Shepherd the Flock

Growing up in church I can never remember being specifically taught about Christian liberalism and what exactly it referred to. Generally, I understood that a liberal was someone who didn’t take the Bible literally; someone who didn’t believe that the text of scripture carried full authority. All I knew is that they were the bad guys; the ones who undermined the true faith. And in a sense, this is indeed true.

But ironically, what I now realize is that those churches and circles that decried ‘liberalism’ were themselves often holding to some very, well, liberal tendencies. And even in this day we have preachers left and right who scream about the evil of liberalism and its infiltration into our churches, but who yet do not see that they themselves advocate the very essence of liberalism in many ways, which I’m broadly defining as deeds over creeds.

So although scripture and its authority/interpretation is the battleground on this issue of liberalism, the topic of ‘what we DO is more important than what we BELIEVE’ is certainly the foundation of this ideology.

But I came across a quote today by William Wilberforce in his book A Practical View of Christianity that it certainly worth considering given all of the unbeknownst liberalism in our day. Wilberforce here is describing the ethical life and political welfare of England in his time:

“The fatal habit of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight, and as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment.” --Quoted by John Piper in The Roots of Endurance, p120 (emphasis mine)

My friends– is this not an accurate description of the majority of church-life today? Where is the deep Bible-study, the careful attention to doctrine, and the emphasis on getting the gospel right? Do we not instead see a bunch of ‘let’s just agree to love Jesus’,  ‘let’s just focus on spreading the love of Jesus’, and ‘give me nothing but simple and practical teaching that I can implement on Monday’? Oh the shame, for a neglect of doctrine is precisely why the morals of the professing church (and especially this country) have been heading downhill for so long.

Although I have only come to this realization in recent years, I am completely convinced that getting people to believe the right thing is much more important than getting people to do the right thing. Sure, there would have been a time where I would have fought tooth and nail to get you to act/live/make ethical decisions based upon what I believe scripture teaches, but clearly, I now see that scripture follows no such pattern. You see, the good deeds will come –and stay, if only the creeds –what we believe– comes first. And on the flip side, the good deeds, though presently good, will eventually flee, if the correct creeds are not supporting the structure.

Thus, in other words, why is this blog so much about doctrine? Why do I spend so much time on negatively pointing out bad theology and/or repeating and re-repeating myself on what exactly the text of scripture teaches? It’s because there isn’t anything more important than what we believe about scripture. Our doctrine and biblical theology will ultimately define, motivate, and support all of our deeds, our outward actions. Therefore, we cannot and must not abandon the proper interpretation of scripture in favor of the liberalism of just focusing on how we live. To ‘live like Jesus’ and yet neglect to ’study and believe what Jesus taught’, is an oxymoron, an impossibility, and the very heartbeat of corrupt, liberal ideology.