There were three churches in the town where I grew up.  The doctrinal position of each was well understood and inflexible; none of them would have been considered evangelical.  About the time I began high school, an itinerant evangelist held meetings in a rented hall and people’s hearts were sufficiently stirred that a Baptist congregation was formed.  A minister was found, but when the new congregation affiliated with one of the Baptist denominations, he left.  I never knew whether his departure was voluntary or not.

A few years later he returned as the pastor of another new congregation, this one affiliated with the Associated Gospel Churches.  I am presuming that there was a disagreement on the understanding and application of some point of Christian doctrine.  Those were the days when doctrine meant something and people would discuss earnestly the meaning of various passages of the Bible.  Discuss is the polite word for it, some folks called it arguing, and indeed feelings did get rather warm and words a little sharp at times.

Our little town was a microcosm of the greater society, where the divisions over small points of doctrine spawned a seemingly limitless variety of denominations.  It mattered a lot whether church services were liturgical, evangelical, charismatic or informal in structure.  It mattered whether you believed Christian life began after baptism, before baptism, or as a result of baptism.  Many things mattered, giving rise to lively discussions about which denomination was on the right track in teaching the Bible.  Those discussions provided abundant fodder for humorists and mockers.

It seems that Christians today have seen how divisive that all was and have determined to just all get along.  The important thing today is to be able to testify of having once experienced a warm, fuzzy feeling at the mention of the name of Jesus.  If you have experienced that, nothing much else matters; this makes you a part of the blood washed throng waiting for the Lord’s return.  Bible doctrine has been cast aside, discussions today centre around feelings rather than Scriptures.

This is pietism and it is not an improvement.  When everything is based on having that warm, fuzzy feeling and it doesn’t make much difference what you believe or how you live, haven’t you forfeited the right to call yourselves disciples of Jesus Christ?

Yes, the old divisions were sometimes scandalous, often farcical, but they indicated an underlying conviction that somewhere there was a truth that mattered.  The real scandal was not that people were searching for the truth, but that they stopped before they discovered it.  Yet there were those who did press on until they found the pearl of great price.  Some are still doing so today.  Yet I fear that the warm fog of pietism too easily becomes a comfortable blanket to lull people to sleep before they even realize that there should be something more to being a follower of Jesus Christ.

Experiences do matter.  There has to be a point in the life of each person who claims to be a Christian where they actually had an encounter with the Almighty, all-righteous God, confessed their own unrighteousness and experienced forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ.  But this is not the whole story, only the beginning of a relationship.  As that relationship grows and deepens, a new Christian should be hungry for the Word of God, desiring to know God better and to learn more of His plan for the life of a believer.