Pursuit
is the ever-popular, but always unbiblical social gospel. From one
entry we read, “Not only does our pursuit of justice bring healing to
this world, but it also brings us closer to God.” Or there’s this line,
“Fighting injustice, speaking against lies, loving others, and seeking
to end poverty all require much effort often personal discomfort – but
they give so much gain.” Or, from another entry, this explanation:
“Just as materialism is heart bondage, so poverty and injustice are
physical bondage. When we generously give to the needy for the good of
God’s kingdom, we take part in God’s purpose for the world: to free
creation from the bondage of evil through the love of Christ.”
The social justice refrains reflect an aberrant Gospel message exhibited in Simple Pursuit.
They smack of a form of dominionism in which believers must eradicate
the ills of the world – poverty, homelessness, legal injustices, for
example – as critical to the “good of God’s kingdom.” While these noble
acts of Christian charity are done as a consequential outflow of a
truly redeemed soul, the acts themselves do not constitute the Gospel.
Apart from doing such charity with a clear, corresponding proclamation
of the Gospel, the results won’t be establishing “God’s kingdom,” but
simply making the world a better place from which to go to hell.
Rather, God’s plans for this divinely cursed world (Genesis 3:17) are certain – see 2 Peter 3:10-12 – and, until that “day of Lord” arrives, believers are to seek to reconcile with God the spiritually lost (and, according to Scripture, spiritually “dead” – Ephesians 2:1)
by purposefully, audibly sharing – not merely “shining,” as Passion
point #5 puts it – the authentic Gospel of Christ. God’s temporal
purpose is not to “free creation from the bondage of evil” through a
social gospel agenda, but to take for the Son from it a bride – the
church – comprised of those divinely regenerated as a result of His
powerful, authentic Gospel. (Romans 1:16) Believers in the true Gospel of Scripture are awaiting the new creation, “a new heaven and a new earth.” (Revelation 21:1)
Commensurate with a doctrine-less, social gospel platform for which
Passion is known, their devotional book perpetuates the unbiblical
notion that all men are the beloved children of God who merely need to
“love Jesus.” Regrettably, the Jesus glimpsed on the pages of Simple Pursuit is a Jesus that cannot be properly gleaned from a responsible reading of Scripture.
Under the entry for Day 27, entitled “Hear The Knock,” the false, but
evangelically-hallowed, door-knocking Jesus is seen. “Jesus knocks at
the door of our hearts and is waiting to enter fellowship with us.” The
cited verse for this illicit statement? Revelation 3:20
… a verse in which Jesus is not knocking on anyone’s heart, but is
issuing a dire warning against apostasy and disobedience to the
believer-void church of Laodicea. The day’s devotional ends with a
dangerous tone of contemplative spirituality, “What can we do to be
still so we can hear God’s voice today? Let us pause to hear His voice,
and answer the knock at the door of our hearts.”
The “Jesus loves everyone” notion shows up in a number of the daily
readings. In one, the closing is in the form of a question, “How can
you learn to see everyone as Jesus does – a dearly loved child in need
of an eternal savior?” While every believer should proclaim the gospel
to everyone, not everyone is “a dearly loved child” of God. What this
errant proclamation fails to recognize is that even Jesus, while on
earth, did not exhibit limitless, gushing divine love for everyone He
encountered. In fact, the Jesus of Simple Pursuit seems unlike the judgmental Jesus of Matthew 13:10-16
who began teaching in parables precisely so that not all His hearers
would grasp His divinely taught truth. As MacArthur writes, parables
“were designed to hide the truth.” “Do you know why Jesus taught in
parables?” writes MacArthur. “It was a judgment. It was a judgment on
willful, hard-hearted unbelief.” So much for “Jesus loves you and has a
wonderfully hedonistic plan for your life.”
Giglio, in his introduction to Simple Pursuit, says this:
“From the start [of the Passion Movement], we have wanted
to see a generation stand in awe of Jesus; to fall in love with the
wonder and majesty of who He is. And we have sought to inspire them to
reflect that glory to their world.”
Those words ring with a noble resolve, to be sure, but the ambition
is based on an errant theology. The fundamental premise of Christian
hedonism that is rampant throughout the volume, as it is the Passion
Movement, elevates the pursuit of joy in Jesus above the very thing
which Christ Himself said would identify those who truly love Him: “If
you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15) God commands our obedience.
Simple Pursuit
encourages social justice as a way to “shine” the Gospel for the intent
of maximizing individual joy. This form of hedonism seems foreign to
the authors of the New Testament who defined themselves, often in the
opening words their epistles, as “doulos” – or slaves – of Christ. (Romans 1:1, James 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, Jude 1:1, Revelation 1:1)
A slave exhibits obedience to his master, first and foremost, not the
relentless pursuit of self-gratifying joy to be gained in the name of
his master.
“So my call to you now, in the name of God Almighty, is
that you might make it your eternal vocation to pursue your pleasure
with all the might that God mightily inspires within you.” John Piper,
Passion Conference 1997 (Source)
Simple Pursuit is an
avoidable devotional guide for the millennial. In a post-modern world
where relativistic, subjective pursuits run counter to Scriptural
veracities, the continued proclamation of the tenets of Christian
hedonism will drive many to ultimately seek escape from Christianity,
for the Christian faith puts a priority on obedience to Christ, with
sanctification resulting in many fruits in addition to joy. (Galatians 5:22-23)
Scripture does not promise unbridled temporal joy nor prescribe the
pursuit of indulgent self-gratification though Christian hedonism
slathers these ambitions with a veneer of Christian-ese. But Piper and
Giglio and his Passion colleagues are required to read into Scripture a
formula for faith not naturally, normally, or – from the record of
orthodoxy – historically found within it. Such a “simple pursuit”
cannot be sustained by those who have no true foundation in the
fundamental doctrines of faith, the “sound teaching” from the Word. (1 Timothy 4:6, 2 Timothy 4:3, Titus 1:9)
As Dr. Masters pointed out, “We will pay a high price for any kind of
clever system that reduces biblical duties to an artificial formula,
however sound and inspiring many of its elements may seem to be.” Simple Pursuit is
effectively a “rah-rah” approach to faith, proffered in a daily
sound-byte format, and most certainly exemplifies this dangerous,
menacing, “clever system.”
Simple Pursuit is not a sound, endorsable resource for authentic believers of any age.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book through
BooklookBlogger in return for my honest review. I was not required to
give a favorable review to the book.)