The New Testament can be divided into four logical sections. The four gospels describe the life and teachings of Jesus. The book of Acts describes how the Disciples understood and implemented the teaching of Jesus. The epistles provide additional teaching for the new churches. Finally, the book of Reveletion offers some hints at the future.
The modern Feeler message inviting unbelievers into the Christian church is essentially that ``God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.'' I call this particular one ``The Gospel According to Bill Bright'' but virtually every evangelistic message from Billy Graham down to the smallest rural church in the Bible Belt is fundamantally the same. This focus on God's love has little or no basis in Scripture. The word ``love'' is completely absent from every record of the early church's evangelistic efforts. The Apostle Paul, writing to Christians (not unbelievers) in the young churches often mentions love and (to a lesser degree) relationships, but not significantly more often than he writes about Truth, Justice and Righteousness. Jesus taught his disciples (and Nicodemus, at the time arguably an unbeliever) about relationships and love, but only in a few chapters of John's gospel. The rest of his teaching is about Truth, Justice and Righteousness.
What is going on here? How did the Christian church turn the balanced
or slightly Thinker message of the Bible into a pure Feeler agenda?
Book | Thinker | Feeler | |
Matthew | 201 | 99 | |
Mark | 44 | 20 | |
Luke | 164 | 95 | |
John | 91 | 88 | |
Acts | 66 | 26 | |
Romans | 37 | 47 | |
1 Corinth | 90 | 43 | |
2 Corinth | 16 | 20 | |
Galatians | 17 | 5 | |
Ephesians | 12 | 17 | |
Philippians | 5 | 6 | |
Colossians | 12 | 11 | |
1 Thess | 6 | 13 | |
2 Thess | 7 | 5 | |
1 Timothy | 36 | 10 | |
2 Timothy | 24 | 7 | |
Titus | 16 | 5 | |
Philemon | 1 | 4 | |
Hebrews | 23 | 15 | |
James | 32 | 7 | |
1 Peter | 8 | 9 | |
2 Peter | 14 | 2 | |
1 John | 25 | 29 | |
2 John | 6 | 4 | |
3 John | 5 | 4 | |
Jude | 10 | 5 | |
Revelation | 35 | 20 | |
Totals | 1003 | 606 |
This is not the whole Bible, but we can see some important factors here. The gospel narratives tend to reflect both the personality of the evangelists recording them and the message reported. John is more relational, almost equally promoting Thinker and Feeler values, while the synoptics consistently favor Thinker values by a 2:1 margin. Jesus had a mostly Thinker message to his disciples and to the Jews, but was more relational to the disciples in private teaching (which John reports in greater detail). Paul, writing to the church at Rome, where he had not yet been, is much more relational and affirming, despite that he has some disaffirming things to say to them. We see a similar affirming bias in the Ephesian and Colossian letters, which appear to be general encouragement meant to accompany the return of Onesimus. To the churches at Corinth and Galatia, and in the pastoral epistles, his remarks are much more sharp. The one-chapter books are too small and too specific to count fairly.
No book here is overwhelmingly relational or Feeler-oriented. God is the God of His whole creation, not just the Feelers.
But if you look at the gospel message preached to unbelievers, the Biblical
model is far different from what we practice today. Never
is the gospel presented to unbelievers in relational terms. Nicodemus possibly
excepted, God does not love the unbelievers, and they -- not even Nicodemus
-- are never, not even once, offered a relationship with God. The gospel
to them in every case is always ``Jesus died and rose again. Repent.''
There are a few relational verses in Acts, but almost always directed at
other believers in the church. The same is true in the gospels and [so
far] also the epistles.
There are 678 verses in Mark, 44 of them promoting Thinker values, and
20 more Feeler oriented. Romans is smaller, with only 433 verses, and more
balanced; I counted 37 Thinker verses, and 47 Feeler verses, including
18 verses with the word ``love,'' many of which would not otherwise get
counted as promoting an explicitly Feeler value. There were also 9 verses
with some form of the word ``true'' that did not get considered; if they
had all been counted, the scores would have been much more nearly equal.
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Rev. 2008 May 9