(The following is what I wrote to an online purveyor of a clever, effective, and misleadingly-marketed resource whose marketing copy was alarming, at best, and satanic, at worst.
I share it with you here because it contains some points that my friends at home may benefit from during their coffee shop discussions… or something. For the record, I did request this work for my upcoming bday, and I do still want it. I’m not dissing it or the idea of it, but rather the indubitably-ai marketing tripe.
Anyway, enough ranting from me. (For now, lol). GBU, my friend :))
Dear Marketing Team:
I applaud your product overall.
But using verbiage like “deepenyourbelief” and “buildunshakablefaith” to refer to a mere work of human origin—your lovely workbook—is totally unBiblical.
Why? Because it discounts and disregards The Work Of The PRECIOUS Holy Spirit, particularly His Sweet Drawing of us.
And while your marketing copy appears to line up with the requirement of “working out our own salvation,” in terms of my own desire to deepen my faith and my commitment to learn more in order to bolster it and be able to provide an answer for my own belief and hope, the underlying assumption is that “knowing more and knowing why WILL, necessarily, guard my faith, since learning more facts will make me able to defend my faith before unbelievers—and make me immune to their question of why, aka “why do I believe, anyway?!”
This smacks of two “things that don’t rock, in terms of true faith,” though:
1) if a person is persuaded into the faith by scientific fact, then will his alleged faith start blowing in the wind every time a wind blows a into our direction some new tidbit of alleged scientific evidence for or against something to do with The Blessed Word?
2) the whole “is it that you DON’T believe, or that you WON’T believe?” thing, aka “even if God Came Down and I KNEW He Real, but I was STILL mad At Him for not saving my granny or for letting me get abused, I would ONLY ‘believe In’ God inasmuch as do the loser demons/fallen angels/unclean spirits who rebelled.
The only way to please God Is through faith, even the size of a mustard seed, and He Prefers obedience to sacrifice, as well as our repentance and a contrite spirit and grateful humility. He Opposes the proud. He whooped the trash out of Job in his 38th chapter and beyond, over the self-righteousness shown by the feisty old man.
Learning this stuff IS important, it’s VERY important. But we can’t put more emphasis on learning it than we do in realising His sovereignty—and in submitting FULLY To Him.
As someone who had the honour of teaching college and university students for 15 years, I can tell you that the ones who knew why they believed and what they believed had just as much believing or still believing as did the ones who didn’t.
It’s about heart posture. Submission. And … having seen true faith and complete submission modeled, at times.
A child who has never seen any adult or family member believe and trust completely may not know how to believe fully, or realise what it looks like to do so. That’s not something that can be taught in a book. Except, perhaps, In The Blessed Bible Itself… and In The One Who Himself IS The Word. :)
May God Bless you and I hope you will take my comments under advisement. 🙏✝️♥️
In Him,
Sally B.
You got here for a reason. Maybe you want to finally understand why you believe. Maybe you’ve tried other resources and they didn’t stick.
Whatever brought you here, let us show you why this one’s different.
METANOiA Means 