On "False Teachers"

It has been strange but several different tangents in my life have combined to make me thing of the idea of what a false teacher is. In the context of these conversations a "false teacher" has been defined in several different ways.

First one has to assume that there is some objective Truth out there to which one can be false. That is a given. So within this context one might define falseness as that which denies the truth.

Ah, but (as Pilot put it to the Christ) "What is truth?" That, my friends, is a whole different argument. Let's table, for a moment, the possibility that there is no objective truth.

Instead let us assume, for the sake of this conversation anyway, that there is an objective truth out there -- That there is some basic reality in which we operate.

That done, we move to what is a false teacher.

Here are some definitions I have trouble with:

1)If you disagree with me and you publicly declare whatever it is that I disagree with, you are a false teacher. Your falseness resides mainly in the fact that I (and others like me) have figured out whatever it is that you have gotten wrong.

Not satisfying (I agree, but those who disagree are false teachers ;)

2) You teach some specific doctrine that is contrary to my understanding of God. I've heard some of the "false" teaching has to do with Gender roles, leadership in the church, sexual orientation, definition of bigotry, stance on divorce and remarriage -- there are more.

That isn't really satisfying either.

Hmmm. The Bible makes it clear that teachers are more responsible or culpable than those who do not teach. It also makes it clear that there is such a thing as false doctrine and false practice.

But what, first of all is the definition of teaching. Is the warning that those who presume to teach just for those who presume to teach about the ways of God, or is it also a warning to those of us who attempt to teach things like statistics, the difference between a sonnet and an ode, how to play the guitar, how to whittle, how to square dance, how to market a product? If you take the most expansive possible view of teaching you might say that teaching is whenever you work to impart some sort of skill or knowledge to another. If that is the case, I daresay we all are teachers, but in this case what does it mean to be "false?"

Again we might assume that we are only speaking of teaching that is false in a religious sense. So perhaps those of us who failed to teach someone how to write a decent essay or how to use a mouse are not in danger of hell fire simply because we were inaccurate.

So, let's stick to religious teaching. Do you define someone as a "false" teacher if anything that they say about religion is inaccurate? Or is a false teacher not someone who accidentally misses the mark on some specific issues but is instead one who leads people to fail, fall short, etc.?

In other words are you false merely by omission or accident or can one only be "false" through actively and purposefully mislead people?

Well I have to stop here. Perhaps I have been a false teacher by raising this question and not definitively answering it. But I do know that if admission to Heaven is determined by whether we get everything absolutely right, I'm afraid it will be a rather empty place.