Coming from a long tradition of being a non-creedal people (a tradition which holds that only the Bible's words should serve as a believer's theological guide) I, nevertheless, find the grounding words of The Apostles' Creed and The Nicene Creed helpful as summaries of the core teaching of the Church. (By the "Church," I mean all Christ-following individuals who collectively are the Body of Christ.)
One who desires to follow Christ needs to embrace core teachings (Bible-based) that guide his or her life. Sayers wrote . . .
The thing I am here to say to you is this: that it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine,steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. (page 31)Chaos is defined as "complete disorder and confusion." That state of being serves as a poor alternative to believing and living grounded in core-teaching.
Choose your creed.
Stand by your creed.
Choose creed over chaos.
For further reading:
Sayers, Dorothy L. Creed or Chaos? New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.
No comments:
Post a Comment