Dig!

Confusion abounds in Christianity. I am not saying that Christians are ready and willing to admit this. Christians sit in their churches each Sunday listening to the same verses used over and over again to teach the truth as they see it. One of the most useful things I ever did is to study the doctrine of all the other denominations besides mine. I discovered that they also had verses to prove different conclusions than I held. In an honest Christian looking for truth this should cause pause at least and really should cause doubt. Thankfully I did not stick my head in the sand and pretend I never seen this elephant in the room. Thankfully I decided for myself that there must be an answer to the confusion. Thankfully I was willing to admit that I could be wrong. This trait is quite rare. In my experience, most Christians know they don’t really understand the Bible but are not willing to admit they could be wrong. I had a eye-opening experience that really made me realize the extent of the problem. As a Deacon in a Baptist church, I took part in revising a church constitution. Part of this project was to take a look at the Statement of Faith. What I studied during this project was the list of the “Fundamentals” or the “Baptist Distinctives” or whatever you want to call them. Here is what you most likely will find if you have the guts to try it, A statement sometimes followed by 20 or more verses to prove the statement. At a glance this seamed quite impressive. You would look at that long list of verses and think to yourself, this no doubt is an easily proven fact. Here is what I found out after helping to revise the Constitution and statement of faith in 2 different Baptist churches. You and I were being bluffed into thinking all those verses actually prove the statement. What I found was the first few verses were clearly about the context of the statement. But the further you got from the clear verses you found that most of the verses had little or almost nothing to do with proving the statement and were thrown in just to make a long list. Maybe your statement of faith does not look this way? Do you know? There was a period of time when I read the statements of faith of all the major denominations from many different churches. By and large I found this to be true over and over amongst all the ones I read. If you are sitting in a church Sunday after Sunday betting eternity on the chance you picked the correct church or were raised up in the right denomination, you are on thin ice no doubt. There are things you must figure out. These are things that WILL affect your eternity. If those verses listed are found in Israel’s Old Testament and Israel’s New Testament you are in a perilous position. Church doctrine for today comes primarily from your Apostle Paul. Yes, every verse in the Bible is true and accurate as written, but Paul was sent by Jesus directly to you with the message valid today in the age of grace. If your foundation is not built upon Paul’s doctrine, you’re just trusting in man’s opinion. Sadly today, most Christians are completely fine believing their pastor and church creed. They have more important things to do. I implore you to figure these things out for yourself. And when something smells fishy, is usually is. Stop, dig in and keep digging.