After hearing some good preaching last Sunday to the effect that it's all about knowing Jesus, himself, personally, and that all that doctrinal crap just creates insiders and outsiders, I came to a realization of that truth from my own standpoint. Jesus, himself, personifies the Truth, and the youngest "Baby Christian" has connected fully with that wonderful God-Man Person. Out of the mouths of babes has God perfected praise.
What then happens after a while of trying to follow Jesus and live in the Spirit? Our old nature is still there, giving us the Old Man's view of the Truth we have started to get to know, the view perverted by the knowledge of good and evil, and it starts replacing our first love with doctrine.
Now, our hearts are deceitful and we need to understand what the Bible says about the nature of our God, so we don't fool ourselves into thinking he is something more convenient. Doctrines are profitable for helping us stay on the path of righteousness; but doctrines are to the Truth of God as Scientific Theories are to the nature of the universe: they are useful ideas that enable us to understand and predict causes and effects. They are just flattened little pieces of a much larger complex thing. Too often an understanding of a collection of ideas passes for a relationship with the Living God, and the loving life in the Spirit gets quenched by the cold water of dogma. If your doctrines are not bringing you closer to the person of Jesus, you'd better take another look.
At the Bell n Pomegranate, I want to focus on things of the Spirit and how our beliefs inform our lives in this world. So settle in with a drink of new wine, and put your two cents in with mine. Just remember this is a publick house, and I expect a certain amount of civility; but that does not rule out controversy, nor even passion.
