Why Do Churches Believe Such Different Things?
I had this kind of crazy goal that I wanted to attempt to visit every single church in this city. Have I told you about this? This was before this church had Sunday morning church services, so I was one of those really weird pastors that had Sunday mornings free. So, if you think pastors only work one day a week, I just worked a half a day a week, apparently. So, I had Sunday mornings and I wanted to visit every church in the streets around this church. I visited over 100 separate churches and I learned two things.
I learned, number one, that so many of the churches in this community — and if you’re watching at home, I bet this is true for your community too — have so much in common. As I went from church to church to church, they pick up the same Bible. Many of them would talk about the birth of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning. There’s often a similar ethic about how we should live: don’t lie, forgive, the importance of prayer. On the big Venn diagram, I noticed so much overlap with so many of the churches in our community.
And, to be honest, I noticed that the churches didn’t entirely overlap. It wasn’t just the name of the church or the denomination listed on the sign, it wasn’t just whether it was a casual or formal service, it wasn’t when the service time started. Very often, there were differences in the distinct teachings of the churches.
That’s what I want to talk to you about today. Now, I would need about 36 sermons to unpack all the different branches in this big Christian family tree, but as I’ve thought about this — how do we end up in such different spots if there’s just one book? — from a 10,000-foot view, it’s dawned on me: it’s because people approach the Bible in four distinct ways. This won’t answer all of your questions, but it helps me understand the 10,000-foot view of biblical interpretation.
Four Ways People Approach the Bible
If you’re taking notes, I’d love for you to write this down. Some people just try to have the Bible, period. If the Bible says it, they’re going to believe it. If it makes sense, if it doesn’t, it’s the Bible — they believe it. They don’t want to add to it, they don’t want to subtract from it; they think it’s the Word of God from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Their interpretation, old method, is the Bible, period.
Second, there are other denominations and other churches that use the Bible, except they subtract from it what I want to call unpopular doctrines. If you ever actually read the Bible cover to cover, I guarantee that you will find a few pages that you honestly don’t like. They will offend you, they will feel wrong, absolutely counter-cultural. There’s actually something in you that will wish that that wasn’t there. It might change from person to person and generation to generation, but when that happens, you have to decide: am I going to take that page out, or am I going to believe it even if I don’t agree with it just yet?
I’ve told some of you the story: years ago, I was preparing for a series on Christianity and sexuality, and I was studying all the different Bible passages that speak on that issue, especially on sexual orientation, and I went to interview other pastors from other churches and denominations. I remember sitting down with this one pastor and I had my Bible open to Romans 1, probably the key page in the Bible, and after explaining what I believed — my interpretation of that page — he said to me, “Mike, you are exactly right. That is exactly what that page says, but we know better than that page.” I thought, okay, well, that explains why we have two different churches. He thinks you can take some pages out because not all of them come from God. I think all the pages are from God whether I initially agree with them or not. Sometimes there are different churches and denominations because it’s the Bible minus certain things that I don’t like.
Number three, sometimes there are differences because it’s the Bible plus church tradition. It’s in the Bible, but it doesn’t have to be in the Bible, because certain denominations think that God didn’t limit himself to just speaking in the Old and New Testament. It’s actually the official teaching of the Catholic Church, if you’re Catholic or grew up Catholic. The Catholic Catechism — I’ve read all 900 pages of it — says that God certainly does speak in the Bible, but he also speaks to us through the church leadership, the church councils, the Pope who speaks in God’s place. So if you ever ask a Catholic person, well, where in the Bible does it exactly say — and list a specific Catholic doctrine — the answer will be, it isn’t, and it doesn’t have to be. Their view of truth is that there are two sources, and that they’re not limiting themselves to just one. So why are there differences between Catholics and Protestants? Part of the reason is because they have two different ways of finding the truth of God.
And then finally, number four, are churches who believe the Bible, have the Bible, love the Bible, except they filter it at times through human reason. And that’s what I want to focus on today. If y’all had nothing to do until midnight, I would preach a very, very long sermon about all four of those things. But I want to focus on the distinction between number one and number four — the Bible, period, versus the Bible filtered through human reason. Because what I’ve seen is that some of the divisions and distinctions between really passionate followers of Jesus who have a really high view of the Bible sometimes come down to this: what role will reason play? I’m going to go deep on that issue today.
You might know that Jesus does not want us to be divided. Jesus actually prayed that we as Christians would be one as he and the Father are one. Jesus does not love the denominational distinctions. He wants his church to be one big happy family, united in the truth of God. And if we’re going to do that, if we’re going to get one step closer to that, we have to figure out: what role does reason play in the teaching that comes from God?
So here’s what I want to do today. I want to spend a few minutes and share two big truths — how we figure this out — and I want to give you a bunch of really practical examples for each one, a bunch of Bible passages, so that you and I can get reason right in the right spot, that we would be united with each other and, most importantly, united with the truth of God. So I hope you’re awake. I hope at home you’re well caffeinated. We’re going to move fast today and cover a lot of ground.
Truth #1: Christians Love Reason
Grab a pen, we’re going to dive right in with truth number one of these two truths, and it’s this: Christians love reason. We love it. We leverage it, we lean into it, we believe that God gave us a brain and that brain is very good. In the Bible, we find all sorts of things where God says, think, fix your thoughts on, meditate upon. There’s even one passage in the book of Isaiah where he says, come and reason with me. So, like one of our pastors said, God doesn’t want you to put your brain in a bucket — he wants you to leave it in your skull and turn it up to ten and use every bit of the thought process that God put into you.
Let me give you a couple of examples of that. Think, for example, of creation, of nature. Quick pop church quiz: how many of you have ever been out in nature? Maybe you’re walking in the woods on one of those Wisconsin days when the leaves are changing color. Maybe you’re hiking in the mountains of Colorado on the most clear and beautiful day. Maybe you make it to the beaches of Florida, and the waves are crashing in as the sun is setting. How many of you have ever been out in nature and thought about God? All right, I’ll take those hundreds of hands. Now here’s my question: how did you get to God? Was God standing on that Colorado mountaintop saying, “Hey, good to see you”? Did God write his name on the leaves that were changing colors as you walked through the woods?
How did you experience nature — not see God, not hear the voice of God — and yet think of God? There’s a really simple answer: you reasoned. You saw the bigness of the mountains, you saw the massiveness of the ocean, you saw the complexity of creation, and your very reasonable mind jumped to the conclusion: God, this could not have just happened. This is not some wild coincidence. This is not some mathematical, barely-a-probability that just happened to be. You realized something this big, something this beautiful, and something this insanely complex had to come from someone insanely powerful and insanely wise, and you thought: God.
“For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” — Romans 1:20
How do you see God — he’s invisible? And the answer is, you look at what he has made. You study creation, and the more you study the systems of the human body, the more you look at the insane scientific constants and forces — like, how do we even exist? How is earth even a thing? — the more you come to the conclusion there must be a God who is smart and powerful who set this all into motion.
Or how about this example — how about not creation, how about your own salvation? There’s a really famous passage in John 3:16.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” — John 3:16
So why do you and I see those words and our hearts go, wow? And the answer is reason. Because we’ve reasoned: if God loves the world, then he must love me. If Jesus died for the sins of the world, then he must have died for my sins. You can read on almost any page of the Bible something that is such good news because your brain connects the dots. You come to the reasonable, logical conclusion that “whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life” means if you believe in Jesus, you have eternal life — which means if you have Jesus, you have, right now, eternal life. Imagine if God didn’t give you a logical mind — you could read John 3:16 all day and say, huh? Once your brain connects the dots, just like you do out in creation, you do with your own salvation.
I could give you plenty more examples, but hopefully you get the point. We think, we reason, we leverage this gift that God put into our brains. Christians love, love, love reason.
Truth #2: Christians Also Limit Reason
But I need to tell you something else. We don’t love reason too much. Instead of serving him and the genius ways of the Word of God, something in me, something very human that likes to be in control, that loves the last word, tries to sit on the throne of God and determine what is exactly the truth of God. And friends, we must resist this with everything we can. We must fight the kind of pride that thinks I can tell the difference between good, bad, right, wrong, truth, and lie.
Christians, I told you before, love reason. But here’s the second thing I need you to know, and write this down too: Christians also limit reason. We don’t love it so much. We refuse to let it have the last word. Our simple line of thinking is that if he’s God and I’m me, and if the Bible came from God and not from me, then whatever the Bible says has to be right no matter what me, myself, and I might conclude.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” — Isaiah 55:8–9
As a guy who has studied all the doctrines in Christianity, I can tell you this: if you study almost any doctrine in the Bible, you will come to the point where your brain will say, huh? And there will be a fork in the road, where you’ll either humbly submit to what it simply says, or where you’ll fight it, doubt it, question it, change it, edit it, or walk away from it. I’ll give you a whole bunch of examples of what I mean — five of them I’ll share with you today.
Example One: The Doctrine of the Trinity
The first one, maybe the most important one, is the doctrine of the Trinity. You’ve heard of it before? When Christians read the Bible, they didn’t find the word “trinity” in it, but what they did find was that the Father we read about in the Scriptures is God, that Jesus claimed himself to be God, and that the Holy Spirit is God — and yet there’s not one, two, three separate gods, there is just one God. And they came up with this name: tri-, three, -inity, unity, one. There’s one God but there’s three persons.
Does that make sense? No. And people fought over this literally for generations in the early church. “No, there have to be three gods.” And the Bible says, “No, there’s just one God.” You say, “Well, then it has to be one person who has three different forms — like water can be water, or it can turn into vapor, or it can become ice.” And the other Christian said, “That’s not what the Bible says.” You say, “Well, it’s like you, Pastor Mike. You’re one guy, but you could be a pastor, and you could be a father, and you could be a husband — three different…” No, that’s also not right. It’s like a three-leaf clover — it has three leaves but it’s just one clover. Also, no. There is nothing in all of creation that matches God. Three separate persons. The Father is not Jesus, Jesus is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Father. The Spirit did not die on a cross, the Father did not rise from the grave on the third day. They are different persons who can appear in the same spot and talk to each other, and yet there’s not one, two, three gods — there’s just one.
You get it? You don’t get it. It is beyond human understanding, in the same way that the clouds are above the skies. You can accept it or reject it. When God reveals himself to us, he’s not just another human being — he is so much bigger than us. Will you submit your human reason and say, “Okay, he’s God, he can be whatever he wants to be, I’m going to believe what he says”? Or will you try to squeeze him into the little human box that makes sense from our earthly understanding?
Example Two: The Doctrine of Conversion
Or how about this example — how about the doctrine of conversion? How does a person become a Christian? How do you move from not believing in Jesus to believing in Jesus? What’s the moment when that happens? And the answer is, God does it. It’s not a prayer you pray, it’s not a thing you say, it’s not a decision you make. You were dead, and God makes you alive. You were blind, and God sends someone to share the message so that you suddenly see. You are born again.
Think of it: when a baby is born, do we say to the baby, “Good job, you did it”? No, we say to the mama, “You did it.” Reason loves the idea of human will, human choice, but no — God says your conversion is 1,000% a gift that comes from God. My reason doesn’t know, but this is what my God said.
Example Three: Baptism and Communion
Or how about this one? Here’s a pastor trick — let me put two unreasonable things in one blank for you: how about baptism and communion? The Bible says that baptism is like the power cord that connects a dead phone to the outlet in the wall. It can’t do anything by itself, but because it’s connected to Jesus, it flows with power. And so we celebrate baptisms because we don’t think that it’s a thing that we do, or a church tradition, or another commandment to keep. We believe that God himself is doing something, even if we can’t see it, because we submit our reason to the words of God.
I mean, think of communion. Have you ever been taking communion in your life and your brain got in the way? Looks like bread, tastes like bread. And then the pastor says, “Take and eat the body of Christ.” And your reason throws a full-out tantrum. No, that can’t be. Does it symbolize — you know, the wine is red just like the blood of Jesus is red? We take the body of Christ just like Jesus gave his body on the cross — except the problem is, the Bible never says that. Read every single passage about communion in Matthew and Mark and Luke and 1 Corinthians, and what you’ll find is not a symbol and a representation, but “is, is, is, is.” This is my body, is my body, is my body, is my blood, is my blood, is my blood. It’s given for you. God literally puts a miracle in our hands. And with trembling hands we tell our own brains, “I don’t fully get this.” But God said it.
And the reason we do that is because Jesus said next, “Take and eat, this is my body for the forgiveness of your sins.” Instead of rejecting it and saying, “Well, that’s too easy,” we receive it and say, “Thank you, Jesus.” Thank you, I don’t have to earn it. Thank you, I don’t have to deserve it. Thank you that you just give it. Thank you that I came forward with a sorrowful heart over my sin and you blessed me in ways that I do not deserve. I love baptism and communion not because they feel reasonable to me, but because God gives the most amazing blessings in the simplest and most available gifts.
Example Four: Purposeful Pain
Or how about this one, number four — how about purposeful pain? Maybe this idea doesn’t divide churches and denominations as much as some of the others, but it is something you, sooner or later, will have to wrestle with. Sometime — oh man, I hope you can’t relate to this right now — sometime in your life, you will go through something so painful it will feel like there cannot be a purpose. You will go through something that just will feel so illogical that you think, if I was God, if I could do anything, if I loved me this much, there’s no way I would let this happen.
You might think of childhood trauma that way. Why would God not stop my stepdad from — why didn’t God just help my parents communicate and get through it instead of me ending in two separate households? You get older and you say, why can’t God just give me a friend? Why can’t God just give me a partner who loves Jesus like I love Jesus? You might get married and want a baby more than anything. You’ll say, “We want to raise our kid to know Jesus — why wouldn’t God give it? Other people can conceive who don’t give a rip about eternity, but we do. Why?” The cancer will come back, there’ll be a tragedy, a car accident, a heart attack, and the pain you go through will make zero sense.
And so you start to reason, and your reason will tell you things like this: maybe you deserve it. Maybe if you were trying harder with your faith, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe God doesn’t care about you. Maybe he’s not even paying attention to your life. Maybe God isn’t so powerful — he claims to love you, but he’s like your best friend who cares but can’t do anything. Your reason will come to all kinds of conclusions, and I just want to tell you with as much respect as I can: in those moments, to hell with your reason.
God has said there is a plan, there is a purpose, it’s never pointless. He says things like in the book of Romans, in all things he’s working for the good. And sometimes you can’t see it. You’re like the little kid getting a shot at the doctor, and your little brain doesn’t understand why your parents would let a stranger jab you with something so painful. You might not understand the pain, but God says there is a reason. Trust him. I wish your chronic pain would end. I can’t wait for the day when Jesus comes back and every tear is wiped away, but until that day comes, refuse to let your reason convince you that you’re so bad or God is so bad. Instead, just say, “I don’t know why, but I do know who. I know who told me there’s a purpose. He’s the God who cannot lie. He’s the God of truth. He’s the God who loves me more than I will ever understand. My reason doesn’t know, but my God says so.”
Example Five: The Gospel Itself
Or how about one final example — how about the gospel? The gospel is the good news that God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus. And that Jesus came down from heaven not just to give us a couple of tips or a ladder to climb our way up to heaven, but instead he would live for us, die for us, do everything for us, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
The gospel, if you ever stop and think about it, is the most ridiculous, unreasonable, illogical thing in the world — and the most beautiful. See, here’s how life works: when you’re good, people do good to you. When you’re bad, they don’t. If you go to work, you get paid. If you don’t show up, you don’t. If you study hard, you get the grade. If you don’t study at all, you don’t. If you invest in a relationship and communicate with your wife, you end up with a strong marriage. If you don’t, you won’t.
This is how the world works. But the gospel says, even though you didn’t, God did. Even though you really don’t deserve it, and you’re probably very aware of that, God does. God loved you. In fact, God gave you the most amazing gift not because you were his best friend. You were dead in sin, you were hostile to his ways, you were trying to do what you wanted, but God loved you despite it. You were buried in sin, and he’s the one who took the blame. How could you ever look at the cross and say that makes sense? No, you look at it and you say, “God, why would you do that? Why would you give up your own life not for your best friend but for your worst enemy?” You might run into a burning building to save your baby or your black lab. Would you do it for Hitler? This is what God did for us. He saw us in our sin, and he loved us in ways that simply don’t make sense to human reason.
There will be times when you will sit in your bed at night and say, “Why does God love me?” And reason will put a big question mark, and the gospel will declare an exclamation point, because he does. I don’t know why, but my God said so. He declared it — that through his Son, I am forgiven, I am loved, God is for me, God delights in me, God is with me even here today. It will feel too easy. It will feel like, who would do anything like that? But reason submits itself to the word of God and takes hold of the gospel of God.
Submitting Reason to the God Who Is Higher Than Our Ways
Man, don’t you see? All of life, every doctrine, forces us to limit reason so that God can be God, and we can be us.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.” — Proverbs 3:5–6
Let’s pray.
Oh God, what a glimpse of your generous heart. Thinking of someone giving up so much for people like us is inspiring, but you gave up so much more, and it’s the best thing about this faith. Thank you for free forgiveness. Thank you for those of us who know that we don’t deserve your love, we don’t deserve heaven, and yet it’s ours through faith in Jesus Christ.
God, thank you for not being reasonable. It would be reasonable if you loved some people but not all people. It would make sense if you forgave some sins but not certain sins, but the fact that we can come to you — all of us — can come to you with everything, and it’s finished in the name of Jesus. It’s all forgiven. I’m so grateful your love doesn’t make sense. It’s one of the reasons that we love you so much.
Oh God, we’ve spent just three weeks talking about your word, and I pray that this is the seed that grows into something really big for so many of us. If we’ve gotten out of the habit of reading the Bible, if we’ve never had the habit, if you feel overwhelmed by where to start, God, nudge us, push us, connect us to the right resources and the right people that we would know your word and your heart better than ever before.
God, thank you for giving us a book. Thank you for not making us guess what you want or how you are. Thank you for revealing yourself in this word, and in this word, revealing your Son and his amazing grace. It’s in his name that we pray all these things, and all God’s people said, amen.
