By
A. W. Tozer
IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE to overemphasize the
importance of sound doctrine in the life of a Christian. Right
thinking about all spiritual matters is imperative if we would have
right living. As men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of
thistles, sound character does not grow out of unsound teaching.
The word doctrine means simply religious beliefs held
and taught. It is the sacred task of all Christians, first as
believers and then as teachers of religious beliefs, to be certain
that these beliefs correspond exactly to truth. A precise agreement
between belief and fact constitutes soundness in doctrine. We cannot
afford to have less.
The apostles not only taught truth but contended for
its purity against any who would corrupt it. The Pauline epistles
resist every effort of false teachers to introduce doctrinal
vagaries. John’s epistles are sharp with condemnation of those
teachers who harassed the young church by denying the incarnation
and throwing doubts upon the doctrine of the Trinity; and Jude in
his brief but powerful epistle rises to heights of burning eloquence
as he pours scorn upon evil teachers who would mislead the saints.
Each generation of Christians must look to its
beliefs. While truth itself is unchanging, the minds of men are
porous vessels out of which truth can leak and into which error may
seep to dilute the truth they contain. The human heart is heretical
by nature and runs to error as naturally as a garden to weeds. All a
man, a church or a denomination needs to guarantee deterioration of
doctrine is to take everything for granted and do nothing. The
unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that
fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a
theological wilderness; the church or denomination that grows
careless on the highway of truth will before long find itself
astray, bogged down in some mud flat from which there is no escape.
In every field of human thought and activity accuracy
is considered a virtue. To err ever so slightly is to invite serious
loss, if not death itself. Only in religious thought is faithfulness
to truth looked upon as a fault. When men deal with things earthly
and temporal they demand truth; when they come to the consideration
of things heavenly and eternal they hedge and hesitate as if truth
either could not be discovered or didn’t matter anyway.
Montaigne said that a liar is one who is brave toward
God and a coward toward men; for a liar faces God and shrinks from
men. Is this not simply a proof of unbelief? Is it not to say that
the liar believes in men but is not convinced of the existence of
God, and is willing to risk the displeasure of a God who may not
exist rather than that of man who obviously does?
I think also that deep, basic unbelief is back of
human carelessness in religion. The scientist, the physician, the
navigator deals with matters he knows are real; and because these
things are real the world demands that both teacher and practitioner
be skilled in the knowledge of them. The teacher of spiritual things
only is required to be unsure in his beliefs, ambiguous in his
remarks and tolerant of every religious opinion expressed by anyone,
even by the man least qualified to hold an opinion.
Haziness of doctrine has always been the mark of the
liberal. When the Holy Scriptures are rejected as the final
authority on religious belief something must be found to take their
place. Historically that something has been either reason or
sentiment: if sentiment, it has been humanism. Sometimes there has
been an admixture of the two, as may be seen in liberal churches
today. These will not quite give up the Bible, neither will they
quite believe it; the result is an unclear body of beliefs more like
a fog than a mountain, where anything may be true but nothing may be
trusted as being certainly true.
We have gotten accustomed to the blurred puffs of gray fog that pass
for doctrine in modernistic churches and expect nothing better, but
it is a cause for real alarm that the fog has begun of late to creep
into many evangelical churches. From some previously unimpeachable
sources are now coming vague statements consisting of a milky
admixture of Scripture, science and human sentiment that is true to
none of its ingredients because each one works to cancel the others
out.
Certain of our evangelical brethren appear to be
laboring under the impression that they are advanced thinkers
because they are rethinking evolution and reevaluating various Bible
doctrines or even divine inspiration itself; but so far are they
from being advanced thinkers that they are merely timid followers of
modernism-fifty years behind the parade.
Little by little evangelical Christians these days
are being brainwashed. One evidence is that increasing numbers of
them are becoming ashamed to be found unequivocally on the side of
truth. They say they believe but their beliefs have been so diluted
as to be impossible of clear definition.
Moral power has always accompanied definitive
beliefs. Great saints have always been dogmatic. We need right now a
return to a gentle dogmatism that smiles while it stands stubborn
and firm on the Word of God that liveth and abideth forever.
