Ed Stetzer and Elmer Towns wrote a book listing several core doctrines that are essential to Christianity. One of those doctrines is the authority of the Scriptures. They wrote, "Take away the authority of the Bible, or the essential content of the Bible, and you no longer have Christianity." You may have a good organization or a belief system that does many good things, but you have something less than the Christian faith.
In my book The Healthy Community: Moving Your Church Beyond Tunnel Vision I wrote
Without an authoritative Bible, the church will be susceptible to a variety of popular, yet false beliefs. People will pick and choose which ideas to dismiss and which ideas to add until their "Christianity" is unrecognizable as the apostolic faith. Those who create their own version of Christianity in this way have no solid foundation upon which to offer truth because their source is considered unreliable and open to change with cultural trends. We are no longer anchored to truth when we believe one person's theology is just as true as another's no matter how those theologies may disagree. We need Scripture to settle theological disagreements and provide a trustworthy foundation for belief. Some have said the primary belief system in our postmodern world can be summed up in one word: "Whatever." Without an authoritative Bible, the same will be true of the church as well.
The first temptation mankind faced was to question the word of God. God specifically told Adam and Eve to not eat of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Satan comes along and asks "Has God said...?" causing Eve and then Adam to question God's clear word to them. It is a strategy he still uses today when he tries to create doubts in people's minds regarding the validity of the Scriptures.
The apostle Paul cautioned young Timothy that there would come a time when people would not want to hear sound doctrine but would gather around them false teachers who would tickle their ears with pleasant messages (2 Timothy 4: 3-4). We are living in that time. In too many seminaries young people preparing for the ministry graduate doubting the truths found in the Scriptures. They are taught to trust more in science and philosophy than in the teaching of the Bible. As they assume pastoral ministries they began to teach these false doctrines to their congregations. The result is that many Christians struggle to believe basic biblical teaching. According to one study 21 percent of born-again Christians believe that the Bible teaches principles that should not be followed. Only 40 percent of these individuals believe that Satan is a real force, and only 62 percent believe that Jesus lived a sinless life on earth. In another survey conducted of clergy in mainline Protestant churches 67 percent lacked confidence in at least some aspects of the Scriptures.
Individual Christians will never live the life God has prepared for them if they do not accept biblical teaching as relevant and authoritative to their lives. We cannot pick and choose which Bible doctrines we want to accept and which ones we want to ignore.
Likewise, churches will never impact their communities for the Kingdom of God without a firm belief in the authority and infallibility of the Bible. Without such an understanding of Scriptures we have no firm foundation for our teaching, our practices or our ministries.
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