The doctrinal errors of many Christians
have one or more of these origins
Very often Christians are laden with doctrinal errors that shouldn't master their lives, but enslave them in a merciless way. That is due to flaws in their souls: lack of love for God, for which reason divine truth is not the main objective of their lives, and too often not even an objective. Their ego, their lusts, in general are the main aim in their interests. Those doctrinal errors master them for the following reasons.
a) The almost complete ignorance of the Bible. They all take their Bible to church, to see if what the pastor reads is true; as if the pastor were to lie to them. However, they never turn off the television set to read the Bible alone, without being taken by the hand in their study of God's doctrines.
b) The lack of an integral and coherent vision of Scriptures, due to the fact that they read a passage here and a verse there, and never read the Bible in order from Genesis to Revelation. These brothers usually jump over “what they don't like” and what they consider “not important”.
c) The fact that they study using rigged "courses" on the Bible, or on sectarian doctrines, prepared by the special interests of the sectors, whether religious or political. Many of these “courses” twist the biblical truth to their own liking, resting on the proven psychological truth that states that it is harder for human beings to unlearn what they learned and correct it, than it is to learn something for the first time.
They know that once they
are indoctrinated on an error; very few escape,
if any. A recent case of
“courses” prepared by special interests in the political
sector, twisting Scripture to
gain the sympathy of the Christians they so much
hate, was when they
“interpreted”
prophesy and said that Gog and
Magog were the
d) The almost total absence of a critical spirit in regards to the teachings received. The seminary student or church member, trusting his teachers, believes the doctrines taught, before analyzing them. After he decides to believe them, when someone contradicts him, he tries to find passages to sustain it, instead of doing the opposite: analyze first the doctrine, and believe it later.
Sometimes the absence of a critical spirit is due to the fear of being alienated from the seminary or separated from the church, if he contradicts what he is being taught. If he is a pastor he also is afraid of being ousted and loosing his salary and his retirement. Sometimes the lack of a critical spirit is due to a false notion of loyalty to the sect, the clan or group spirit.
e) The fact that words don't have the meaning they attribute to them. This is a grave semantics problem, because it is as if the brother and the Bible or the brother and his listener spoke two different languages.
f) Using the same word to express two or more things or concepts, without realizing when they say one thing or the other. If in the equation “A + 7 = 11” we have given “A” a value of four; we cannot, without properly clarifying it, say that “A + 5 = 20”, because in this case we are giving “A” a value of 15 and not 4 as we previously did. Doing this causes confusion in our listener, but that is precisely what many do in their debates, especially on religion.
g) Using premises or concepts originated in tradition in order to reason on the truth of our doctrines, as if these concepts were Bible premises. If by tradition we learned that the number 3 equals five units, every time we see 3 x 4 we will say it equals 20, in spite of the fact that it equals 12. All that happens because of the lack of a critical spirit, or fear of being separated from the seminary, being ousted as pastor or being “excommunicated from the sect”.
h) Another problem the Christian faces just like any other human being is the mixture of feelings in the reasoning process. Feelings such as: 1) the fear of offending God if he doubts what they taught him and tries to reason it; 2) the fear of finding a truth that he feels would be too much to bear; 3) lack of faith in God's support by believing that if he reasons, one more intelligent than him can deceive him and make him err on that which, intuitively, he believes to be an absolute truth; 4) fear of changing his doctrine and then have to face the brothers that used to think like him; 5) pride, resistance to admit he was wrong and had not used adequately his intelligence; 6) fear of what is unknown to him, without knowing why he is afraid, etc..
What would be the solution? Read the Bible every day, in sequence; not to fear to be contradicted; realize that if someone “confuses us”, it will be a transitory state, because the Holy Spirit is not going to leave us without help if we really want to find truth, but above all, remember that our Lord Jesus Christ promised in Lk 21:15 that he will give us mouth and wisdom which all our adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.