Keeping Focus in Christianity

Christianity has a core and a periphery. All truth is important, but not all truth is essential.

It is often forgotten in many churches what is of absolute importance and what while important is not essential. Our concern for the purity of the church should be more focused on what is of absolute importance than what is at the edge.

Often what is at the edge of Christianity dominates the discussion. Concerns about style in music or method of distributing the Lord's super or exact details of how this or that should look in the church dominate. All of these things are good and well, but they are always at the side.

The church's focus should always be at the heart of Christianity--the good news of the offer of grace to sinners because of Christ's perfect life, death, and resurrection. If we get the center of Christianity right everything else will fall into place.

It is our union with the risen Jesus which makes people better. Too often we see people trying to improve the behavior of their church by preaching law day in and day out.

Often the problem of behavior in church is not a failure to understand law, but to really grasp grace. It is grace which shows us the greatness of the love of God for us. Often we cannot truly grasp how far we are from righteousness until we see what perfect love is and perfect love does.

Often it is more grace that transforms us than law. We try to faithfully live out law because of and only because of grace.

The Core of Christianity and the Periphery

In theology there is a core and a periphery to theology. All truth is important, but not all truth equally vital.

The distinction is not arbitrary or unimportant. You see that scripture says that if we have all virtue, but lack love then our faith is meaningless. If we have the whole world, but lack faith in God our life is meaningless.

You see faith and love are at the center of Christianity, they fall in essentials. It is of great importance to the church to recognize what is important and what is not so important.

You see many churches in the current day focusing heavily on minor points of scripture which are toward the periphery of Christianity in importance and completely neglecting elements at the core.

Ultimately we need to embrace all of the truth in scripture, but we also need to pay attention most closely to what scripture says repeatedly. Usually scripture repeats what is critical in many places and many ways. Often scripture explicitly says that a principle is vital.

The distinction is lost to many theologians and churches. It seems unimportant. The reality is it is of great importance. Minor debates over the meaning of a Greek word used only one or two times or a single Old Testament text often have as much fervor as debates over the meaning of justification by faith alone.

You see we completely lack an understanding of the structure of Christian theology if we get caught up in the tiny debates of nuance and do not care about debates at the very center of Christian faith.

It is of course completely unmodern to place certain truths at a much higher level than other truths. But the reality is that it makes complete sense and you see many situations where it is the case in life that one truth is far more vital than another truth.

A Time for Unity

Unity is at times more important than truth. Paul speaks of issues which have an answer, but unity is more important than the answer.

You see truth at all costs is not Christian. Truth has value and some truth is of great value, but all truth is not equally important.

It is often odd debating with atheists who seem to view that any point of Christianity they object to can sink all of Christianity.

I do see the need to defend the whole faith, but the error in the atheist's approach is that he assumes that Christianity does not have a core and a periphery.

The reality is the Christian faith has an order of beliefs which is important. Not everything is worth dividing over in Christianity.

Some things are worth a good long discussion over but not worth dividing over. Some points are so minor they are not worth discussing if it would bring tension among brothers.