One Sunday after church, my ex-wife noticed that someone had forgotten their Bible on the pew. As she picked it up to see who it belonged to, it opened up to a passage. She noticed where it's owner had taken a black marker and blotted out many of the verses. Just like many people highlight verses that speak to them, this person had "erased" all of the verses that they didn't like. While at the time I thought that it was quite interesting, I now find it refreshingly honest (but I do not suggest or encourage the practice). We all do this subconsciously. We all have our own interpretations of the Bible. We all have our own favorite verses that we hold on to and prioritise over other verses that appear to contradict our favorite one. One of the main goals in studying the Bible is to figure out how it all works together.
The Bible is full of contradictions. I've heard it taught and preached from church pulpits that the Bible is without any contradictions and that God's law never changes. This is absolutly not true. Just look at what the Bible says about the Sabbath. If we read the Old Testament we must believe that we need to stone people who break the Sabbath. However if we read the New Testament we see that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So which is it? The Sabbath is only one example. What about the food laws, or divorce or slavery? The answer is simple, but the solution is not easy.
The answer is that God's principles do not change. How he applies those principles to different people and at different times does change. Let me give you an example. At one time I had an 19 year old son, a 15 year old son and an 11 year old daughter. I would let my 19 year old drive my car without me. I would let my 15 year old drive my car if I was in the car with him. I would not let my 11 year old drive my car at all. Did I have inconsistant rules? Was I not treating my children equally and fairly? The answer is that the rules were different for each child, but the principle was the same. The principle was that my children could drive my car when it was safe and legal for them to do so. How that principle was applied to each child varried by their own age and circumstance. My 19 year old knew how to safely drive a car and he already had his licence. My 15 year old was just learning to drive and he had his learning permit that allowed him to drive when another licenced person was with him. My 11 year old could not leagally opperate a car at all and she did not have the skills or knowledge to do so safely. The same is true with God. He gave different people different rules or "laws" at different times, but his principles have always been the same. Our job as Christians is to study the Bible and try to determine what are his unchanging principles. This is the hard part.
Wayne Grudem talks about this in his book "Systematic Theology". Wayne defines Theology as "the study of God". Then he defines Doctrine as "what does the entire Bible teach us about how we are to live our lives today?" While I don't think his definition of doctrine is completly accurate, I do find it very helpful. Basically what he is saying is this. We read the entire Bible, the Old and the New Testament. Then we try to extract the principle that is consistent throughout all of it. Once we understand the principle, we then try to apply that principle to ourselves. How that principle is applied to me, may very well not be how it is applied to you or to my neighbor. So we are taking what we learned in our theology and applying it into practical doctrine. This is what I have done for each of the topics on this web site. Through this process I have had to change many of my beliefs. As I read through the Bible, studied it, started to learn greek and most of all go through books of the Bible verse by verse I had to make a choice. Was I going to accept the Bible for what it says, or was I going to hang on to my own personal beliefs and traditions? Was I going to use a highlighter or a black Sharpie? My outlook on life, on God and on myself drastically had to change if I was going to accept what the Bible was telling me. I started this process as an evangelical Christian with many of the "traditional" evangelical Christian beliefs, but many of those beliefs were wrong. I am still an evangelical Christian. I have simply learned that I need to read and study the Bible for myself and not just listen to the pastors at church (which I used to be one).
While the intent of this web site is to focus more on every day practical doctrine (how we live our lives every day), I will still touch on things that are more "Theology" than "Doctrine". The reason I do this is because our doctrine is guided by our theology. Another way to say this is, our actions are determined by our beliefs. See my page on the image of God to see how the Nazis justified murdering millions of people. Along those lines I should let you know what my core theology is so that you know where I am coming from. I am a born again, evangelical, New Testament Christian. I believe in the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Old and New Testament. I hold the the teaching of the Trinity, that Jesus is one with God the Father and with God the Spirit. I'm not going to spend much time on explaining the Trinity here. There are many great resources that already do this. The ones that I find to be the most helpful are Nabeel Qureshi's explanation and the Bible Project's explanation. It is from this standpoint that I am interpreting the Bible and trying to extract God's never changing principles.