Credible sources

Not so very long ago, I heard a Bible teacher say, "Never quote anybody while he is still alive, because you never know where his life is going to head."

That didn't sit well with me, but it took me a long time to figure out exactly why.

Here's the deal:

Truth is truth.  Whether or not truth is spoken by a "reputable" person, if it is true, it is true.  The truth of a statement is not determined by the condition of the person who makes it.

Therefore, if you come across a good, well-worded explanation or description of something, I would say go ahead and quote it.  You may want to say something about the person you are quoting, as a caveat, if you are concerned that he has a tarnished reputation which might hinder someone's ability to accept what he has said.  Still, I think it is important to recognize truth as its own entity, not something that ebbs and sways according to the varying moral state of the person who uttered it.

For instance, the Rolling Stones had a song that said, "You can't always get what you want."  I'm not a fan of the Rolling Stones, but that's a true statement.

We have a book about fatherhood by a famous Christian leader who later had an affair.  His life failures do not automatically negate everything he wrote in his book about fatherhood.  He had very good advice for fathers.  In fact, after his affair, he repented, did everything he could to restore his relationship with his wife, and ultimately recovered both his wife and his ministry.  Will he fall again?  Maybe.  Will it falsify everything he ever taught if he does?  Why would it?

We all make mistakes.  Nobody is perfect.  Everybody sins.

What people write or teach needs to be measured against scripture, not accepted or rejected based on how virtuous the author/teacher/preacher is.

The prophet Jonah was a defiant man with a bitter heart.  He hated the people of Ninevah, and wanted them to go to hell.  God wanted the people of Ninevah to repent and be saved.  God sent Jonah to Ninevah.  It took a lot of work on God's part to get the cranky prophet to his preaching engagement, but Jonah finally arrived, preached, and saw the Ninevites come to repentance.  In the end, Jonah was angry that God accepted the Ninevites' repentance.  Jonah was not what we would call a "good" person, yet God used him to bring truth to a perishing people group.

And while we're at it, if we were going to disqualify people's writings based on their life failures, we'd have to throw away most of the book of Psalms, because King David was not a stellar moral example, by any means.  Not only did he commit adultery with Bathsheba, but he had her husband killed to try to cover it up after he'd impregnated her.  Yet, King David was called, "A man after God's own heart," and he wrote many of our most beautiful Psalms.  In vulnerable, raw honesty, David even wrote Psalm 32 and Psalm 51, which explain his experience with sin, confession, repentance and forgiveness.  This is also truth.

Truth is truth.  We live in a fallen world, daily battling the fleshly temptations that surge up in us.  We sometimes fail to be as alert as we need to be, and fall under the spell of Satan's deceptions, which always draw us into sin.  But our failure to recognize and live by truth does not change the nature of truth.

Please don't misunderstand me.  I'm not saying that we should be undiscerning in the name of "grace" (I'm talking about a warped and misapplied grace), and accept anything anybody says.  I'm just pointing out that the truth of a teaching resides outside of the person who teaches it.  Ideally, all teachers would be perfectly consistent in practicing what they preach.  In reality, in a fallen world, this is impossible.  You need to sift and strain for truth, always, and avoid getting caught up in issues that might distract you from this.  Compare the teaching to the Word of God.  That is the proper measuring stick.

Remember, Satan can deceive you by distracting you from truth by toppling truth's messenger.  I think it's actually one of his favorite techniques, because he can use it to accomplish two goals simultaneously: He denigrates truth, while nurturing pride in the hearts of people who condemn its imperfect messengers.