Disclaimer: Let me make this disclaimer up front, I am not a trained pastor. My viewpoints are my own. Use the content with this blog at your own discretion.
I am a very logical individual. Of course, that implies that I consider myself pretty intelligent. However, at least for me, there's is a price to be paid; a curse of intelligence. And no more obvious is it with Bible doctrine. With every single piece of doctrine, I have to analyze and agonize over the information and attempt to find how that doctrine fits into my overall understanding of the spiritual life. Naturally, my understanding of doctrine has become a lot more fine-grained due to having to essentially conduct apologetics on myself.
Every so often, I run into a particular issue or problem within the spiritual life, and to that effect, doctrine. An effective roadbump in my ability to learn and apply bible doctrine. To unbelievers, this would be me coming to the light and becoming aware of my faulty ways. To me, it has been a reminder of the importance and applications of the spiritual life. Because at the end of the day, everything apart from God is vanity. Just take it from Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes.
My motivation for this blog is twofold:
- to be a repository for all the doctrinal questions and answers that have occurred to me over the years in hopes that it can be a reference to myself when I reach future roadbumps
- To potentially assist others on the internet who have the same or similar questions as I do. Hopefully framing doctrinal issues in a format that can appease the mind.
To be honest though, my primary motivation, at least at this point, for this blog is for it to be a repository that tackles various doctrinal issues in a format that is (hopefully) objective. To the people that may be reading this, I don't care about your feelings. I care what the scripture says. I am inevitably going to step on toes due to the sensitive nature of the topics I present. Come up with your own conclusions from my information. If there is a wrong conclusion, or flaw in my logic, feel free to contact me about it.
I am thankful enough to have found a pastor that effectively communicates bible doctrine and reaches a level of teaching and exegesis some pastors will never attempt with their own congregation. On numbers of occasions, we have spent multiple 45-ish minute bible classes extracting and analyzing the doctrine that can be found in a single verse of scripture.
This is just our pastor's way of doing things. But it can essentially be compared to putting a microscope onto the Bible and you can sometimes forget about how the doctrine being presented connects with other doctrines. Additionally, it can lead to us remaining on a given topic within the Bible for an extensive amount of time. This is just fine for a mature congregation that is loyal to the church and has the time to dive into detail and truly understand particular doctrines.
Sometimes, I need to be able to zoom out and look at the context of this doctrine that is being taught, and place it into the overall picture of the spiritual life. This is where my questions arise. These questions typically span many different doctrines before a conclusion can be drawn.
This is all to present my background and my qualifications (or lack thereof). For anyone that is curious, the church that I go to is Beracah Church in Houston. There are radio/telephone hookup locations around the nation for those who desire to be in a location to hear his doctrine in real-time.
I must also make a comment on the need for a shared vocabulary. Vocabulary and language are the means of expressing an idea to others through phonating or writing. I am reminded of the definition of communication as expressed by my speech professor in college; the encoding, transmission, and decoding of a particular message. Bible doctrine is no different. There are many doctrines and ideas that would be inefficient and painstaking to explain every single time the topic is brought up during exegesis of a verse or doctrine.
A perfect example of this is 1 John 1:9 and the term "rebound". Rebound is a fundamental concept of the spiritual life which is naming your sins to God and returning to be in fellowship with God. To have to reanalyze and explain this doctrine every single time it is brought up during the exegesis of a passage would detract from the primary message trying to be communicated.
I might utilize the vocabulary that we use inside of our church during posts. If you are interested in having a greater understanding of this vocabulary, Thieme's Bible Doctrine Dictionary is available for free on Beracah's website to all who are interested.
Now that everything is cleared up, I hope that the information on this blog can be informative and useful to anyone who is in the same boat as me and has questions that they're having problems answering.
