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Finding the integration between doctrine and practice in the Christian life is very much like one of those marble maze games.  In order to get the marble to fall into the right slot and work through the maze, one has to tilt the little box back and forth and get things lined up just right.  I sometimes feel about as frustrated with integrating doctrine and practice as I do trying to get that marble to move in the right direction.

I’m an academic.  I love the classroom.  I love parsing ideas and chasing their implications.  But I’ve never wanted to be the stereotypical ivory tower academic.  I think ideas really matter and I especially think doctrines matter to real life.  But, like the marble maze, integrating doctrine and life takes awareness, commitment, focus and adjustment.

Maybe a couple of biblical examples will help to illustrate.  The exalted Lord Jesus, in the book of Revelation, had some harsh things to say to those Ephesian Christians:

I know your works, your toil and patient endurance.  I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles, but are not, and have found them to be false.  I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary.  But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first (emphasis added).

This saying is generally understood to point to the Ephesians’ doctrinal orthodoxy (they could tell false apostles from true) and their hard work, but they had lost their first love.  Bad thing for a Christian to be theologically sound, but without love.

Then there’s that statement from 1 John 4 that provides a kind of creedal (or doctrinal) litmus test: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.  By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God…” (emphasis added).  We could add quotes from 1 Timothy about the importance of sound doctrine.  Doctrine seems to matter.

It also seems as if everybody in the church knows we need sound doctrine, but usually when people hear the word they turn up their noses.  Too many of us have sat through abstract, disconnected and boring disquisitions on all manner of esoterica.  Who wants that?  I don’t and I don’t know too many people who do.

Moreover, campus ministry tends to be very activistic, which I don’t mean in just a political or social sense.  I mean that there’s much to do and by God’s grace we’re going to do it.  We work hard to get our students active in ministry as well.  But being busy with ministry can make us shallow.  We’re under time pressure and we need a resource.  Sometimes we go for what’s cheap and quick.  Doctrine can provide the corrective.  Serious theology matters to the way we live and people are starved for it.

Consider, for example, Ephesians 4:24.  It reminds us that we are to “clothe [ourselves] with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness.”  It’s easy to focus on the word “righteousness” and turn this verse easily into a teaching on moral character.  When we act in righteousness, we demonstrate a righteous character and we are thus “like God.”  Ah, a new ministry idea!  Let’s have a class or a program on moral character!  Now all we need to do is find the right resource and, bingo, program is going.  We have a new small group, a new class, a new something…

But let’s press a bit.  Is that all this verse renders?  What does it mean to be created “according to the likeness of God?”  Our thoughts beg the question, “Well, what is God like?”  Am I really to understand that, as I explore the nature of God (theology), I can begin to see what God expects of (and is doing in) a believer?  In a believing community?  It turns out to be a lot more than just devising a list of qualities that roughly matches our notion of a righteous character, working to realize that list of qualities, and calling it good.  We’re good at making lists and boiling things down to manageable portions.  We love the tangible, the workable.  Unfortunately, I just don’t think that doctrine associated with Ephesians 4:24 yields so easily to our exegetical manipulations.

The very image of the Trinitarian God is being restored in me/us by the grace of God.  That image in believers would thus somehow reflect the very Trinitarian nature of God.  That Trinitarian nature involves a mutually interpenetrating community of agape love within the Godhead.  Thinking about having that image restored in me/us makes me think about much more than just my individual righteousness.  It makes me think about the community of Jesus’ followers.  Then the “payoff” question comes: Do we Christians in campus ministry at Southwestern College reflect the image of God?  Is that image being restored in us?  Can anybody see it?  Can we?

In the end, if doctrine does not pierce our hearts, it’s pretty useless.  But it is by no means useless.  It restores our souls.  We need to drink deep from doctrine and teach our students how to do the same.  What I am advocating here is a kind of mixed activity.  It’s more than prayer, but prayerful.  It’s more than study, but studious, slow, reflective.  It’s meditation in the classic sense of the word.

If you’re not pondering doctrine like this now, are you interested in trying it?  Take this book for starters: By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine by Ellen Charry (Oxford University Press, 1997).  Don’t hurry.  And don’t expect it to be quick or easy.  It’s your life.

Stephen W. Rankin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Campus Minister, Southwestern College srankin@sckans.edu

Categories: Nurturing the Soul of the Campus Minister
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