A Theology of non-essentials

WARNING: This post is significantly less humorous than previous posts. It was written as a semi-formal essay on the topic of "non-essentials" and how they should affect Christian theology. That being said, I hope you still enjoy it.

A Theology of Non-Essentials

When dealing with the non-essentials of Christianity there is a
great danger of being opinionated.

The opinionated man is both gifted and cursed in his personality.
He studies and ponders ideas to see all sides of them, for every issue
must have an answer. No enigma is allowed to remain unsolved and every
area of any given topic must be systematically probed in order to draw
proper conclusions. He is thorough in his work and leaves no stone
unturned. He thirsts for the truth and will let nothing stop him in
his quest for discovering objective reality.

The opinionated man makes hasty opinions, even without enough
evidence to support his stance. He is both argumentative and arrogant,
and will strive to maintain the integrity of his position even when
the chips are down. He fights to the death over issues of little or no
significance and is quick to withdraw form the masses with the idea
that his thoughts transcend anyone else's that don't agree with his.

When dealing with his faith, he is strongly attracted to dogma and
will quickly make divisions wherever possible. He devours theological
terms and ideas, and spews them out like vomit. He battles pride on the
front lines daily, and oftentimes, he loses. He is a resilient fellow
though, for he simply counts his losses as victories and continues on,
never looking back. The opinionated man bumbles through life and takes
advice from no one but himself. He draws his own conclusions about life
and meets an untimely end, accomplishing nothing. I am such a man.

Non-essentials of Christianity often consume me and distract me
from following The Way. So much so, that it oftentimes undermines
parts of my faith and puts up self-restraints that prevent me from
running the race that I was called for.

For the opinionated man (or simply anyone curious about the
"smaller" aspects of their faith) it is helpful to keep a few things
in mind. One of the harder facts to grasp, is that we are looking at
things through tainted eyes. We will never get everything right for we
will always see a distorted image. We are spiritually blind from birth
and until God graciously gives us the glasses of salvation, we will
scarcely be able to see Him, if we can see Him at all. Our spiritual
blindness is so severe, that even with the best glasses blood can buy,
they will never be perfect until we are. Only through the completion
of our salvation, will we be able to see clearly, and this will never
happen on this present earth. To be blunt, we will never have all the
answers.

For me, this is difficult to accept, but the sooner I accept it,
the sooner I can stop being so dogmatic when dealing with my own
answers that are not essential to Christ's life. There are so many
great theologians and yet they disagree on what seems to be almost
everything. How can so many people, who are honestly seeking God's
answers, draw so many vastly different conclusions? It is not that
they are all so sin burdened that they are unable to perceive truth,
or that they are so wrapped up in themselves that they forget to check
with God, although both of these things could quite possibly be true.
The majority of the time, it is because although they are all looking
at the One True God, they are all looking through different eyes.
This is not to say that their salvation is somehow different, rather
it is their fallen minds that alter their glasses of salvation.

This is not a problem that resides only in theologians, it's just
that it is oftentimes more strongly manifested in those willing to
boldly state their beliefs. To claim that you do not have this problem
because you subscribe to "general Christianity" is to say that outside
of the essentials, you do no thinking whatsoever. It is helpful to
remember that we are told to have child-like faith, not child-like
reasoning.

To think is to err, and it is better to err than to not think at
all. To not think about such areas for fear of being wrong is the
equivalent of living a self-sufficient, solitary life for fear of
harming people. The solution of tainted vision is not to close your
eyes, for everyone knows that some sight is better than no sight at
all. Instead of avoiding the problem, we need to confront it. We need
to acknowledge our spiritual blindness and try our best to minimize
our own destructive potential. This means that we must not get too
attached to our own conclusions concerning the non-essentials of our
faith. I do not mean by this, that we should hold no opinion on such
issues, rather we should ponder everything and bring every opinion we
have before our Lord and Savior. This does mean however, that we must
always keep in the back of our minds, the likely possibility that
we could be wrong.

We must do away with all preconceived notions about any issue,
and we must base our salvation on the solid foundation of Christ. He
is our Cornerstone and to start our foundation without Him, is to not
start at all. It is here that we begin to build our belief system.

Once Christ, the living word, is our cornerstone, we must add the
written word to our foundation of beliefs. Once we have laid our
foundation out, we must take a step back from our structure and humbly
acknowledge that anything beyond this is speculation. We might know
what blocks to use in our structure or what order some of them go in,
but we are not exactly sure about the specifics. We are now ready to
build our tower of beliefs.

These two bricks that we have set down, make up our everlasting
foundation. These two bricks are made of concrete and they are
cemented into the ground for all eternity. To cement any other blocks
on top of these two is a grave mistake. It is at this point that we
put away our concrete and our cement, and pull out our plastic
building blocks. We then begin to place these building blocks in the
way that we think they fit. At the end of our life, we might have a
completed tower but it will never look quite right. Perhaps it will
be a little unsteady, or a tad unsymmetrical. It will never be perfect
no matter how many times we rebuild it and yet, it is our tower. If,
for some reason, we discover a fatal design in it, we never have to
tear it down completely. We simply knock down the plastic blocks and
start again, piling plastic on the cement foundation.

When we are constructing this tower of beliefs, is it important to
never be afraid of two things happening. First, we must never be
afraid of rearranging the blocks, for this shall be a normal occurrence
in any man's life. Second, we must never be afraid if the breath of God
causes our entire tower to collapse, and most importantly, we must
never cry. For the breath of God blows where it pleases, and if it is
in His will that your tower should fall, it is for your benefit. There
is only one danger that you must always keep in mind throughout your
life as a spiritual architect: you must never, ever, pour cement on
the plastic blocks. It is much easier to pour on than it is to take
off!

Before you begin on your lifelong construction of your tower,
there is one important step you must take. Before you go about adding
all of your plastic blocks, you must walk over to your tower and kick
it down. You must leave no block standing, for this tower is nothing
but a tower of pre-conceived notions. If upon the destruction of your
tower, you find that both the foundation of Christ and the Bible are not
firmly cemented at it's base, please take the time to do so. Your
tower will be nothing but a pile of meaningless plastic without them.

Another problem you may encounter is that while you are kicking
down your tower, you may stub your toe on one of many wrongly cemented
plastic layers. One of these layers is called strong denominationalism and it
must be destroyed. Get out your sledge hammer and begin the difficult
yet necessary work or disassembling this layer promptly. If upon
reconstruction of your tower, the layer of a particular denomination
reforms, that is fine. Just be careful not to cement it in again and
remember not to pout if God decides that you do not need it there
anymore.

It is crucial to destroy your old tower before rebuilding it,
for no one puts new wine in old wineskins. There are many more
difficulties in the destruction of your tower that you will soon
discover. For example, one particularly difficult layer to break down,
is the cemented layer known as "family beliefs". If you are
taught certain things from your childhood, you will have poured so
much cement on top of this layer that it will hardly be
distinguishable from your two foundational blocks! It will begin to
look like one monstrous lump of cement, but don't be deceived: Christ
lies under there somewhere along with His scripture. It is difficult,
but if you are persistent, you will reach them in this highly
important rescue mission.

Perhaps the most difficult layer of all is the layer known as
"society". This layer will often sneak below the foundation itself!
It's quite possible that society IS your foundation for your tower of
beliefs, for it is indeed a parasite of incredible strength. It is
very important that we completely eradicate this layer and never allow
it to creep into our tower again! This layer is of the world, and
should have no place in the beliefs of Christians. It is more like
acid than it is like a building block and it will corrode our entire
tower and alter our view of both Christ and the Bible. It is fatal to
many people's towers and it is pure idolatry to hold it above the Word
of God, whether Living or written.

Once you have destroyed all of your old tower and have set Christ
as your cornerstone, you can now finish off the foundation by adding the
Scriptures as I have mentioned above. Your foundation is set and you
must literally guard it with your life. Pour your cement on
these two bricks and make sure you use it all. Tell yourself that you
will never alter this foundation, nor will you ever purchase a new
pail of cement. Now you are ready to prepare for construction.

Construction holds a few dangers of it's own, all of which can be
linked to pride. When we are building our tower anew, we must do it
humbly for the entire construction process. We must put away what we
like and what we want and instead we must replace them with the Truth.
We need to accept that some of our plastic blocks do not belong on our
tower at all and we must give up our own set of blocks and adopt the
Divine set. Even with this Divine set of blocks, we will continue to make
mistakes: we will still place our blocks in the wrong places and we
will somehow get our blocks mixed up with the Divine blocks, even
though they look nothing alike.

As hard as we try to build our tower correctly, it will still
always be tainted by our pride. This is inevitable and it is the
reason that our towers will never be the same as God intended them to
be. When we die, or when Christ returns, our tower will be transformed
into the perfect, glorious tower that God Himself has constructed.
This tower will indeed be eternally cemented and not one single block
will ever fall from it. It will be identical to everyone's tower
that has been made Real in Christ but it will never be boring. It will
be infinitely complex, just as God's character is. It will be made of
gold and will put our earthly towers to shame, but we won't mind one
bit. Until that day comes, we will sit with our cheap imitations of God's
holy tower. There should be no ounce of pride in us, for we should all
realize that our towers are worthless when compared to the tower of
Christ.

So this is our job concerning our tower: we must follow the rules
of destruction and construction and build our tower to be as close to
God's as we can possibly make it. We must humbly remember that our
tower will never be completed, nor will it ever be perfected, on this
present earth. Therefore, our job is to cling to Christ who is our
essential, and to await the day when we too, will have a tower that
fully glorifies Him in all of His majesty. Until then, let us hold
unity in Christ, and diversity in our non-essentials, because in the
end we only know one thing for certain: Christ is all that counts.