Doctrine

From Lane Chaplin:

Have you ever had someone tell you, “Hey, you have your truth and I have mine. There is no such thing as absolute truth.”?

At that point you should then ask them, “Is what you’ve just said, ‘there is no absolute truth’ absolutely true?”

They may say, “Well, I’m just saying that we can’t be completely sure about anything.”

You should then ask, “Are you completely sure that we can’t be completely sure about anything?”

Then they may say, “Ok, ok… You’re not right because we can’t know that anything is right or wrong. That’s all I’m saying. It’s all relative.”

You should then say, “Is what you’re saying, ‘You’re not right because we can’t know if anything is right or wrong’ …right?”

Behold, the essence of “post-modernism” or relativism as it’s also so called. Here’s basically what the philosophy stands for: Self-refutuation. It’s a walking contradiction, and it’s a lie. When someone says that we can’t know if anything is absolutely true, tell them that they are lying and remind them what one is called who tells lies. Of course they will get mad, but anyone who doesn’t love truth and says we can’t really know what truth is, is opposed to the One who is the Truth, the Way, and the Life and those who believe in Him.

John MacArthur expounds on how important doctrine is — a personal conviction of mine — and shows how, while we look for practical applications of the Word of God, it follows after getting a right understanding of doctrine in God’s Word, not the other way around.

If I may connect this view to a real-life scenario, it would be akin to learning how to write computer programs — you first have to understand what each function and call in that language does before you can even apply those to actually writing computer programs that work.

What Does It Mean “To Me”?

by John MacArthur.
First published at Pulpit Magazine.

That’s a fashionable concern, judging from the trends in devotional booklets, home Bible study discussions, Sunday-school literature, and most popular preaching.

The question of what Scripture means has taken a back seat to the issue of what it means “to me.”

The difference may seem insignificant at first. Nevertheless, our obsession with the Scripture’s applicability reflects a fundamental weakness. We have adopted practicality as the ultimate judge of the worth of God’s Word. We bury ourselves in passages that overtly relate to daily living, and ignore those that don’t.

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