Plagiarizing: The act of plagiarizing is when someone steals and passes off another person's work as their own without giving credit to the original source.
I have often wondered how often plagiarism happens within the profession we call ministry. Where do we get all the ideas, concepts, or insights that we make into the books, articles, or sermons? If we say all Biblical material is His, then why do we often take credit for the insights? I realize this is not a big spiritual error, but then again, it could be. The world and all that is in it belongs to God. So, is my creativity in using His Word, mine or His?
Someone complimented me recently on some of my Facebook and blog postings, and I can honestly say, everything I write comes from Him and belongs to Him. Are we the messengers of the message, or do we have a stake in the credit for what we produce? I was talking with a young man whose father was a pastor. He was telling me how much his father struggled to come up with theological ideas to preach. Often his attempts ended in long-winded preaching that got completely into the weeds. In that same conversation, we talked about pastors who get stuck in message preparation will often turn to online services that do sermon prep for you. Now, not sure how you feel about that, but to me, the pastor who uses these services can be accused of plagiarizing, especially if the sermon preached is without giving credit to the service providing it. Here is one of my favorite passages of Scripture that defines for me the causality of such convenience:
Hosea 4:7 The more priests there are, the more they sin against me. They have exchanged the glory of God for the shame of idols.
The citation here by God through the Prophet Hosea is about the content that is in the heart of Israel’s leadership. The results are firmly displayed in the lack of knowledge about God, and the leadership is directly responsible. The idol Hosea mentions could simply be the idol of pride producing a spiritual direction not directed by God. Jesus warned of this happening in the last days as well. He said that false prophets would arise producing a false narrative about God.
Most false prophets and teachers have a charismatic presence; they produce material they claim is from God, but it lacks the authenticity from Scripture, and it usually is promoting the teacher as strongly as it produces a spiritual truth. Remember the Parable that Jesus talked about, the Wheat and the Tares? They are very similar in appearance, but one is true grain, the other is a weed. False teaching is a weed … a false reality about the truth of God. The danger of material that is created by a spiritual leader is that it may sound good and may be believed because of the reputation of that leader, but it is often found lacking in the truth of the Scriptures. I have seen creative interpretations of Scripture that brings error into the truth, and the result becomes a cult. Some well-known preachers insert their own theological bias into their understanding of God, making God support things like Calvinism, Prosperity Gospel, Cessation of Spiritual Gifts, prophetic timings of the Rapture of the Church, and a host of other themes that are errors in judgement by those preaching these themes. One of the early theological foundations that I was taught was not to build a doctrine on one Verse. A one Verse idea is a very shallow way to describe God’s truth. When interpreting Scripture, we look for the patterns of God’s thoughts that are found consistently through the Bible. This consistency is a sure way of getting a good handle on the truth of what God’s Word teaches.
Again, I come back to whose material is it anyway? A lot of what we hear today is a combination of the Bible mixed with cultural bias and contemporary thought. We do more plagiarizing than we want to admit, yet in the end people may be entertained, form spiritual opinions, and justify behavior … but they never change. God’s material is described in Scripture as a hammer that breaks up hard surfaces, or a fire that consumes. It is material that is His, and it will never return void of its purpose to bring you into fellowship with God.
The material you listen to or read is important, and the best material is straight out of God’s Word. Read it for content and meaning, don’t bring your opinions or theological bias into your experience or you may only get only what you want, but miss what you need. And lastly, don’t take credit for God’s Word in your life. Give glory to God for allowing you to hear from Him and thank Him for having trust in you to be clear about whose material changed your life.
Challenging the Culture with Truth … Larry Kutzler