Chapter 2

Possessing the Whole Truth

Another tendency of unhealthy Christian groups is to see themselves as the possessors of God’s truth—in its entirety. Usually they put great stock in the written Word of God. They venerate the Bible and its teachers highly. This is good, of course, except that they take it too far.

In their zeal to know and obey the Word of God, these groups begin to trust in their own knowledge and spiritual insights, believing that God is giving them an inside track on understanding His mind. One of the scriptures they twist to their advantage is 2 Peter 1:20: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

Using this text, an unbalanced teacher can assert that individual Christians (especially younger ones) shouldn’t feel free to come up with their own interpretation for a Bible passage, because there is only one right answer to its meaning … and guess who has it? The teacher, of course!

No doubt there is a perfect understanding of each Bible verse written. I’m looking forward to heaven, when my earthly mind will finally be perfectly aligned with God’s. But while we’re still here on earth, subject to our flesh and other human limitations, who can claim that he or she has tapped the entirety of God’s wisdom and can perfectly expound every idea expressed in His Word?

As strange as it may sound, there are groups of Christians that honestly believe they can. I’m not talking about the cardinal truths of the Christian faith—the essential truths that are “able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). All Christians—from youngest to oldest—should know the fundamentals of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and be able to impart them to others by the power of the Holy Spirit. But when it comes to minor points of doctrine, that’s another matter. To think that every Christian worldwide will come up with an identical view concerning every Bible passage is naïve and absurd.

Over the years, as we mature in our faith, all of us slowly develop a system of theological belief. After years of consistently studying the Bible, we begin to formulate certain ideas about the larger issues found within its pages. End times teaching (eschatology) is put in some kind of logical package; a philosophy about God’s plan of salvation is usually formulated as well, including an orientation towards Calvinism or Arminian views; prophecies directed to the nation of Israel are put into an overall perspective concerning how we believe God is dealing with them as opposed to the church, etc. This kind of formulation is perfectly normal, and it evolves as a result of the teaching we expose ourselves to—whether through media sources, group or individual Bible study, reading other Christian books, listening to sermons, attending Bible school, or whatever else.

We need a systematic approach to Scripture. If we don’t have a framework in which to hang new ideas and truths that come to us, we will be in a constant state of confusion and, for that reason, we may be easy prey for deceptive teachers. The problem isn’t having an opinion about biblical issues. We become unbalanced and unhealthy when we begin to believe that our opinions are authoritative and reliable in all cases. And if anyone disagrees with us on some issue, they are written off as heretical or uninformed.

People in ultra-sectarian Christian groups are not open to any debate or differing views about what they have been taught. Without any sense of distinction, they hold everything as “God’s truth” because it has come—as far as they are concerned—from an inerrant source. As we mentioned in chapter one, people in these groups see their teachers and leaders as awesome spiritual figures above reproach on scriptural matters. To question their views would be disloyal. That’s why they come at anyone with alternate ideas with such vengeance and hostility.

When my husband challenged something held by a member of such a group, he was surprised by the swift reaction he encountered. The other person, ostensibly a brother in Christ, uttered a curse upon him: “You’re nothing but a child of hell. I hope you burn forever for the errors you hold and the truth you oppose!”

This particular characteristic can take one of two directions. The person can strike out at what he perceives as error (like what happened in the incident with my husband), or he can block off any divergent ideas by a kind of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” response. As one Italian lady involved in a sectarian group said recently to an American missionary, “I’m not like most people. I don’t want to go to America. I’ll probably get exposed to ideas I’ve never heard before, and I don’t want to get confused!” This isolationism is a far cry from Paul’s boldness to face anyone and anything with confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Honest Differences

When we’re grappling with the issue of divergent scriptural ideas, we have to ask ourselves some important questions. Is there no possibility of honest disagreement about certain passages—passages that do not deal with the fundamentals of the Christian faith? Is there no room for personal convictions in matters dealing with conscience rather than command?

To the latter question, the apostle Paul would answer with an emphatic yes! In Romans 14 and 15, we find him discussing examples of issues where sincere Christians honestly disagreed with one another. One had to do with Christians eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols, and another centered around what constitutes a holy day. In such minor issues he seemed to see no problem with one Christian holding a different view from another: “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers each day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5).

Following Paul’s teaching about each man deciding such issues for himself, John Wesley believed that we should earnestly search the Scriptures and make informed decisions about minor doctrinal ideas and modes of worship. This is our responsibility before God. We need to be sure our decisions are made for the right reasons—not according to whim or personal preference, but based on what we believe best reflects Christ’s life and teaching. Once we decide what we believe on these issues, we can then attach ourselves to a congregation that affirms those beliefs and practices. It’s natural and right for us to join groups of people who share a like mind and conscience with us.

In his discussion in Romans 14, Paul isn’t saying differences of opinion about minor doctrines don’t matter at all. He’s saying that compared to the possibility of dividing the body of Christ and harming the conscience of other believers, our opinions are of lesser importance in God’s eyes. Yes, we seek out like-minded believers to worship with, but we don’t shun or criticize other Christians who may not see things the way we do. Focusing on what unites us, not what divides us, helps us to follow Paul’s directive: “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7).

One of the marks of an unbalanced Christian is his inability to see beyond his own views about Scripture. He cannot make allowance for a divergent view, even on the most minor doctrinal point. He doesn’t care how many fellow believers he tears down and discourages along the way in his zeal to be right. He misses Paul’s point entirely in Romans 14, to refrain from judging one another because each believer is ultimately answerable only to God on matters of conscience. “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls” (v. 4).

No Proselytizing

It’s interesting to note in this chapter that Paul doesn’t advise one camp to try to “win over” with persuasive argument the other camp to its point of view. Attempts to proselytize, especially if they come with an arrogant or critical spirit, create misunderstanding, anger, and division among the members of Christ’s body—and that grieves the heart of God. That’s why Paul advises us to do the very opposite: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (Romans 14:19).

To have an opinion on every issue raised in the Bible isn’t a problem. It’s when we believe that every one of our opinions is “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” that we become unbalanced and ultra-sectarian. A.W. Tozer saw the danger in this kind of arrogant thinking in his day and wrote the following:

“A new school of evangelical Christianity has come up of late which appears to me to be in grave danger of producing a prime crop of intellectual snobs. The disciples of this school are orthodox in creed, if by that we mean that they hold the fundamental tenets of the historic faith; but right there the similarity of their school to New Testament Christianity ends. Their spirit is quite other than the spirit of the early church. … One indispensable quality is missing—humility.”[1]

Humility and a willingness to learn from others is the true test of a New Testament Christian. For someone to claim, or imply by their actions, that he has all the answers about spiritual matters is the height of self-deception. One day we’ll all stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ. What a glorious day that will be, because we will all walk away from it with the same mind. No more disagreements, no more questions, no more uncertainties! For we will “know fully, even as [we are] fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12, NIV). Until then, however, we must be content with some maybes along with the certainties we hold.

Areas where sincere Christians hold different views are many and varied. Issues like ecclesiology—how to best govern church congregations—and what constitutes holy behavior are two good examples. Others include beliefs about worship practices, prayer and fasting, marriage and remarriage, how and when Christ will return to earth, tithing, parental discipline, God’s sovereignty and foreknowledge, modes of baptism, roles of men and women in ministry, which Bible translation is most reliable, etc. The list could go on and on. 

Sure, there are things from Scripture that we can be very sure about—so sure, in fact, that we would be willing to die for those truths. But other issues may have room for disagreement without being considered hills to die on. For these minor doctrines, balanced Christian groups can extend grace and patience to those who hold different opinions. They know that the way we can best honor God is to “have a walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1-3).

Unhealthy Christian groups, by contrast, teach their people to stand their ground in every point of Scripture, no matter how minor it may be. They grieve the Spirit of God by creating division and discord among the members of Christ, yet they blindly carry on, thinking they “do God service.” How sad! They don’t realize how much harm they are doing, both to themselves and to others, by their arrogance.

Being able to make fine distinctions is one of the ways we recognize intelligent people. Life is mostly gray; few things operate by strictly black and white principles. And life in Christ is like that too. Often we have to rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us in matters that aren’t distinctly clear to our human way of reasoning. It takes humility to admit that we don’t know everything yet, even if we are in possession of the mind of Christ through our new nature. Paul said, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12), but we can look forward to the day when “we shall see face to face.” 

At the beginning of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul makes another important distinction between good deeds and the surpassing importance of the motivations of our hearts. He talks about all the good things we can do—speaking in the tongues of men and angels, being able to prophecy and understand all mysteries within God’s kingdom, moving mountains, giving all we own to the poor, and even sacrificing our lives in martyrdom. But at the end of the list he concludes by saying that without love, all of it is of no consequence spiritually. Love (charity) is preeminently more important than any of those things.

To see everything in life with the same intensity and to ascribe the same importance to every issue creates a kind of spiritual madness. That’s why we want to avoid the unbalanced groups and individuals who display this tendency. We need the focus of a systematic framework in which to hang our doctrinal views … but we also need to know when it is permissible by God to follow our own conscience and to allow others to do the same. Following the lead of Augustine, John Wesley came up with a wonderfully succinct way of striking balance in our Christian life. With it, I’ll close this chapter.

In essentials, unity;     

In non-essentials, liberty;

In all things, charity.

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[1] A.W. Tozer, God Tells the Man Who Cares (Harrisburg: Christian Publications, Inc., 1970), 121.

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