October 18, 2025
Vol. 8, Issue 6 (Fall 2025)
We all have a theology. Even if you have bad theology, you still believe something about God. And what you believe about God matters a great deal.
Everything we know about God comes from the Bible. No correct idea of God has come merely from a doctorate or a pastor or a teacher who had some clever ideas. The Bible is the only reliable data and information we have about God. The only things we can know about God is what is written for us in the pages of the Bible and what He has revealed to us about Himself in Christ.
What we believe about God is so important, because what we believe determines what we practice. An incorrect view of God produces incorrect practices and behaviors. On the other hand, a correct view of God produces correct practices and behaviors. What you believe about God affects your entire life.
Now, firstly, you don’t have to understand everything. That’s not what I’m saying. But for example, if I believe that God is angry and always mad at me no matter what I do, that is going to affect me greatly. If I really believe that, then that’s going to cause me to live a certain way in light of that belief. Now, say I believe that God doesn’t care. Say I believe that He created the world and just left it alone. I don’t believe He cares what I do or how I live, or if I’m happy or suffering. Say I don’t believe that God cares about me at all. If that’s what I truly believe, then you can see how that would profoundly affect my view of life and how I choose to live.
I believe that many Christians are engaging in a lot of wrong practices and behaviors because they have extra-biblical and incorrect beliefs about God. But this is what the Bible does for us—it tells us who God is. So, if you do not read the Bible, you will form an incorrect view of God based on your own or others’ opinions. Then, those incorrect beliefs will profoundly and negatively affect your life.
Theology, the study of God, and doctrine, simply what we believe, have both become dirty words in many churches. There are many teachers today who teach things that come from nowhere in the Bible; their teachings come from their culture or from their own imaginations. This may shock you, but there are too many teachers today who don’t want their parishioners studying through Scripture for themselves because they’re afraid of them believing the Bible’s teachings over their teachings. These type of teachers only want to retain control over their people; they do not have as much interest in their church’s spiritual development and growth.
I’ve said this to youth groups and in the pulpit to those listening to my teaching and preaching: “If you ever hear me say something that doesn’t line up with what the Bible says, don’t believe me; believe God. I am human, and I can be wrong. But God is never wrong. If it comes to either believing me or believing God, you’ve got to go with God every time.”
The late Voddie Bauchum said, “‘The Lord told me’ is no substitute for ‘The Bible says.’” It’s good to read and to listen to preachers, but that is never a replacement for Scripture. It’s good to have people you can trust who will teach you truth; but you can’t depend on ministers to tell you everything the Bible has to say in a 40 minute sermon one day a week. The most reliable source of information about God is the Bible. Just go straight to the Bible for yourself.
Let me close with this excerpt from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis:
They all say “the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion.” I have rejected their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means “the science of God,” and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children?….
If a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it.
In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together…. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God….
And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map…. That is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.
The Azusa Weekly 