Copyright by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
Perfect love casts out fear, not perfect doctrine. Today there are some prominent evangelicals who appear to give the impression that having a watertight, systematic theology is the most important task of every true believer. For them security is found in crossing every “t” and dotting every “i” in the interpretation of Scripture. While it is no doubt true that belief in biblical inerrancy requires us to seek and hold onto sound doctrine our creeds do not save us, Jesus Christ does.<\/p>\n
Cognitive, propositional approaches to the faith have their place. We are to love the Lord our God with, among other things, our minds. A Christianity that has little regard for the truths of the Bible can hardly be called Christianity at all. The relativism of our age surely has invaded the Church and to ignore this fact is to risk becoming salt that has lost its proverbial saltiness. This having been said right doctrine is still a terrible substitute for right relationship if right doctrine is all you have.<\/p>\n
Relationship is at the core of true religion. The Pharisees had the law but they had no relationship with the God of that law. The heart of Christianity is found in the reality that God was willing to go to an incredibly great length to make it possible to once again be in deep communion with His finest creation. Joy at the prospect of the restoration of the human race to God\u2019s family was one of the things that\u00a0helped\u00a0Jesus to endure the physical and spiritual trauma of the cross.<\/p>\n
There are many hindrances to God\u2019s desire for that restoration to be realized. Sin takes multiple forms; some are obvious, some less so. One of the latter more subtle forms of sin might be called “doctrinolatry”. It can be defined as a focus on doctrine so extreme and dogmatic that knowing right doctrine subtly becomes more important than knowing Christ. People who fall into this error lose the joy of their salvation because they lose their first love. They reject the primacy of knowing and loving God for the false comfort of a system of thought which seeks to put Him in a box they themselves may\u00a0have designed. In doing so they reject mystery for a presumptuous intellectual mastery and, without even knowing it, thwart the Spirit\u2019s work in their hearts. In some extreme cases it may even prevent someone from truly coming to know Christ at all.<\/p>\n
Lovers do not analyze and tabulate one another. They experientially know and deeply enjoy each other. Lovers do not spend too much time reading about the structure of relationships at the expense of actually having one. For true believers this may seem like stating the obvious but when it comes to the ultimate Lover, the Lover of our souls, we often forget that our relationship with Him is the greatest love affair in the universe!<\/p>\n
By all means study Scripture and examine what it says in order to understand that which God\u00a0gives us to understand about ultimate reality. By all means study sound Christian works of theology through the centuries.\u00a0But in doing so never forget that it is the God behind those Scriptures and that sound theology we need to know and love first and foremost, not our finite intellectual interpretation of that God.<\/p>\n
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Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Perfect love casts out fear, not perfect doctrine. Today there are some prominent evangelicals who appear to give the impression that having a watertight, systematic theology is the most important task of every true believer. For them security is found in crossing every “t” and dotting every “i”… <\/p>\n