My initial argument with Fred May was that God was not interested in demons, he was heartbroken for the poor little children and youth of Stellenbosch.

I’ve preached it every way I know. I’ve preached it to all the churches of Stellenbosch, and yet those youth are so far from love and know only hunger and despair to a degree that they will attack people fleeing war.

You quite simply get what you pay for. Hillsong can come to SA, get down on their knees and each personally give old Fred May a Bill Clinton – and the thirty children under the Kayamandi Railway bridge will still sleep in their own little corner of hell that night.

Why, because Jesus Christ is just some doos whom we can get what we want from. Even in the advertising blurb – He’s your “personal” saviour. And he comes cheap, 10% or 20% if you really raise the bar.

See, and still not one Fred May Worshipping Shofarian, Every Nation Fuck Every Nation Starting With The Pastor … type cash-paying meme will go under the railway bridge and rescue those children – but folks they will be there in their mascara streaked masses when Hillsong tunes up to put on their lukewarm brand of super-commercial Christian crap. With tasty video and sound bites for marketing.

Look on their Facebook group, These People or Shofarians …. want to be in Aspen, or Gstaad or St. Moritz with the uber-riche and the media darlings of the world on the ski-slopes. To go under the railway bridge just once, would force them to look at the horrible truth for once, the glaring nauseating truth – and realise everything about the May’s and their “ministry” is a lie.

Read Matt 18, then read John 21 and watch Jesus do it. Now, buy tickets for Hillsong OR go under the bridge to the children – Personally? I would choose life…

The holy spirit extracts the correct meaning at the correct time for them.

Like you say, “except when they get it wrong…”, when everyone else just “smiles and nods”.

And Bible study groups in the Dutch-Reformed church, that are also informed by liberal theology and science and “higher criticism”, they also talk about guidance by the holy spirit, but not in the same way as the charismatic churches. The general impression I get from the so called “born again” or “Bible believers”, is one of “we have the spirit, yes we do… we’ve got the spirit, and you don’t…”

Which might not be an official stance, of course.

And I wonder about my interpretations then… are my interpretations also inspired by the holy spirit? When my interpretations differ so much from the Shofarian’s? I mean, I do consider myself deconverted from fundamentalism, but I never did chase out the holy spirit. Pastor Sias himself (iirc) “baptised” me in the holy spirit… um… so, who am I to question? That’s an unforgivable sin, isn’t it, if I inadvertently deny that my interpretations of the Bible were not inspired by the holy spirit, if they actually were? So at that point, … ah… I guess it’s all a moot point. I’m just playing word games here. (I guess the problem the typical Shofarian would point to, is that I don’t exactly pray and ask for guidance. I have an intellectual and academic approach to the matter.)

So… we’d have to agree to disagree and move on. Your world view is yours, and mine is mine, and we can only really speak for our own world views…

So how do Shofar get around this infallibility issue. Simple answer: The holy spirit. The holy spirit extracts the correct meaning at the correct time for them. The bible acts as a “medium” through which they hear what God has to say.

Therefore, the same scripture has unlimited meanings and is always correct because that is what the holy spirit is convicting the reader of. What they fail to notice is that if it is indeed the holy spirit guiding them, why is the church so divided!? Surely the holy spirit should guide everyone to the same set of truths. But its not working. What are the chances that Fred is the only person getting the correct convictions from the holy spirit. And why now. Why not 20 years ago when there weren’t so many Charismatic churches. Does God change his tactics over time? Not according to Shofar bible school.

This leads to some disturbing thoughts. Christianity can never be proved wrong or ridiculed against. In fact, doing so only makes them stronger in their beliefs. The more attacks a denomination gets from unbelievers the more they read it as “We are on the right path” because the devil is now giving extra attention to them. I personally have heard Fred say this. And it worries me deeply. They are in a sense using immorality as a moral compass. It is completely messed up in my opinion.

Immorality!? Strong word. Maybe to strong. But you get the idea.

What does “Biblical infallibility” mean when interpretation is so fallible? (That’s not the question, that just sets up the context for the rest of this comment.) OK, well, if we wanted to “get at” the supposedly “infallible message”, we’d need to understand the context as best we can, i.e. we’d need good Bible scholarship to get maximum knowledge of context. We’d need good exegetical work… or what about hermeneutics? (An exegesis is the interpretation and understanding of a text on the basis of the text itself. A hermeneutic is a practical application of a certain method or theory of interpretation, often revolving around the contemporary relevance of the text in question. — wikipedia on exegesis.)

Now the question is, there are different approaches to Bible scholarship/study. In Stellenbosch, there’s the theological faculty of the university, and then there’s Shofar’s own Bible School. In particular, I’ve heard, on multiple occasions, serious doubt or distrust expressed by Shofar or EveryNation members and/or leadership about the theological faculty. Not sure about terminology, but drawing from your comment, they might complain too many theologians are not “spirit filled”? Or that there are “atheists” at the theological faculty? (I’ve heard that relatively recently, and I also recall a Shofarian telling a story about some theology student that actually got “saved”, told in a way to imply “that’s so rare and special when that happens”.)

In the light of such comments about the theological faculty, and in the light of people ripping things out of context, what is your (or Shofar’s) convictions (not sure how identical those two are?) with regards to what “context” is good and what is not? Is a thorough and rigorous theological training, a degree, at the theological faculty an asset, or a liability, given your particular world-view or approach to the Bible?

(I suspect you have a relatively conservative approach to scholarship, which typically rejects the findings of higher criticism with respect to e.g. authorship of the books in the Bible? Going back to the origins of the term “fundamentalism”, prior to numerous redefinitions that ended up with a strong negative connotation, the “fundamentalist” stance — from Wikipedia on Fundamentalism:

The term “fundamentalism” came into existence at the Niagara Bible Conference which defined those things that were fundamental to belief. The term was also used to describe “The Fundamentals”, a collection of twelve books on five subjects published in 1910 by Milton and Lyman Steward[10] [11]

Fundamentalism as a movement arose in the United States starting among conservative Presbyterian academics and theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the first decade of the Twentieth Century[10] [11]. It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations during and immediately following the First World War[10] [11]. The movement’s purpose was to reaffirm orthodox Protestant Christianity and zealously defend it against the challenges of liberal theology, German higher criticism, Darwinism, and other “-isms” which it regarded as harmful to Christianity[10] [11].

Bold emphasis mine, pointing out the source of my understanding of your views on what context is good and what is not.)

To summarise my beliefs about Shofar, which calls themselves a “Bible believing” church, the difference between the theological faculty and Shofar’s Bible School is that the former believes the Bible contains human fallibility, as human hands wrote it… while the latter rejects this idea?

Is that about right? Apologies for the verbosity.

Much of what I’ve wondered about the religion thing is along that theme. Very much a case of “take it seriously, but not too seriously”. Aka “don’t take it too far”. It is a hard line for someone to draw, because the line seems rather arbitrary?

(From there the secular humanist’s conviction that belief in the… um… “spiritual” (I use that word differently usually)… is already “going too far”.)

However, Shofar knows this. I have heard many of the “elders” say that most damage done to the church are by new born Christians. That does not take away the fact that in some cases they might be seen as “responsible” for not preparing these people properly. These people completely and utterly loose all sense of reality. They embrace the spirit world with such zeal that they are impossible to get along with.

Everything becomes spiritual to them. Physical illness, tsunamis, theft; I can go on for days. The only way to be able to get to the point where you can observe the absurdity is by playing along and agreeing with what is being stated. Because, as soon as you disagree you are a heretic end of story.

This deeply concerns me.

I’m curious about a number of things, trying to prioritise in my mind. One of the things I found particularly interesting, was the mention of “weird things in student cell groups”, implying that some students took things too far or developed weird ideas, which were not representative of Shofar’s views and/or doctrines. (Now there’s a potential rationale for clause 11 — the authoritarian clause.) I’d love to hear more about such things, and what the leadership does to solve such problems. (Outsiders would still find fault with the doctrines that make people vulnerable to such “weird things” — pointing out that that is one of the problems with authoritarian morality, suggesting people really need to develop the skills to think for themselves.)

As much as I would love to have a chat again, I suspect “Post-graduate coordinator” is possibly an impostor. (Email address given was likely fake. Source IP was the university proxy, can’t tell more from that.)

It would be a rather interesting state of “tension”, when you’re working together with people on one mission, with both knowing there are other missions on which you are in direct opposition. (Science education, for one.)

In terms of ideals, why can’t everyone just work together in their diversity… sigh. Because they fight about the things they’re diverse about, rather than working together on the things they agree about.