HEY, CHRISTIAN: Are You An ‘Oak of Righteousness’ Or An Evangelical Tumbleweed?
It’s the Christian’s responsibility to get settled in Christian doctrine. God’s goal is to make His people hurricane-proof oaks of righteousness, not evangelical tumbleweeds that derail and turn into agnostics or atheists once they hit the first speed bump in their Christian experience.
The scriptures rebuke the superficial Christian who cannot give a reasonable answer for the gospel hope that he supposedly holds. One of the reasons the Bible commands the believer to be doctrinally sound is that when an unbeliever tosses a tough question at him regarding his faith, he doesn’t duck and run to the Sit-On-The-Sidelines-of-Life Community Church to avoid the probing inquiry.
Yeah, the Bible doesn’t have too many chipper things to say about the flighty, easy breezy, summer squeezy, pseudo-saint who, like Reuben, is as theologically unstable as water.
Listen, all you quasi-Christians avoiding sound doctrine and the biblical worldview: if you’re not well-established in the great truths of Scripture, then your faith will be overturned by every wind of false doctrine, and you will stand intellectually naked before the obstreperous challenger.
Becoming mentally and spiritually equipped to defend the faith is not an option if you’re a believer in the Christ of the Bible. According to the scripture, God commands, He doesn’t suggest, He doesn’t softly nudge – He demands that we grow up into sound-as-a-pound professors of the faith for which we stand. Scripture uniformly challenges the fickle featherweight followers who are one day of this mind and the next day of another. Or, who are of no mind at all.
To say that doctrine doesn’t matter is to say that God, who is the author of doctrine, doesn’t matter. Doctrine is not boring or irrelevant. You might be, but doctrine sure as heck isn’t. Sound biblical doctrine matters greatly. Doctrine defines:
· the principal purpose of man,
· the role and rule of the scripture,
· the character and nature of God,
· the purpose of creation,
· the fall of man,
· Christ and the covenant of grace,
· the application of redemption and
· God’s view of death and the last day.
To those who are tired of being theologically lazy and who see the sin in being biblically uninformed or misinformed, here are six reasons why one should get with it, doctrinally:
· You will honor God and the serious saints who have gone before you.
· Your evangelism will step up a few notches – giving you an effective edge.
· You will not be easily seduced by charlatans selling you bogus beliefs.
· You will value truth over hype, and not be dazzled by the outward pretenses of the feigned religious-glitterati who would wow you with charisma, while feeding you crap. Yes, you will not be looking for new truth but ancient, historic and eternal verities that have stood the test of time.
· You will have at your disposal a blueprint for the good society.
· Your solid knowledge will give you lion-like boldness in the face of antagonists.
In addition to personally digging into the Old & New Testament to mine the gold which is between their covers, snag the following three books:
· Fit Bodies and Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What to Do About It by Dr. Os Guinness,
· Defending the Faith by Dr. R.C. Sproul and
· Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey.
They’ll help you shape up the grey matter and become a biblical champion of the faith. There is no way we can please God, make the Church thrive, reach lost man and positively impact this planet if our beliefs are not grounded in the truth.
