I find so many of us as Christians today disparaging the importance of theology and am grieved. In truth, my heart is cleft by the willful ignorance and outright rebellion against learning sound doctrine. After all, faith without sound doctrine is faith without foundation. Yet that is where millions of us find ourselves today. Instead of applying ourselves (heart, soul, mind and strength) to the study of God’s direct revelation—the Word of God—we choose instead to rely on personal experience to interpret who He is. Though God has given us the Bible as a telescope, “to see Him as He longs to be seen,” we look instead through the kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings that swirl around us and see wonderful and entertaining patterns which we label “God,” but is at best only a pale shadow of who He really is, and many times is a complete distortion of the truth. As one theologian put it, “God made man in His image, and man is returning the favor.”
Instead of developing a Biblical worldview, we develop a chimeric understanding of reality built from a combination of desires and opinions and fears we experience as we are buffeted by the storms of life raging around us. When faced with hard or even merely moderately difficult decisions we rarely say, “The Bible says…” More often we are inclined to spew out such gems as, “Well, I think…” or “I feel…” or “I believe…” and then we go on our merry way. Who cares what I think/feel/believe?! As followers of Jesus Christ, the only opinion that truly matters is the Lord’s! Of course, ultimately we will have to incorporate our thoughts, feelings and beliefs into our decisions. They are, after all part of who we are and were created to be by the same God we’re blessed to follow. My point is that those things must first be tempered by prolonged exposure to the Word of God.
Indeed, that we should have a deep and abiding concern for sound doctrine is evident both implicitly and explicitly in scripture. Implicitly we can see the “messenger formulas” given hundreds of times throughout the Old Testament which point out that it is not just another person speaking, but the Lord himself. (A messenger formula is the phrase used to describe the source of a particular message, i.e., “Thus says the Lord.”) In the New Testament we see the Lord Jesus Himself quoting scripture repeatedly in His teaching and most poignantly in His confrontation with Satan during a time of temptation (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13). As a child He is lost for three days and later found in the temple debating scholars who were, “astounded at His understanding and His answers.” (Luke 2:41-50) And one might be tempted to argue that He was God and therefore theology was moot for Him. True, but He also left us a record of Himself continually throughout His human existence engaging people with sound doctrine, in the temple, the marketplace, the street, and even in the wilderness. He wanted His followers to understand Him that way! Beyond that we have the example of Jesus’ apostles at the beginning of the church. Their earliest activities as described in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching…”
Explicitly, we have both what the Bible says about itself as well as the admonitions it contains to pay attention to what we believe. In the Old Testament we find God telling His people in no uncertain terms, “These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) God is creating a culture there based on the understanding of His Word. Then in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul says, “Be conscientious about yourself and your teaching; persevere in these things, for by doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (1 Timothy 4:16) And, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who doesn't need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15) In context we find a young pastor fighting bad doctrine—poor theology—in his church. Paul’s answer? Sound doctrine. And where does that come from? “For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as to divide soul, spirit, joints, and marrow; it is a judge of the ideas and thoughts of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) “so My word that comes from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but it will accomplish what I please, and will prosper in what I send it [to do].” (Isaiah 55:11) “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105)
And maybe you’re reading this now and saying, “I don’t need theology, I just need Jesus.” That’s great, but which Jesus? I mean, there’s a lot of people out there who agree with that simple statement; Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science Church, Moonies and Unitarians to name a few. Unfortunately, unless you want to buy into universalism—the idea that EVERYONE goes to heaven—somebody has the wrong Jesus. Jim Jones loved Jesus too. Want some of his Kool-Aid? David Koresh loved Jesus so much he thought he was Jesus. Didn’t turn out so well for his followers (Branch Davidians), but that’s just more theology you don’t need… or is it?
Listen, everyone is a theologian. We all have opinions about who God is and what He’s like. Even atheists have theological ideas. The question I think we need to focus on is where do those ideas come from? Have we thought them through? Muslims call Christians, “Followers of the Book,” meaning we live according to what the Bible says, but do we? When we pooh-pooh theology, complain when a pastor teaches deeper thoughts about God instead of “Ten Steps to Better Living,” or whatever other “me first” sermon we want to hear, are we really doing ourselves any favors? I don’t think so. Next time, instead of whining about how boring it was to hear about the authority and inerrancy of scripture, or the importance of Baptism, or the person and work of the Holy Spirit, perhaps we should focus on how amazing it is that we serve a God who cares enough to let us hear and understand so much about Him and His world.
When a husband bears his soul to his wife, should she ask him to be more relevant to her and turn up the television, or praise him for his openness and apply herself to understanding him all the more? Isn’t intimacy desirable in marriage? Yet we, the Bride of Christ, don’t want to hear much about Him. We want to hear how he’ll bless us and make our lives easier, but we really don’t want to invest much time in understanding who He really is. It’s as if we’d rather be married to a vending machine. We’d put it in the attic (so our guests wouldn’t know it’s there), then when circumstances warrant, say for instance, when we needed a better parking spot, we could put in a little prayer and out pops a miracle! And we wonder why our faith is so weak, why our lives don’t reflect the joy we were promised, why the “abundant life” for which Christ came seems so flat… We lack sound doctrine. We treat it like spiritual broccoli. We live only a shallow faith, one built on the shifting sand of personal experience, and we wonder why life isn’t better than it seems.
Maybe it is. Maybe it is and we don’t know it because we’re spiritually malnourished. Faith without sound doctrine is faith without foundation.
