I've been thinking a bit about how to build an official statement of faith for a church. One reason I was thinking about this was that statements of faith have become "statements of obscure doctrine". That is, sometimes churches will put out statements of faith will the goal to distinguish themselves from other churches. For example, bullet point number one on a recent statement of faith that I read was that the King James Version translation of the Bible was the only valid translation, mentioned above far less important things, like the saving Grace of Jesus Christ. Now, I do understand the need to sometimes make statements of doctrine in the statements of faith, because their are a handful of Christian-like religions that take a lot of the same character names and a lot of their actions and teachings, and then build a false religion around them. But, in any case, I don't think the King Jame Version should make it to any noticeable position on any statement of faith.
So, this lead me to the thought of how one would write a good statement of faith, and here's what I got so far.
1. Start with Mark 12:29-31. A teacher asks Jesus what the most important commandment is. The reply is
“The most important one,” answered Jesus,
“is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
2. Clarify the commandment by answering the questions it doesn't ask. For example
- Who is the Lord? (The Lord is not an imaginary God, one among many, etc. The Lord is the creator of the universe and He is Jesus Christ, redeemer of humanity.)
- How do we know who the Lord is? (The Bible, the Holy Spirit, etc)
- What is love? (Love isn't a feeling of affection!)
- What does loving with all your hear, soul, mind entail? (Probably such things as humility, gratitude, praise, obedience, acceptance of grace, etc.)
- Who is your neighbor?
- What does it mean "as yourself"? (Engaging is self-destructive behavior does not give you permission to engage in neighbor-destructive behavior, for example.)
With those two commands, listed as the most important by Jesus Himself, you can probably cover all the teachings that are actually important enough to separate a follower of Christ from a follower of a religion. If you want to get into other thoughts about doctrine, you can do that in another document. I don't think it's inherently wrong, for example, to have a translation of the Bible that you think is superior than other translations, because there are probably some poor translations out there. And your view of the end times may affect how your church goes about certain things. However, to put those things at the core rather than Jesus Christ seems like a pretty risky thing to me.
I really enjoyed reading your post. I especially liked your comment about knowing what the phrase "as yourself" means. As a matter of fact, the sarcastic and bitter part of me really enjoyed the momentary thought of holding others to unachievable goals and standards and then flogging them for their failure (as I do to myself), and blaming it on the bible. I think it really important for Christians to clarify that, and to consider how the Bible wants us to treat ourselves. Thanks for the awesome insight. ~Lindsay
ReplyDelete