Doctrine Isn't Practical?

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"All doctrine is practical, and all practice must be based on sound doctrine. Doctrine that is not practical is not healthy doctrine, and practice that is not doctrinal is not rightly based."

-- Charles Ryrie (in Balancing the Christian Life)

It seems that in a lot of churches today doctrine is a dirty word. I have often heard the misguided statement that doctrine isn't practical. People label doctrine as boring or irrelevant to their daily lives. The fact is that doctrine is vital to the Christian life. The above quote by Ryrie reinforces my view that doctrine is practical. Dr. Albert Mohler has written a great article along these same lines. You can find it here:
http://www.albertmohler.com/2004/07/02/why-doctrine-matters-2/ .

A Personal Testimony

I grew up in a loving home with Christian parents and Christian siblings (an older brother and sister). My dad felt God's call on his life to become a pastor before I even started school so I have been a preacher's kid for practically all of my life. Yeah, I'm that kid. The one that got to go on the youth group snow skiing trip before I was in the youth group because I got to tag along with my pastor/dad. I have heard a lot of stories of preacher's kids (pk's) who are bitter about their experiences; the perceived constant scrutiny from church members, the lack of privacy, having to share their dad with hundreds of other people, missing out on family vacations because someone's aunt so-and-so died, etc. Those are real experiences, but I consider it a privilege to have the example of a godly dad who gave himself to minister to others as their pastor. The blessings of being a pk far outweigh the challenges in my opinion. When I was around five years old, my ni...

We Call Him "Terrorist"

courtesy of www.freeimages.com This man cuts off the head of a hostage and is rightfully condemned as the epitome of wickedness. We think of him as evil to the core. We call on the government to bring justice to this murderer. We know that we cannot tolerate this kind of evil in the world. He must be stopped and we will spare no expense to make sure that he doesn't kill again. We call him "terrorist". courtesy of www.freeimages.com This man cuts off the heads of hundreds of unborn babies with no real condemnation. Some think of him as a champion of women's rights. Others choose to ignore him, pretending that he doesn't exist. To some he is not really bad, just misguided. Perhaps he has the wrong priorities but is generally a decent person. We tolerate his decapitation of innocent babies and don't spend too much time or energy trying to stop him. We call him "doctor".

Isaac Asimov's book "In the Beginning": Part Four- Chapter Three

I had good intentions. For various reasons I was delayed in blogging and didn't get further in the book than chapter 3, which I hope to comment on today. Working my way through Asimov's book was like digging through a garbage dump looking for something useful. I found that the whole thing stunk and what little I finally did pull out of his worthless writings made the effort seem wasted. I was already contemplating not finishing what I boldly set out to do, i.e. comment on all thirteen chapters, when I realized that the book was overdue at the library. I returned the book today and am using this as an excuse to not finish my series. With that said I will comment on what little I found in chapter 3. A little chronological background of the creation account of Day 6 in Genesis chapter two will help us understand my comments later in this post. First of all, God made Adam and placed him in Eden. God then told him not to eat from the tree of the kn...

Doctrinal Matters

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