"Always remember, when somebody comes up with something new,
it's usually wrong. We are to be plagiarists of the same information that
God gave the first Christians." -- Dr. Matthew McMahon, aPuritansMind.com

 

15 September, 2006   comments: (0) Audio Clips   Short Belief Statements Do More Harm Than Good When a church clearly spells out what they believe, in substantial enough detail where someone who reads their statement of faith can determine from it - what that church actually believes on the key issues and doctrines of Christianity - that serves to promote true unity, not destroy it. Because true unity is not a matter of agreeing to disagree; true unity is when everyone clearly and definitively defines their terms, and everyone knows what the other parties truly believe, and yet everyone still agrees. And so they are truly like minded; that's real genuine unity. But what happens when a church decides to be purposely vague and generic in their statements of faith? That's when it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the false believer from the true. While no-one is suggesting that we should intentionally and maliciously play-up our differences with a pharisaical heart of sectarianism, nitpicking over minor differences or other non-essential matters, I'm afraid that the list of non-essentials has grown so large in the modern church today, and encompasses so many key and fundamental doctrines, that it's no longer possible to determine where a church stands in their beliefs today, at least - not from a review of their statement of faith. And ironically, that was supposed to be the point of having a good statement of faith in the first place; they were supposed to specifically make distinctions between the very differences that do arise amongst professing Christians, and that begin to separate churches, not only from each other, but from biblical orthodoxy itself. They are supposed to separate the wheat from the chaff, the genuine from the spurious, and the true from the false. But as I'm sure you've noticed, the trend in the modern church is exactly opposite of that. The trend is towards broader, more vague, more all inclusive statements of faith. Yet as John Gill pointed out, a good statement of faith would be anything but vague and generic. Many churches today use their statement of faith almost as a tool of evangelism, with the idea being that the broader and more inclusive they can make their statement of faith, the more people will come and try their churches. But a real statement of faith is supposed to boldly declare the truth, so that those who disagree can be identified, and then compassionately ministered to, and so that those who agree can become likeminded members. The idea isn't supposed to be to get false Christians who oppose the truth to join our churches, and then we all just pretend like everyone agrees. We want to have true unity, with likeminded believers, and that comes from more clarity in our statements of faith, and not less. What you just read was an excerpt from the following 20 minute audio clip from CrossTV's program on the value of Creeds, Catechisms, and Confessions. The clip that you are about to hear also features a segment from a Larry King program in which four well known Christian leaders weigh-in with opposing opinions on a given doctrinal issue. Their disagreement in front of 5 million viewers is the kind of thing that leads unbelievers to think that the bible is unclear and can't be understood. It's exactly this kind of disunity that exists today, often times because of a lack of regard for the historic standards of Christian doctrine. CLICK HERE TO PLAY NOW . . . or to download this MP3 file for later: right click the link and then "save target as"   More Old Truth Audio Files: 04/25/08 - The False Peace of Truth-Compromised 03/20/08 - The Arrogance of Abandoning Church History 02/25/08 - Judging Fruit By Biblical Standards 01/30/08 - The History of Praise Songs: Simple from Semple 11/06/07 - Audio Archive: How God Converts The Human Soul 07/19/07 - Theology Q&A's: Does Prayer Change God's Mind? 06/03/07 - Addressing Our Culture w/Reformed Christianity 05/28/07 - Don't Make The Church Mars Hill, Go There Instead 05/07/07 - Old Truths versus The Quest For 'Something New' 04/27/07 - Lost and Found: The Fear of The Lord Detailed Listing of All Audio Files   Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.457   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism