Many people have questions about why doctrine is important. Here are a few people have asked me:
If God is big, and we’re so small, how could we ever really understand him?
Most people like to sound nice and humble, and this question sounds like a nice, humble thing to ask. It isn’t. G.K. Chesterton saw this coming 100 years ago, and said, “What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”
It sounds humble to say we can’t really understand God, but it’s actually the epitome of pride. What you’re really saying to God is, “I don’t think you’re wise enough and powerful enough to reveal yourself to us in a way we can understand, so I’m not even going to try to understand you.”
You’re saying, “All those people who think they can understand God are wrong. I’m the only person who really understands the truth, and that’s the fact that God is un-understandable!”
Why can’t we just let the seminary professors worry about theology?
Everyone does theology, whether they know it or not. Everyone goes through a process to decide what they believe and don’t. That’s theology. The only question is whether it’s good theology or bad theology.
Everyone has an idea in their head of what God is like. Maybe he’s the ultra-demanding boss in the sky who’s never satisfied with you. Or maybe he’s the nice old uncle who always gives you a pass when you mess up, “Hey, nobody’s perfect! Just believe in yourself more! Always next time!” Maybe he’s the deadbeat dad who’s always somewhere else and never has time for you.
Whatever you think about God, mankind, and the world is your theology. It can be either consistent and biblical theology or it can be theology that you pieced together from things you’ve experienced, things you heard from a pastor on the radio, things in the latest book you read, and things Oprah said on yesterday’s show.
C.S. Lewis described our natural tendency well: “People are content to have a dozen different incompatible philosophies dancing around inside their head.” That’s bad theology.
Isn’t theology a waste of time? Shouldn’t we be focusing our energy on getting people saved?
“We’re supposed to be loving other people and leading them to Christ. If my head is stuck in a theology book, how is that going to help my neighbor come to Jesus?”
A legitimate question. I met plenty of guys in seminary who were there because they wanted to avoid real life. They wanted to be monks and surround themselves with books by dead guys so they wouldn’t have to be bothered by people who were alive.
But it doesn’t always have to be either/or. Either people and ministry or theology and doctrine. Just look at Paul.
Paul loved people. He told the Philippians that he thanked God every time he thought about them… that he held them in his heart. Paul loved ministry. He was always lying awake at night figuring out how to be all things to all people so that by ALL MEANS he could save some. And Paul loved theology. You just have to read a few of his paragraph-long run-on-sentences to know that this stuff was on his mind all the time, and he couldn’t keep it from exploding out. Read some passages like Romans 8, and you can almost hear him trying to catch his breath between sentences.
Evangelism and theology go hand-in-hand.
