Saturday, August 16th, 2014 Greetings, to you, brothers and sisters in Christ. May. God grant you rest and rejuvenation during this weekend. I love do-it-yourself projects. Even more so in recent years due to the ease of access which the internet provides to step-by-step instructions in either video or text. With each project that I complete, my knowledge base grows. I know that next time I assume a similar undertaking, I can be confident in trusting my knowledge to complete the task. It is tempting to view doctrine as an empowering do-it-yourself guide to Living as a Christian, a spiritual instruction book, if you will. Doctrine is time-tested and scripturally-based. Surely, if there ever were any document that we should look to for guidance, it is doctrine. Theres just one small problem; doctrine is mans interpretation of scripture. Man, being the fallible creature that he/she is, is occasionally prone to mistakes, or in the case of scripture, misinterpretation. Thus, while it is important to understand doctrine, it is not to be relied on as the sole authority to Christian life. There have been, (are) people who command an unquestionable grasp of doctrine. One that you may have heard of was the Pharisees. There was no arguing that the Pharisees could win nearly any religious debate of their time by their uncanny penchant for legalism. Yet, for all of their knowledge, they could not recognize the fulfillment of scripture in their time. Only God knows His will. By relying on our own presumed knowledge of His will through doctrine, as opposed to discerning His will through prayer, we run the same risk to which the Pharisees succumb. We PRESUMPTIVELY know Christ so well that we fail to ACTUALLY to know Him at all. Such doctrinal knowledge is based on law which we cannot fully understand. It is akin to explaining why water boils without a proper understanding of molecular physics. And while we can understand molecular physics, we are incapable, now or at any point in the future, of understanding fully Gods plan for humanity. Our outcomes are poor when we value our knowledge of doctrine to be greater than our faith in Jesus. An a result, we judge others unjustly and behave in a manner which stifles the work of Christ through us. A friend once asked me, What do you know? To which. I responded, I know enough to know that I do not know enough. It was an impressive off-the-cuff response, but it really is worthy of note. The more we know Christ through doctrine, the more we realize that we know only a fraction of Him. His will is incomprehensible and frankly, we, each with innumerable issues ourselves, should be content to even know His will for us, let alone other people. The only thing that I know to be an absolute truth regarding others is that Jesus calls me to love them. Do not mistake this for a Universalist view. It is undoubted, by Christs own words, that certain actions are sinful. But, with all sins being equal in that they tear us asunder from Christ, it is not our place to cast a stone from our own glass houses. Instead, let us worry about our own relationships with Christ, whilst loving others, even those whom we find it difficult to love. Pray for others, both Christian and not, but focus your own judgements inwardly. Learn to discern the voice of Christ,either in conjunction or in spite of, the doctrine of the church. What a pity it would be to find yourself, at the end of your journey, a pious sinner. Yours in Christ, Nate Blum
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 22:44:58 +0000
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