There’s one last thing that I want to muse about when it comes to orthodoxy. After this we’ll all take a break from that and pick on something else.
In the last post I talked about what my Correct Belief is not in: The Bible. Our Sacred Text was never meant to take the place of God. Neither are guns or country. In the first century, Jewish leaders put their faith in the Temple and the rites that took place there. Well, they found out how secure that was in 70 A.D. when Rome destroyed the Temple and put that entire system to the sword.
Stuff cannot be our God.
Here’s where I think that Correct Belief finds its true object.
God.
Period, end of story.
Perhaps not like you may think. I don’t think that belief IN God is adequate. Anyone can believe that God exists. James wrote in his epistle that the people believed “that God is one. Even the demons believe…and shudder.” Actually, when someone tells me that they believe in God I just shake my head. Those words mean nothing. I believe in gravity, also. What’s important is what I do with that belief.
That brings to what I think IS the Correct Belief. What it’s true subject has to be if we want to be faithful stewards of God’s love.
What we believe ABOUT God is paramount.
Who is God? What is God like? Show my God’s character and heart. These are the questions that we should be seeking answers to. Last year in our St. Barnabas Bible Study we spent several months on this question. What started out looking at how God’s wrath in the Bible can be an accurate description of God. Short answer, it can’t. The angry God that Jonathan Edwards preached about in an early American church in New England, doesn’t exist. From Edwards on the idea that God hates our sin so much that God can’t even look at us unless Jesus stands between God and humanity. That is a lie straight from the pit of hell. And, that lie has tied countless people into a bondage that suffocates the life out of their spirit.
Correct Belief, orthodoxy, starts at the Incarnation of God in Messiah Jesus. And, it ends with God sacrificing God’s self as Jesus the Son in order to defeat sin and death. The proof of this Correct Belief is the empty tomb. This is the Gospel. That the Kingdom of God is here, now. Jesus is the Messiah; the Christ; the Lord of all.
That is what we can know about God. That is the beginning of orthodoxy. That is where our Correct Belief finds its true object.
It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.(Gal. 5:1)
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