The purpose of these blogs is to help you live for Christ. In the last blog I explained that you need both a right heart and right beliefs in order to live for Christ. God wants a holistic faith, not just a superficial one. It is now time to talk a little bit about Christian beliefs, but before we delve into specific doctrines, I ought to take a couple blogs to discuss some broad issues related to truth and doctrine.
Doctrine is a foul word to some people. To them, it represents silly arguments that people have fought and died over. Of course, sometimes this portrayal has been true, but we should not throw away the meat with the bones. Healthy doctrine is central to a healthy faith. The things we believe actually impact us, and our ability to be effective in any field depends on what we believe within that field. If you want to be a good doctor, you must know good medical doctrine. If you want to be a good lawyer, you must know good legal doctrine. Being a good follower of Christ is no different. You must know good Christian doctrine.
Christian doctrine does get at the intellect, but it is not solely about the intellect. Paul tells Timothy to stay in Ephesus so that he might “command certain men not to teach false doctrines.” Paul then says, “The goal of this command is love which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (I Tim 1:3-5) In other words, good doctrine is necessary for real love, a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. If anyone wants these things, he should seek right doctrine. Love and doctrine are friends. Sometimes people say silly things like, “I would rather love my brother than believe the right things about God.” They do not understand that they cannot love their brother as God wants them to until they first believe right things about God.
C.S. Lewis likened doctrine to a spiritual map. Of course, any map is merely a picture and not the real thing. And ultimately we want the real God and not the map, but it is the map that shows us what that real God is like. We are fools if we engage in this lifelong journey without a good map. The map is merely a tool, not the end, but if it is a good map, it helps us get to the end. A hiker in the Alaskan wilderness knows the benefits of a good map. If someone offered him one, he would not reply, “No thank you. I am not interested in knowing how to get anywhere. I’m interested in enjoying the beauty of this wilderness.” We see the ridiculousness of such talk, but many people talk that same way about Scriptural doctrine. They somehow pretend that doctrinal knowledge and enjoyment contradict each other when in reality just the opposite is true.
Good doctrine will not answer every question we have. In this respect it is like those maps of America that were made in the 1500s. You can see the rough outlines of the Atlantic Coast. Here’s New England, the Canadian Maritime provinces, Chesapeake Bay, Long Island, Florida. You can make out a lot of things, but if you go inland any short distance, the map quickly dissolves into emptiness. If someone from that time had looked at one of those maps and had asked, “What’s beyond these mountains?” no one could answer him.
Good Christian doctrine comes from the Bible. The Scriptures are the raw data, so to speak. Where the Scriptures are clear, good doctrine needs to be clear. Where the Scriptures are fuzzy, honest Christians may disagree. That Jesus has bodily risen from the dead is clear in Scripture. To deny this is to cease to be a Christian. What the end times will look like is fuzzy in Scripture. Honest Christians may have differing opinions on this subject.
Some doctrines are more central to following Jesus than others. That God fixes broken people through faith in Jesus is central. That Jesus wipes away sin through the sacrifice of the Cross is central. That Jesus is our king, that you and I are sinful, that God is holy, that we must love our neighbor, that God calls us to righteousness, that people must repent, all of these things are central to the faith. They all get at the essence of what the Christian journey is about.
Some things, however, do not quite get at the essence. Does communion represent Christ’s death or recreate Christ’s death? Should church governments be hierarchical or democratic? Two people can be honest followers of Jesus and adhere to all of the central things above and yet disagree on the answers to these questions. This does not mean that the answers are unimportant; it simply means that the answers are not part of what defines a follower of Jesus. If a woman does not love, however, she does not follow God. That is I John. If a man does not think his sin to be that bad, he does not know God. That is Romans 1. If a woman lives in sexual immorality, she does not know God. That is I Cor 6. I suppose we could say there is a sense in which not all doctrines are equal, and this makes perfect sense, for not all parts of a map are equally crucial to your journey.
