As we progress through life, we come to learn the twin importance of both knowledge and experience. I have definitely learned this as a pastor. I attended seminary, where we delved deeply into the knowledge side of things. There were Old and New Testament studies, church growth and leadership, Biblical exegesis, systematic theology, hermeneutics, homiletics, and a bunch of other things whose very names are intimidating. I am thankful for my seminary education; it forced me to think through my faith on a level unprecedented for me. The rationale for seminary education is that if you are going to teach people about God’s character and works, and the response He wants from us, you had better be able to portray Him faithfully. This can only come by reading, learning and reflecting deeply on His word.
If we are flawed in our understanding of who God is, we cannot really know Him as He is; we merely become experts on own skewed images of Him. Imagine that for some reason, I might have become deeply convinced that my wife was a standup comedian who loved to dine on anchovies while listening to heavy metal music. (Nothing could be more opposite to my wife’s true nature.) With this firm idea in mind, I might believe I had come to know her perfectly. However, I would only know my image of her; I wouldn’t know her at all as she really is. You have to know some fundamental, correct information about a person in order to actually know that person. When you apply this point to our relationship with God, you come to understand that doctrine is important. For this reason, I am thankful for my education, and I strive to present good doctrine as a pastor.
I have also come to learn, however, that experience is just as essential as knowledge. We see this often in the job market. Successful applicants for a job will list their experience in that field, and in a case where two applicants have identical educational backgrounds, the employer will invariably choose the applicant with more experience. The reason for this is that experience yields learning that the collection of knowledge simply can’t produce. I’ve learned this, slowly and soberly, throughout my years as a pastor. Seminary filled my head with all manner of information. By the time I had my M.Div., my theological formulation was fairly tight. I knew tons of background context on Bible history that I hadn’t known before. I was enthused by all sorts of cutting-edge ministries that the really “with it” churches were engaged in. I couldn’t wait to put all this amazing stuff into effect once I became a pastor.
I didn’t realize at the time that seminary hadn’t made me into an expert pastor. It had only helped me become a passable theologian, preacher and teacher.
White hot with all kinds of amazing things I was about to do, I entered my first pastorate. All the slogans, catch phrases and trends gushed forth from me in a mighty torrent. I filled the pulpit with fiery oration about what churches like ours must do--or else. I pushed and prodded and cajoled…and fumed and sulked and pouted when nothing happened. It’s amazing that my first church even put up with me.
I was just beginning to learn that knowledge is no substitute for experience--and it was experience that I lacked. I had a head full of information about church leadership, but I could not lead effectively because I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to really work with the people who make up the church. The ability to shepherd and lead people can’t come from a book, or any number of books. This can only be learned by experience, because you can only truly know and love people experientially.
Over the years I have gained experience in being a pastor--and I will continue to gain experience. Looking back to that overzealous seminary graduate that I once was, I am a bit embarrassed at how very little I knew back then. I had a head full of books, but the textbook of relationship is not text. It is a book of the heart. And that textbook must be read slowly, deeply, and sometimes even painfully. The learning that arises from such a reading is agonizingly slow, but it is immensely more vivid--something like comparing a walk through a fragrant pine forest to a child’s crayon drawing of a Christmas tree.
As it is with our human relationships, so it is with our walk with Christ. Correct doctrine--accurate information about who He is--is an absolutely essential ingredient. It is, however, only one ingredient. Being able to grasp a reasonably true picture of Christ’s character and works must be matched by a personal and transforming imprint of His life upon ours. If volumes of theoretical knowledge about Christ are not accompanied by a deep experience of Him in relationship, that knowledge will be sterile and fruitless. This emptiness is expressed by the Apostle Paul, who in 1 Corinthians 13:2, wrote, “...if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Stellar theological, and even miracle-working, credentials are utterly stillborn without the transforming love and presence of Christ.
When I was a child, my mother carried around an embarrassingly-tattered King James Bible. (Its condition was a very healthy sign, though I didn’t know it at the time.) The pages were loose from the binding, and not always in the right places. I think the book of James had migrated to somewhere in the neighborhood of Habakkuk. The margins, and the front and end papers, were crammed with her handwritten notes. Among them was a saying which, for some reason, fascinated and stuck with me. As I tried to recall the wording, I looked it up on the internet. I don’t think that this is the saying, verbatim, but it is very close. Her note read something like this: “Knowledge without devotion is cold, dead orthodoxy. Devotion without knowledge is irrational instability.” Every now and again, that saying floats to the surface of my memories. Back then, the words were mysterious, but seemed powerful. As I have grown, I have slowly come to understand that those words encapsulate the two essential sides of the “coin” of my faith. Doctrine and relationship must accompany each other in equal measure, or the life of faith will be sterile, stillborn, and perhaps even doomed to shipwreck.
“Dead orthodoxy,” as the quote puts it, is dangerous for a couple of reasons. First, it can result in a drifting away from the faith as its adherents note an abundance of “answers,” but a disturbing absence of meaning and life-change. This lack is felt in evangelical churches all over America. It is felt in the lives of Christians who encounter nothing but blandness and lack of passion. Of course this makes perfect sense, given the circumstances. People are raised in churches which strongly preach the absolute truth of God’s inerrant word. Certainly, we should applaud this emphasis; we ourselves have a high view of revealed truth. There is no true life without it. However, it is too rare that we translate the correct formulas of theology to inspire a dynamic relational experience with Christ. Doctrinal formulas about Christ have no power to change lives. Only a dynamic walk with Christ Himself can unleash Living Water, bringing us to a life charged with meaningful purpose.
What we are really talking about is a life indwelt by the Holy Spirit, pervaded with His fellowship and inspiration. In the absence of it, a person is quickly overcome with a feeling of emptiness which cannot be filled by all the right answers in the world. Passion and joy in Christ seem unattainable, and thus a person might well begin to question whether the whole thing is even worth it. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones expresses this beautifully in his book, Revival:
But now I am indicating that there is a terrible danger of our putting the doctrines, the true doctrines, about the persons into the place of the persons. And that is absolutely fatal. But it is a very similar snare, which traps evangelical people, and orthodox people. You can be orthodox but dead. Why? Well, because you are stopping at the doctrines, you are stopping at the definitions, and failing to realize that the whole purpose of doctrine is not to be an end in itself, but to lead us to a knowledge of the person and to an understanding of the person, and to a fellowship with the person...Dead orthodoxy, in practice, is as bad as heterodoxy, because it is quite useless.
And so it is that uncounted people in our time have left behind the church, and in many cases even the faith. It seemed quite useless to them, because no amount of theology--or even ritual--can remedy the emptiness inside. That can only be filled by a daily, sweet, enlivening fellowship with Jesus.
The sense of emptiness brought on by “dead orthodoxy” leads to the other danger I wish to discuss -- a greater susceptibility to error. It’s ironic; most people would think that a head full of the correct Biblical worldview would form an impregnable fortress against false doctrine. Without being personally impacted by the fellowship and leading of Christ, however, there are more cracks in the wall than you might suspect.
First, the nagging sense of spiritual vacuum can overwhelm our better judgment. God created us to be spiritual beings, and when we are spiritually barren we will instinctively seek to fill that empty space. If a new spiritual idea comes along, seeming to offer something beautiful and transcendent, we may be lured to embrace it even if our church background and teaching set off enormous alarms in our head. Spiritual yearning is just too great; we will often turn to things we know to be wrong if only we can fill the vacuum. It’s the same phenomenon for those who become involved in romantic relationships with people who are no good for them; the desire for “love” and fear of being alone often causes people to unite with those who will end up wreaking havoc in their lives. There are some needs that people cannot ignore. If they are not met by healthy things, people will turn toward unhealthy things.
Second, the lack of Christ’s active presence in your life can deprive you of a crucial filter in discerning truth from error. In the beginning of John 10, Jesus compared His relationship with us to how a Good Shepherd leads His sheep. In verses 3-4, Jesus said, “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” Shepherds in Bible times did not lead sheep through intimidation. They spent so much time with their sheep that their flocks came to know them, and trust their voice, implicitly. They led through relationship. Jesus leads us like that. Over a period of time walking with Him, in a heart-to-heart relationship, we too come to know the voice of our Shepherd. When Jesus calls us by name, it’s a voice we recognize and trust. We know we are safe when we follow His lead, because He loves and feeds us.
I often worry about my church and pray for them. My concern is that they may spend too little time in active fellowship with Christ, and that as a result they may not be able to accurately discern His voice when He calls them. This is a danger, because the devil is very skilled in twisting the Scriptures in order to lead us into poisonous error and destructive behavior. He did this successfully with Eve, and he made a very good attempt at it with Jesus--though Jesus was not fooled. Our adversary is so good at constructing deadly snares out of ideas that seem so very close to complete Biblical truth. The clever counterfeit--the subtle detour--has caused the shipwreck of so many lives of faith. That’s what makes me brood with concern; do my people walk closely enough with Christ that they can recognize when it is truly Him calling them? When an imposter beckons, will they know it is not the true voice of their Good Shepherd, and will they turn away?
Like you, I have been exposed to many errors as I have grown in faith. Some of them have been very clever--so close to the truth that it has been hard to pinpoint exactly where the problem was. I cannot tell how how many times that my first sense of danger came from the nagging sense that this new idea did not line up with who I knew Jesus to be. In our time together, a basic sense of His heart, His motivations and purposes has formed in my own heart. To be sure, a great portion of this has come from my study of God’s Word! Our experience with Christ must always accord with what He plainly reveals about Himself in Scripture. If our image of Him contradicts Scripture in any sense, we have a false image that needs correcting. Having said that, the presence of Jesus in my life carries a certain feel...a fragrance...a majestic, loving, gracious tone which I recognize when He guides me. My first sense of error has often been this caution that sounds in my heart--almost as if Jesus were saying, “You know me, and that’s not me.” That cautious instinct is what tips me off; I investigate the idea more thoroughly in light of God’s Word, and He leads me to understand just where it subtly deviates from the truth. Without the active, living presence of Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit, all those theology classes would have fallen short in guiding me to the truth. You have to know more than just the right answers; you have to experience Jesus’ heart. You must come to know His voice.
Many churches excel at formulating doctrine precisely. They execute Sunday services with quality. Many Christians can answer questions about God’s nature, will, and works with great accuracy. They are dead right about so many things. And yet, their orthodoxy, with all its precision, is devoid of life. There is a form of godliness, but no power. You can be right, but also quite dead inside. It is so very important that you go beyond being dead right about everything. If your correctness isn’t enlivened by the presence and love of Christ in your daily living, you have nothing. Strive beyond dead orthodoxy, and toward a transforming relationship with the true Good Shepherd.
