Theological Triage by Al Mohler

In every generation, the church is commanded to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” That is no easy task, and it is complicated by the multiple attacks upon Christian truth that mark our contemporary age. Assaults upon the Christian faith are no longer directed only at isolated doctrines. The entire structure of Christian truth is now under attack by those who would subvert Christianity’s theological integrity.

Today’s Christian faces the daunting task of strategizing which Christian doctrines and theological issues are to be given highest priority in terms of our contemporary context. This applies both to the public defense of Christianity in face of the secular challenge and the internal responsibility of dealing with doctrinal disagreements. Neither is an easy task, but theological seriousness and maturity demand that we consider doctrinal issues in terms of their relative importance. God’s truth is to be defended at every point and in every detail, but responsible Christians must determine which issues deserve first-rank attention in a time of theological crisis.

A trip to the local hospital Emergency Room some years ago alerted me to an intellectual tool that is most helpful in fulfilling our theological responsibility. In recent years, emergency medical personnel have practiced a discipline known as triage – a process that allows trained personnel to make a quick evaluation of relative medical urgency. Given the chaos of an Emergency Room reception area, someone must be armed with the medical expertise to make an immediate determination of medical priority. Which patients should be rushed into surgery? Which patients can wait for a less urgent examination? Medical personnel cannot flinch from asking these questions, and from taking responsibility to give the patients with the most critical needs top priority in terms of treatment.

The same discipline that brings order to the hectic arena of the Emergency Room can also offer great assistance to Christians defending truth in the present age. A discipline of theological triage would require Christians to determine a scale of theological urgency that would correspond to the medical world’s framework for medical priority. With this in mind, I would suggest three different levels of theological urgency, each corresponding to a set of issues and theological priorities found in current doctrinal debates.  Continue at Refocusing Our Eyes

The Velvet Covered Sword ...where are the Christian men more Concerned about the Truth than Niceness?

There is a feminization going on in evangelicalism today that has recently spilled over to the blogosphere. It has manifested itself by saying things like,

"All you truth-detectors and discernment watch-dogs are just so nasty all the time... Can't we all just get along? Just be nice; make nice; play nice; and OOZE nice? I don't think it is loving to criticize others. You're all just a bunch of big 'ol meanies. You think you know it all. If you say anything negative, I'm just going to ignore you. Tissue please... it's just too much to bear..."

These toy-soldiers carry what I call "a velvet covered sword." It's lightweight, easy to wield, isn't designed for battle, takes little strength to lift it, looks inviting, and won't cut too deep for fear of offending too greatly. It's like reading the ESV or NASB; and then one day you pickup up a copy of The Message thinking that it too is a Bible; when all that it is, is just a velvet covered sword. Continue Reading>>>

WHAT MAKES MUSIC... CHRISTIANLY?...contending for biblical theology in CCM

Knowing God - Not Feeling God
In Christian music we are missing the key pillar, the cornerstone, which the other two rely upon - sound doctrine! There has already occurred a much needed return to praise and worship in the church and we’ve observed that across the board in evangelicalism. There is also a renewed heightened call for more personal ecclesiastical accountability.[6] Though we have not arrived in those areas, we are on the path, nevertheless, the Achilles heel of our industry is the blatant absence of sound biblical theology which has effected every level of Christian music.

This is most evident in it’s message. Christian music, originally called Jesus Music that once fearlessly sang about the gospel, now sings of a Christ-less, watered-down, pabulum-based, positive alternative, cream of wheat, mush-kind-of-syrupy God-as-my-girlfriend thing. There is an obvious reason this has taken place: artists primarily feel; theologians primarily think. We need artists who will balance their zeal with knowledge[7] to invest their lives in the daily discipline of Bible study, and then, to write with the fire, passion and enthusiasm which that study has illumined to communicate the glorious language of the church - the holy Word of God! Until this occurs, we are guilty of sentencing a generation of Christians to simply “feel” their God, rather than to know their God! In the early days of my own music ministry I wrote songs that neither represented good music or precise theology. It is out of the crucible of those experiences that God convicted me, which drives me to speak passionately to these issues. Read the rest HERE