Ever notice that we have become a nation of consumers? We love restaurants with giant menus that offer burgers and tacos, sushi and pasta, sandwiches and steaks. And we want that restaurant to be happy to reconfigure anything at our request without complaint. We want our phones to make musical playlists that play only the songs we thumbs-up and never expose us to the unfamiliar. We have come to expect that we have the right to only experience what we like.
This is also true in the church. We want a church that plays the music we like in the way that we like. We want a fellowship that is made up of people who look like us and have our same hobbies. We even want to b able to pick and choose which parts of the church’s doctrine we hold to and which we ignore.
There is a phrase in Scripture that has my attention: “right in his own eyes.” When you read that phrase, you probably think of the end of the book of Judges, though I recently ran across it in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy 12:8 – You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes…
See also Judges 17:6; 21:25; and Proverbs 12:15; 16:2; 21:2; 26:5; 26:12; 26:16; 28:11.
As the Lord led his people, he repeatedly spoke of people doing what was right in their own, individual eyes. And every single time God talks about it, God condemns it—every time. In Deuteronomy and in Judges, the thought is that the nation was not to determine its worship or its morality by their own personal opinions. Instead, the people were to submit to the Lord’s word. In Proverbs, the common thread is that a man who is wise in his own eyes, a man who will not learn from others or receive counsel from others, is actually a fool.
Think well, dear Christian friend, about how well you receive counsel and wisdom from others. When you think of your theology, as an example, to whom do you submit? Are you picking and choosing doctrines based on your wisdom alone? Or are your thoughts actually shaped by the wisdom of others who have gone before you?
Carl Trueman writes about people who say they have no creed but the Bible. There is, of course, a sense in which this is a noble-sounding thought. The problem is that such a declaration is not true. Every person who reads and loves Scripture develops doctrine. You have to. Every Bible reader decides what he believes about God, about salvation, about the church, about baptism, about marriage, about morality, etc. Hopefully those beliefs are based on accurate interpretation and application of Scripture. But in no way is the reader without a set of beliefs that summarize what Scripture teaches. The person, as Trueman points out, who says they have no creed actually has a creed, they are just unwilling to have that creed written down so that others can examine it and question it.
A faithful Christian has an interestingly narrow road to walk, one with ditches on either side. On one side of the road is the faulty belief of the Roman Catholic Church that councils and the collected teachings of the church are equal in authority with Scripture. On the other side of the road is the fault of the consumeristic Christian who believes that he can pick and choose all doctrine a la carte. On the one side of the ditch is a person who bows to tradition and unthinkingly swallows whatever he is fed. On the other is the one who develops a strange hodgepodge of differing, even contradictory, doctrines.
In our church-shopping, individualistic culture, we would be wise to take into consideration the warnings in Scripture against only doing what is right in our own eyes. There is great wisdom in learning from the spiritual giants of the past who wrestled down important theological issues far better than we are likely to do today. Faithful statements of faith and the classic creeds of the early church are helpful guardrails to keep our thinking on a biblical track. We should not, of course, give any of these the weight of holy Scripture. At the same time, we should think twice, three times, even twelve times before we determine that we have figured something out on our own about how the church should function that the faithful before us have never quite gotten right.
What about you? Do you pick and choose doctrines like a la carte menu options? Is there anyone to whom you submit yourself for instruction and counsel on the complicated issues of the faith? Do you embrace a creed, confession, or statement of faith as a true and helpful summary of right doctrine? If not, is there some reason that you believe that not having a statement to which you subscribe is better—that your own wisdom is safer than the wisdom of others which has stood the test of time?
No, I do not assume any statement of faith to be perfect. We will read them and say that we would say this or that differently. We will wish that the old statements clearly addressed modern issues. But, it should concern a Christian if he or she cannot find even one statement of faith among the classics that fairly summarizes his beliefs. Let us learn from others and not be guilty of only doing what is wise in our own eyes.
Pastor Travis Peterson 