Have You Abandoned Your Beliefs Without Meaning To?

What is this page about?

Try this. Think of yourself at the age of fifteen. Write one sentence about what you believed then on each of four things: baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the creed your family said, and how a person is saved. Now write what you believe about these four things today.

Are the two lists different? Then here is the question of this page. When did the change happen? Which year? Which sermon? Which talk?

Most people cannot say. This is not because they forget things. There was no such moment, because nobody decided anything. Their beliefs just moved, like a boat when nobody is rowing.

Nobody here says that you may not change your mind. People change their minds about serious things, and sometimes they are right. This page is about a change that nobody made. People only took it in, little by little.

Both sides agree on much. Teaching is a real calling. A hearer should respect his teacher. A church full of suspicious people would be a sad place. The difference is small. Is there a public standard outside both men? And is it loyal or disloyal to look at it?

The short answer

1. Checking is normal. It is not rude. With a house or an operation, you use experts fully, and you still keep the last word. You check their training. You ask a second expert. You ask what else is possible and what can go wrong.
2. In America, the law says that a doctor must tell you the other choices. A decision without that information is not really a decision.
3. With beliefs, almost nobody does any of this. And this decision lasts the longest.
4. The Bible praises people who check their teacher. See Part 2.
5. No passage in the Bible praises a hearer for not checking.
6. The work of a teacher is real, and checking honours it. See Part 3.
7. The churches built the protection themselves. When a man becomes a minister in an old church, he says aloud, in front of people, which written text he will teach under. You can read that text tonight, for free. In one church he even promises to report it himself if his own views change.
8. Where there is no such text, there is nothing to compare with. A short statement of faith can be fully true and say nothing about baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the church or the creeds. But these are the things that change. Then the only standard is the man.
9. Nobody can see this change. Nothing is announced. Nothing is signed. There is no date. If you choose a bad house, the roof leaks within a year. Here nothing ever shows.
10. Each year it becomes harder to ask. In the first month, a question costs nothing. After ten years, your friends are there, and you have taught the new belief to others. Now a question feels like saying, “I was wrong.”
11. The teacher does not pay the cost. He keeps his church and his calling. You pay it. And your children pay it. They will receive the change as “our family’s religion” and never know that there was a change.

Does the Bible tell hearers to check?

Here are seven sentences. Does the Bible say each one?

1. Hearers are praised because they studied the Scriptures every day to see if an apostle’s words were true. Yes.

Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

Acts 17:11 · World English Bible

In simple words: The people of Berea were more noble than the people of Thessalonica. They were very ready to hear the message. And every day they studied the Scriptures to see if these things were true.

They received the message gladly, and they checked it daily. Both are in one sentence.

2. Paul says that people must not accept even him, or an angel, if he brings a different gospel. Yes (Galatians 1:8). Paul makes the message the standard. He puts himself under it.

3. Paul corrected Peter openly when Peter was wrong. Yes. Paul writes: “I resisted him to his face” (Galatians 2:11).

4. A church is told to respect preaching and to test everything, in the same passage. Yes. “Don’t despise prophecies. Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:20–21)

5. Paul warns church leaders that false teachers will come from among the leaders themselves. Yes (Acts 20:29-30). This one decides the argument. The danger can come from inside. So it is no protection to simply trust the teacher that everyone accepts.

6. Hearers are told to believe every spirit, because testing is proud. No. The Bible says the opposite: “don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits” (1 John 4:1). This was written to ordinary believers.

7. Somewhere in the Bible a church is praised because it accepted its teacher’s word and did not check it. No. There is no such passage.

“But the Bible tells us to obey our leaders”

This is the serious argument, and it needs a serious answer.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they watch on behalf of your souls, as those who will give account

Hebrews 13:17 · World English Bible

In simple words: Obey your leaders and do what they say. They watch over your souls, and they must answer for their work.

That is real authority. This page does not make it smaller.

But read the whole sentence. The leaders “will give account”. To whom? To God. For what? For what they taught you. This tells us something. If the leader himself was the final standard, he would have nothing to answer for. He has authority. He is not the measure.

It is the same in other parts of life. A soldier obeys his officer. But the officer is under the law. When the soldier knows that the law exists, he is not rebelling. And you follow the doctor’s orders before an operation. You do not think that the doctor decides what medicine is.

Look at the other passage that people use. It says that God gave pastors and teachers. And it says why: so that Christians grow up, and so that

we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine

Ephesians 4:14 · World English Bible

In simple words: we will not be like children any more, who are pushed here and there by every new teaching, as waves are pushed by the wind

Think of a person who believes what he heard most recently and has never compared it with anything. He is exactly the person that this verse wants to help. He may be faithful and generous in every other way.

What checking means here:

• Read, one time, what your own church wrote down.
• Ask your teacher a clear question, in private and politely. Listen to the answer.
• Hear the other side from a person who really holds it.
• Notice if the answers fit together.

What checking does not mean:

• to stop a sermon;
• to correct anyone in public;
• to judge every sentence the teacher says;
• to think that he is dishonest because you disagree;
• to leave. This page says nothing about leaving.

On this one small point, churches that agree about very little agree with each other. Luther wrote a small book in 1523. It says that a Christian church has the right and the duty to judge what it is taught. The leaders of the Orthodox churches wrote in 1848 that the whole body of the church, the people, guards the faith. The Catholic book of teaching says that ordinary members have the right, and sometimes the duty, to tell their pastors what they think, with respect.

Ten years, step by step

Here is a story about a person. This page made it up. At each step, ask: has anyone decided anything?

1. You visit a new church. Nothing is decided. At this moment the question “What do you teach here about baptism?” would cost you nothing. Almost nobody asks it.
2. You stay, because the people are kind and the preaching is warm. Nothing is decided.
3. Over two years you hear many short remarks from the front. “Some people think a few drops of water on a baby did something.” Nobody gives reasons. So there is nothing to examine. Ten such remarks do what one long sermon could not do.
4. Someone suggests that you should be baptized “properly”. You are. Nothing was decided. But something was done that cannot be undone. You acted on the new belief before you ever examined it.
5. You begin to teach the new belief to others, in a small group or to your children. Now the belief has a second owner. It would be painful for you to open the question again.
6. Year ten. Someone asks, “When did you change your mind about baptism?” There was no such moment. Ten years passed. One act cannot be undone. You taught the belief to others. And no decision is anywhere in the story. One question in the first month could have changed it, at no cost.

Who pays the cost?

Think the best of the teacher. He is honest. He has studied. He holds his belief with his whole heart. The point is still true.

If he is right, he loses nothing. If he is wrong, he still loses nothing that you can count. He keeps his church, his calling and his friends. He does not feel wrong, because an honest mistaken person never does. The Bible says that he must answer to God for his teaching. This page does not make light of that. But it happens where none of us can see.

You are in a different place in one way. You are the one who acted. Your baptism, your children’s baptism, the shape of your family’s week, and what you now think about your parents’ faith all changed.

And then the children. A change like this does not come to them as a change. It comes to them as the family’s religion. Nobody will tell them that there was a change. Nobody is hiding it. After ten years, nobody in the house feels it as a change any more.

Two generations later, a grandchild cannot check anything. To check, he would have to know that there is something to compare with, and what it is called. He has never heard its name. The old standard was not rejected. It was forgotten. That is a more complete way to lose something. It took one generation, and there was no argument.

Check it yourself

Here are six things. The first three take one afternoon and cost nothing.

1. Read Acts 17:10-12. What did the people of Berea do? To whom? What does the Bible call them?
2. Read Ephesians 4:11-16, and then Hebrews 13:7-9 and 13:17. Why were teachers given? To whom must leaders answer?
3. Read what the church of your childhood wrote about baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Read the text itself, not someone’s description of it. It is free online.
4. Find out if your present church has a written statement of its beliefs. Does it answer these four questions: What is baptism? What is the Lord’s Supper? What is the church? Does it hold the creeds?
5. Ask a person who holds the belief that you left to explain it in his own words.
6. Do this one. Ask your teacher one question, in private and politely, as a real question: “What do you believe about the baptism I received as a baby? And what is given in the Lord’s Supper?” Whatever he says, you will know something tonight that you did not know this morning. You will also learn what it cost to ask.