Truth or Love? What’s important?

In Response…

I wasn’t taking it seriously.  I was joking.  Lighten up.

But, seriously… You’re presenting a false dichotomy.  When someone presents an issue as if there are only two options when really there are other more nuanced approaches.  Like, presenting the issue as if it were a choice between those who think doctrine is the only important thing and those that think that showing the love of Jesus is the only important thing.  Just to be plain, saying that showing love is the really important thing is a doctrinal statement.  It is just as much doctrine; it’s just poor doctrine.  And people that take doctrine seriously take loving others seriously, but only if their doctrine is good.

I mean, you don’t really catch Jesus in the Bible saying things like, “What you think of me and my Father is not so important. What’s really important is that you obey the Law in every jot and tittle!  It’s not faith (believing the truth) that is important.  It’s works!  That’s the important thing!” You really can’t get much farther from Jesus’ message than this.  Loving your neighbor is, of course, the Law.  So if loving your neighbor is all that matters, then obeying the Law is all that matters.  And that seems obviously out of sorts with what Jesus and the Apostles taught.  Obeying the Law of Love is great; there’s nothing wrong with loving your neighbor.  It’s when you think that your meager attempts at legal obedience are the ground for your justification and/or acceptance by God that you’ve jumped the Tiber and relinquished a dependence on the grace of God for a scramble of human merit and best intentions.  That’s not the way you want to go on this.

More than this, no, you can’t find a place in the Bible that says that you need to believe in the Trinity in order to be a Christian.  By this same logic you can’t find anywhere that it says that you need to believe that Jesus actually existed, that God exists, that leaves grow on trees, that the Bible is actually God’s revelation of Himself in propositional sentences, or that you need to believe that you should not kill people and eat them.

It’s implied of course.

Neiswonger