“What do I have to believe to be a Christian?”

If you have been part of a church for any amount of time or spent even a few minutes surfing Christian blogs or church websites, this is a question you will encounter ad nauseam.  The question itself is loaded, since it assumes one has to believe something.  The only question to be wrestled with is what that something is.   Our answers will usually illumine the things we value most while simultaneously sorting out who is “in” and who is “out.”   This is a game humans (and animals) love to play.   In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, we might discover upon reflection that much if not most of our identity is rooted in who we distinguish ourselves over and against.   I am not that.  I am not them.

And so it is that when we hear someone in the Christian community say something like “Doctrine is important” or “What we believe matters” we are naturally inclined to hear those sentiments in an exclusionary way.   We assume that person is playing the game we all love to play (even though we all try like mad to pretend as though we aren’t players!).   We assume  the words doctrine or creed are dividing words, systems of an old regime that pit one people against another, draw lines in the sand and dictate what one must believe to be part of the club.

Our suspicions of the words doctrine and creed are not without merit.   The record will clearly show from present day to as far back as anyone cares to look that we have used doctrines and creeds in authoritarian ways.  Sadly, in many cases, we have  lorded over others maliciously.   We have good reason to be cautious.

Those who love the game of “Who’s In or Out?” have co-opted the words doctrine and creed (an easy thing to do) and have insisted there are certain things one must believe to be a Christian.  Those who were cautious and suspicious of those words to begin with because of the ways they are often used quite naturally resisted this Sorting Hat drama and, perhaps showing a bit of dramatic flair of their own, rejected the words outright, choosing instead an ethic of love alone.   Of course, their rejection of doctrines and creeds only made the first group dig their heels in the sand even more, insisting that the second group must be out because, after all, St. Paul said a day would come when people would not put up with sound doctrine (2 Tim. 4:3).  This only served to galvanize the second group, convincing them even further that nothing good can come of a faith built on believing certain things.   [Read more...]