Do
not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is
good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods which
have not profited those who have been occupied with them. (Hebrews
13:09, NKJV).
Because
Jesus is unchanging (Hebrews 13:08), His teaching is unchanging and
is established forever. Consequently there are no new doctrines
needed or possible for the Christian faith. Nonetheless, these
abound, and anticipating this, the writer of Hebrews gives this
plain, common sense warning about the illogic of being enticed by the
inferior teachings of men.
While
we may not understand fully all the tenets of the New Testament, (in
terms of the depth and richness of God's eternal purposes) we can
only concur with what has been said by expositors throughout church
history, “the main things are the plain things”.
Thus,
the best protection against being carried about with various and
strange doctrines, is immersion in the truth. We are to be
steadfast, immovable, rooted
and grounded, holding fast the word of life
so that we do not fall prey to the cunning craftiness of
deceitful plotting and the
trickery of men.
This
does not mean we are to fear such error, for it has no power against
the truth, but we are to guard against it in the same way that a
diligent householder guards against threats to the security and
safety of the house: with eyes and ears open, and ever-ready access
to the armory of the Word of God.
Perhaps,
one of the strangest doctrines in existence, one that has been around
since the Fall in Eden, is that we are capable of saving ourselves.
This is the foundation for legalism and it is deadly. It is the
height of human arrogance and unreason, and if it gains the least
foothold, it spreads like an enervating fungus, defiling the soul
with spiritual pride.
That
is why in the verse above, strange doctrines
are coupled with the eating, or the not eating, of specific
ritualistic foods. We know that the Levitical dietary restrictions of
the Old Testament served two primary purposes – they kept God's
people apart from the world, and they provided daily
reinforcement of the concepts of “clean and unclean”.
However,
these strictures were completely abrogated by the grace revealed in
the New Testament, for the Law was given through Moses, but
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. His
atoning death made all
things new and clean, so that the new contrast
between the works of the Law, and salvation by grace alone through
faith alone were equally reinforced by daily
living. Yet, some could not put away adherence to outward laws, and,
instead continued to be occupied
by that which had been rendered obsolete. The temptation of the old
and comfortable proved too strong for many, preventing them from
fully embracing the “new” law of faith.
In
the end, their unbelief, for that is what it was, resulted in their
rejection of the promised Messiah.
Another
enticing, but unequivocally false doctrine is Darwinian Evolution,
which is the theory (dogma, really) that states that all Causality
came about solely by chance over time. In essence, this false
scientific premise states that some postulated Quantum Singularity,
at some distant “time” in the past, exploded, and, in the
process, created time and space and all the elements of primordial
matter. These, in turn, through random happenstance over eons,
“evolved” into galaxies, stars, planets, and ultimately, us.
The
reason this impressive sounding idea is so alluring is because it
brilliantly feeds the maw of human pride (mankind is accountable to
itself only), while simultaneously rendering us as a kind of potluck
result. We exist not because we are special, but because we aren't.
And because there is No One and Nothing outside of Materiality that
had anything to do with anything, we can go about our business of
becoming the gods we have always wanted to be since the Garden,
without regard to the true and living God.
Aside
from the inherent utter despair this philosophy leads to due to its
fundamental acknowledgement that there is no purpose, intelligence,
or direction to anything, it provides the one thing a
Christ-rejecting world so self-destructively desires: an argument for
dispensing with a Creator. Doing so at the expense of all purpose and
meaning in life is considered only a small price to pay.
Almost
as good, and in someways even more brilliant, is the heresy of
Theistic Evolution. This is the idea that while a Creative
Intelligence may have started the whole thing, she/he/it has no
interest in anything other than sitting back and watching the drama
unfold – less despair, perhaps, but equally allowing for
supernatural non-interventionism. Thus, dispensing more or less
entirely with the God of the Bible, while retaining some semblance of
overarching, but passive, authority.
There
is no good reason to hold either of these fallacies as true, but
reason and rebellion against God have little to do with each other.
Both of these strange doctrines gives man the illusion of control and
non-accountability to a Deity, with the unspoken corollary that we
ourselves will eventually fill that post.
It
requires more faith and suspension of reason to believe in
Macroevolution than it ever would to believe in Special Creation by a
Personal Deity. Everything in the Universe, from the Cosmological
Constants, to the contradictory results of Radioisotope Dating, to
the irreducible complexity of the simplest organic cell, flies
squarely in the face of mindless, or “passive” Creationism.
The
purported long ages of both the earth and the Cosmos are being
addressed with new cosmological theories, extensions to Relativistic
Physics, and hypotheses regarding gravitational time dilation, with
earth at the center of a created Universe.
And
regardless of whether these latest Creationist origins theories serve
to explain fully all the scientific data at our disposal, it is clear
that the Theory of Evolution does not. The dirty secret kept from
popular culture is that Evolution is a paradigm on the brink of
complete collapse. Even its staunchest proponents are beginning to
realize (and admit) it is woefully inadequate in accounting for the
most fundamental questions of modern physics. That is why we here
about such imaginative pseudo-scientific constructs as Dark Matter
and Dark Energy. These are the mathematical necessities required to
“fill the gaps” in the whimsical Big Bang tales.
The
bottom line of this exhortation in Hebrews, then, is for each of us
to realize that there is no profit in denying truth. God has spelled
out clearly what we must do to be saved, and among the most important
steps is to cease being willfully deceived.
It
is a profitless endeavor to turn aside from the truth of God to the
gossamer imaginings of fallible man, knowing that ultimately,
rejecting His truth ends in eternal calamity.
Instead,
we should cling to that which was revealed to us through His Word,
and in the ministry of His Son's propitiatory work on the Cross.
Finally,
understand that all doctrines regarding faith and godliness that are
sourced outside the recognized Canon of Scripture are neither
authoritative or inerrant. These are, like all things man-centered,
corrupt and corrupting, profiting nothing.
Ultimately,
unless you are firmly anchored in the truth, you WILL be carried
about by your own understanding and by “popular wisdom”.
Jesus Himself said it best:
“But
everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will
be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: “and the
rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that
house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:26, 27,
NKJV).
