As a follow up from my previous post, there is a reality that what you believe is vital to how you live your life. What you do really does depend upon your doctrine. To push this all the way to the corners of your life, it is best to start with some definitions. Doctrine is simply what one believes. It is not necessarily religious (I could also make the case that everything is religious, but I’ll save that for another post). Belief is an idea that one holds to be true. These two notions should be taken from how one arrives at “truth.” Volumes have been written through the centuries about how to define truth. Is it based upon fact or believe? As a good Christian, I say both, but I am now digressing.
This all speaks to my point though that what one believes impacts what one does with their life. Doctrines are the beliefs that one holds to be true in the world. Gravity is a clear example of this. My two-year-old daughter has a firm belief in gravity. She has no idea what it is. She can’t quantify it as I suspect most people reading this can’t either. But she firmly believes in it every time she goes to get off of our kitchen barstool. She has been getting down from the table on her own for about 6 months now, so she has run this experiment, let’s say, 180 times so far. If she lets go of the side of the chair, will she fall down and get hurt? The rung of the chair is just below her foot when she is hanging onto the side of the chair. If she just lets go, she will land on the rung within a millisecond. The first 3 dozen times she did this, she would freak out and scream in fear that she was going to die. She has now learned to ask for help, and we tell her she is fine. This fear within her is based upon her belief in gravity. That she is going to fall and get hurt if she lets go of the chair.
This is a simple example, but it proves my point. To up the ante, what about the belief in a god? Taken in the simplest form, is there a divine creator of the universe or is everything a cosmic accident? What you believe about this is vital. Is there reason behind everything or is everything an accident? If there is reason, then it is your job to figure it out. If there is not reason, then nothing matters. Literally nothing. If everything is simple cause and effect, then every “individual” (because how do you define that), can do whatever it wants because who is to say anything about anything. Gravity isn’t even a constant because past events can’t prove future events in a strictly cause-and-effect world.
If there is reason to the world, who put it there? The Cosmic Good and Evil of the world? Allah? Jesus? Which version of Jesus? Mormon’s, Jehovah Witness’, Orthodox’s, Catholic’s, Protestant’s? depending upon what deity you put your faith in, will affect the rest of your world. This is where individual belief vitally matters. This is where first beliefs (who/what created the world is a first belief because everything else in one’s worldview is based upon it) get their importance. One’s entire system of morality is based upon what one believes about how the world was started. The very basis for society is based upon religion. How one handles their day-to-day life depends upon what one believes about the world. This is why theology is vital for a person to know.
In the exploration for truth, there is no question that is off the table. There is no such thing as a sacrilegious question, just sacrilegious attitudes. There are questions that we, as humans, don’t get answers to. Job from the Bible is a good example of this. I do not believe that Job got in trouble for asking the question of “Why is God doing this to me?” He got in trouble because he was not asking with an attitude of belief. Which is why God responds the way that He does, because the pot does not get to rail against the potter for making it in any particular way. It only gets to ask why in order to figure out how better to serve its purpose.
All this to say, spend some time learning to define what you believe because doing depends on doctrine.