The Makililimos and Me

Most people know that there is real, hard poverty here, with people openly begging on the street, at intersections and in front of churches. Depending on where in the city you may be, you might be noticed by someone who is begging, and they might know enough English to walk up to you and say, “Hey! Give me money!”. This can be jarring. Other times it’s when you are coming out of Mcdo (McDonalds for you Americans) and there will be a small, shoeless, disheveled kid who is barely whispering, asking for money or food. This can be devastating.

Mga makililimos (beggars) are sometimes people in legitimate need. Some can't walk, they might be missing limbs, or they just might be able to physically work any longer. Others, we've been told, don't want to work, they may own farms but don't want to work them, or their parents might have "too many kids" to take care of and so they send them out on the street to beg for food or money to take back to their family.

Initially we were told to not give money to anyone begging. This is, after all, what we tell team members.  If we did, we’re told, they would come to expect us to continue to give to them every single time we see them, since many makililimos hang out in the same spots.

This was hard for us, but it was especially hard on Hollie. The kids who would beg always look so sad and Hollie wants to just pick them up and take them home and take care of them.

After being here for a while we had a chance to ask our teacher about mga makililimos and the proper response that we should have when we go to the mall or to the city plaza and run into someone begging. She said that we can indeed give something, but we just need to be careful and we need to be discerning. Just like in other parts of the world (I'm assuming) a preferred method of missionaries is to give food to beggars so that money would not be given to possible drug addicts or an alcoholics and something nourishing and life giving is obtained. We were told to especially look for the kids with things hidden in their shirts who were begging. They were sniffing glue or other inhalants. They most likely they were kids who ran away from the child service homes.  

So we began to notice, to look at the people holding their hands out, looking for mercy. They are not nuisances, merely noise to ignore while you wait for the light to turn to cross the street. These are people,often hurting people, made in the image of God, lovingly crafted, hand-knit in their mother's womb and loved by the Father enough to send His Son to die on the cross so that they could know hope for an eternal blessing that comes with faith in Christ. These are people who have stories, families, friends, good days and bad. To say it another way: they may not be clean and presentable, they may not be one of the fashionable Christian causes at the moment, and some of them may lie to your face and try to take advantage of you, but they are people.

They are people.

Now i want to tell a short story about one of these people, these mga makililimos. I don't know his name, but I have seen him three times now I think, and each time it is shortly after we have had a conversation about responses to beggars. The first time I saw him, I'm deeply ashamed to say, I hid from him. It was afternoon around one or so when I heard what sound like an old man singing. "Maayong hapon! Maayong hapon!" I may not remember all the words to his song, but basically he is saying "Good afternoon! Good afternoon! Would you like to bless me today? Good afternoon sir, good afternoon mam!" He would walk up to each apartment and stand outside of the gate singing, most people ignored him and stayed inside. Since we were still trying to acclimatize ourselves to Philippine weather all of our doors and windows were wide open and the girls were watching tv and singing the Doc McStuffins theme song loudly, so we couldn't just ignore him and act like we weren't home or something.

But man did I try.

Since at this time we still thought that we shouldn't give to anyone asking for money, I tried (in vain) to quiet the girls and get them to go upstairs as quickly and quietly as possible. Sophia asked me why we were doing this and asked what the man was doing, and I regurgitated what we were told. We hid upstairs until he was clear from the entire complex.

The next time I saw the makililimos was after we had been here a while longer. We had a chance to ask our teacher about begging (our lesson was on begging and actually how to relate to people we encounter begging. She told us that we should give, but we just need to be careful, we just need to be discerning to whom we gave money. I heard him singing just like before, 'Maayong utdo sir! Maayong utdo mam!' This time I went out to take a look, to see him this time.

When I walked up to the gate where he was standing I noticed that he was an older man, dirty and stiff clothes with worn flip-flops. His face was smudged with dirt but his eyes lit up when I actually looked at him, when I acknowledged him instead of treating him like a good work or a nuisance. He blessed me a few times as I gave him 10 pesos, singing happily on his way next door.

The more and more I think about this the more I wonder about the role that following what is called "host culture" plays in ministry. I firmly believe that as Christians, no matter where we live or where we are from, we are essentially "above" or “outside” the culture, not cherry-picking parts that we like or don't like of the values and mores that we find in our surroundings, but because our first citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven, and our values come from that kingdom and the Bible. We cannot just adopt any and all of the culture of the Philippines, but just like American (and all other human cultures) it is fallen and corrupt.

So what does the Bible say about giving? What does the Bible say about how to take care of the poor?

In the Old Testament, God gives quite a few laws with regards to taking care of the less fortunate among the Israelites. One such law is  that they need to leave some of their field unharvested so that the poor can come and get what they need to survive (Deut. 24:19-22). We are told all throughout Scripture how we need to treat the poor, and how they are the receivers of God’s justice and care.

We are told that we will always have the poor among us (John 12:8) and we even have the example of churches collecting money to give to the poor (Gal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 16:1).  We are told by Christ that we if someone asks for money we need to give to that person without asking or expecting anything in return. The money that is in our pockets and bank accounts are not ours, but all money, everything, belongs to God (Psalm 50:8-12). It’s not our money, it’s God’s. Since it belongs to Him, doesn’t that mean that He gets to decide how it is used? If He tells us to use what He has blessed us with to bless others and to be His hands and His feet to take care of others, then what in the world is stopping us?

The hard part for all of this is trying to be discerning. How do we make the call that this person is actually in need but that person is trying to get money out of you by pretending that they are collecting “tithes” for their church? Prayer and wisdom are the best answers that I’ve found. Praying for the poor and for your eyes to be opened so that you can see the needs that are in front of you is important. Seeing people as they really are will be crucial to being discerning. Wisdom is the actual use of discernment. Unfortunately, wisdom typically comes through trial and error, which takes time.

Giving to the poor and taking care of those who are in need is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian. We can’t not give to the poor and call ourselves Believers. We also can’t simply make a blanket statement that all people who are begging or panhandling or whatever are simply looking for a hand-out. Even if we did do that, what are we doing? Thinking that they just need to get a job or that there sad state is solely their fault and therefore they do not deserve mercy from us? This reminds me of the dying words of Martin Luther, “We are all beggars, this is true.”

We are all beggars, waiting with open hands for mercy from God.

A Few Thoughts

What happened over the last weekend in Charlottesville is horrible. A person lost their life. Sin reared its ugly head. Hundreds of lost people had their hearts hardened even more by the sins of others and their own sinfulness. Let's make no mistake about it, we are talking about sin. Is bigotry bad? Yes. But is it worse than lying? Or adultery? Or stealing, or idolatry? Before you get upset that I just equated racism with lying, consider this:

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:10-13)

We need to realize that there is no innocent party here. All of us have sinned, all of us have had hard, hate-filled thoughts about the people that we disagree with over the alt-right, the BLM and anyone and everyone in between. John tells us that if we say we hate our brother we cannot have the love of God within us. This, for Christians, is serious business. I have seen good Christians on social media say, with pride, that they would punch neo-nazis, or yell and try to drown-out those that they are against. What is this? Why are we acting like this? Do we not know that since we have our citizenship in heaven we need to be actually acting like we don't belong here? Yes, of course we are supposed to be trying to affect change in the world! But why are we trying to do that by using the same idiotic and sinful means that those outside the church are using? Shouldn't we be against all of that- the hate-filled rhetoric, the verbal abuse, the aggressive body language and physical violence against others? Shouldn’t we be against it entirely, including using it? As believers we don't try to fight fire with fire. We fight everything with the Gospel of Christ and the blood that He shed on the cross to deal with this mess. Am I saying there is not racism and bigotry in the church? No, because there definitely is racism in the church, and it definitely needs to be dealt with. Christ’s sheep have been hurt by racism. What I am saying is that if we are called by Christ's name, we are doing pretty crappy jobs of representing Him to a people who don’t yet have relationship with Him. We need to understand that those brothers and sisters that are black or hispanic have indeed faced different trails and problems, different hurts and pains. They have experienced injustice and racism, and we have to face that at some points in church history, the church itself has been the force behind that pain.

I have also read weak whimpers of Christian leaders whose words betray that they care more about national unity and the "bullying" of the president than they care about the Church and how it has the words and the means to actually heal. Are they our words? No, they are the Words of Christ, but we, as His Church, can wield them as a balm to heal and restore, or a sword with which to cut down. In Jeremiah, God denounces the leaders of Israel (the kings, priests, and prophets) for calling out "peace peace" when everything around them was burning. As leaders in churches, we have the responsibility to call out sin in the world, to be that prophetic voice. But if we fail to point out that the Gospel is the ONLY way that anything can actually change, then we have failed as ministers. If we suggest that protesting and yelling and being angry (whether "righteously" or not) is the "only way" things will get better in America then we have failed. If we forget that, as sinners, we ourselves cannot eradicate sin from our lives, much less a society, and forget to point to the Gospel as the means to defeat sin, then we have failed.  As believers we cannot be surprised that sinners sin. Let me repeat that. As believers we cannot be surprised that sinners sin. What else can we expect of them? Why are we holding unbelievers to the same standard that we need to hold each other to? When did we become God, the one who Judges?

Yes, we need to see that racism is a sin. It demeans the image of God that is in every single person. It inherently says that you are against God, how He made humanity, and His purposes in creation. A black man, Richard Spencer, and a poor Filipino fisherman all have the same inherent value as a being created in the image of God. This. Is. A. Fact. And this fact must lead us to believe that they have worth. They deserve to be treated as humans. Not anything else. This means that anybody who is a human 1) is a sinful creature whose rebellious actions against God are justly punished and 2) is yet loved as a creature that God lovingly formed in the womb.

Racism is sinful and it is a sin committed against "outsiders" because those outside of a particular group are not like those inside of that particular group. They are "different".

But outsiders of what exactly? What are the people who are against immigrants and people of different races actually for in these instances? Are they for a race, a flag, a president, themselves? It seems to me that if we as Christians put our hope in this country and what happens here, then we have put our faith in the flag and not the cross. If we are putting our faith in any politician as someone who can fix our country's problems then we have our faith in the flag and not the cross. If we are too stuck on fixing America without preaching the Gospel and reaching out to heal and to help, then we have put our faith in the flag and not the cross.  If you happen to be one of the thirty or so people who read this and are one of those people who seem to care more for your political idolatry than taking the gospel to the unreached, taking care of the poor and needy, or standing up for the oppressed then I will stop right here and tell you to repent from your idolatrous ideology and nationalism. Turn to put your faith in Christ and not the United States. Christ and His church will outlast any and all governments. This glorious fact makes lines that we draw on a map differentiating where "our land" is from "their land" so that "we" can keep "them" out seem very silly. That is a small thing in light of history and eternity. If you put your hope in those lines or that flag, that is a sinful thing. If you put your faith in the color of your skin, thereby dehumanizing another because they have more melanin than you? That's wicked.

Ok, let's all take a breath....

Something else we all need to remember is that sin, of any type, will never truly go away with the passing of time until the coming of Christ. While reading article after article about all of this white supremacy nonsense a line jumped out at me. It said that people thought that feelings like this (racism) had been buried long ago (and were, therefore, somehow forgotten), and the people of America were surprised by this seeming reemerging of this particular sin. Once we recognize any sin as sin, then we have to wrestle with the reality that we cannot put sin to death by our own strength. Yet as Americans we tend to feel that everything is within our reach and everything is doable with enough time, patience and grit. Just enough elbow grease and we can tackle any problem thrown our way. Except our sin. Except our spiritual deadness. Except our condemnation as rebels under the wrath of God.

Oops.

Sin will not go away. It will always be there. We can't defeat racism. Anyone that tells you that we can is a liar. Anyone that tells you we can defeat X sin and eradicate it from the face of the earth is selling you snake oil. Don't listen to them! We, as finite sinful creatures, cannot run from our sin, especially if we are trapped in the shackles of it. We need to stop with the idea that we can kill racism, or poverty, or lying, or cheating, or stealing, etc. We can't. We don't have the strength to do any of that.

But there is One who can. If we run to the cross we can find the death of sin. If we run to the cross we will find the end of evil and despair. If we run to the cross, repent and believe in Christ, that He is the one who took our sin and died when we should have been the ones suffering in agony for the weight of sin and misery that we have caused with our hands....then we can be free. While we still live in the flesh we will still wrestle with sin, this is true. But sin is defeated for those in Christ. We are no longer held in bondage to our sin. And we have hope that one day (hopefully soon!) sin and death will be defeated for good and Christ will put an end to all of our suffering on this earth with its renewal.

So where do we go from there as Christians? If racism is wicked and if its not going away, what are we supposed to do? I think walking through a few passages of Scripture will help us to maybe see what some practical next steps for "regular" Christians might be.

We start in Genesis. In chapters 1-3 we see marvelous things happening. The creation of the world. The separation and organization of the universe under the care and management of the Creator. We also see horror happen as our parents fall into sin and bring misery upon the creation, distorting and twisting and marring what God called good a few chapters before. But we see a promise. We see God extend His grace with the protoevangelium, the first preaching of the gospel by God Himself to Adam and Eve. He tells the woman that the serpent will bruise the heel of her Son and He will crush the head of the snake, in this we look forward to Christ's work on the cross.

After the people get things really messed up and God tries to start clean with Noah and his family we have the Tower of Babel. This is where we sinned against God in our arrogance trying to raise ourselves up to His level. He responds by confusing our language. Already right here we can see the inevitable. We can see here the beginnings of an “us” against “them” mentality as humanity splits up among languages and form bonds and communities and eventually nations and kingdoms by this division of languages. We are able to see that we are fractured and separated and divided and it is because of sin that we are like that.

But after the ascension of Christ we have a reversal of that event. Pentecost is the undoing of the curse of Babel. God gifts the apostles with the ability to speak and preach in the languages of other nations so that the Gospel can be preached and the reuniting of humanity back together under God along with all of creation can begin to take place in earnest.

The launch of the church is the reconciliation of humanity to God but also of humanity to itself. We see this in Ephesians 2:13-16. God is bringing people who are far away together in Christ by the cross. He is our peace, we have nothing else separating us because Christ has broken down the walls of hostility that divided us. That is more than just the law, because Paul talks about there being no national distinctions among Christians because all are one in Christ. So if we are white, or brown, or black, if we are American, Filipino, Korean, if we are in Christ not one of those markers define us. In Christ we are not Americans, because that is not the identity we have in Christ. In Christ we are not black or white, because that is not a part of the identity that we have in Christ. The idea of ethnic or cultural Christianity and it being a European cultural marker is a bald faced lie. Christianity, true Christian faith, does not recognize the boundaries of made up countries. Are there actual differences between believers? Of course! Most Sundays it is mentally taxing to try to overcome the language barrier that we face at the church we attend here in the Philippines, but does that actually separate us from one another? No way! I am more closely related to those brothers and sisters whom I can barely speak with than any of my biological family that is not Christian. So we must see that we are united in Christ, we are one only in Him, because He has not only taken our sin, He has taken the things that kept us apart in hostility and killed all of it on the cross.

So what exactly am I trying to say here? We need to face reality. Sin and racism are not going away, and they never have. It is an ugly truth, but sin is ugly. But we can have hope if instead of trying to navel-gazing we take an eternal look at this situation. We can see that the issues that divide our country right now, real issues that affect real people, is sin that will be dealt with by Christ at His coming. And until then we must do two things. First, we must preach the gospel faithfully, because this gospel helps us to see that our sin is real, and it is deep and ugly and the only thing that can deal with it is Christ. It also helps us to see that all that sin does in separating us is undone in Christ because of the cross. So we preach the gospel because it really and truly is the only hope that anybody has, whether they are American or not. And second, we must strive daily to be a better representative of who Christ is. That Gospel that we are to be preaching commands us to love like Christ loves, bear each others burdens, take care of the poor and the oppressed, be salt and light.

What Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

We live here in the Philippines. Since you are reading this post, there is a good chance you already knew that. We have been here since the middle of January of this year, and at times it feels like we are just screaming so fast (pas-pas kaayo) through the year. Other times it feels like a single day takes about a month. It's now the middle of August, and we have celebrated all of the girls birthdays, and we are looking forward to being done with our formal language study and moving on to (possibly) moving closer to where we will be working. We are hoping to really focus our energies on training and helping local pastors equip their churches to go and do the work, as the gospel moves, we move with it, helping to train and lead and guide new churches as the Holy Spirit directs us.

Tons of stuff has happened to us, but all of it seems small sometimes. I've shared my fair share of events and adventures here, and Hollie has through the Newsletter and we've both shared on facebook. Here's the thing that everyone knows about moving to a new place: you actually move on. People drift apart, you send fewer and fewer messages to each other, friends that you would have given your left kidney for are harder to get in contact with. It happens. People get busy, they meet new friends, they get wrapped up in the day to day and their life in a new local. The people you leave behind press in to the remaining people surrounding them and they too meet new friends and get pulled into their lives. Family and friends both suffer from the long distance relationship that you have been put in. And while everyone says they will keep in touch, that we will call and talk every weekend, that is almost a nicety, something that sounds hollow because we almost all know that in reality, it's not going to happen.

We've tried to keep in touch, we really have. I (Jeff) have tried to message at least three people from Solid Rock a week, though more often than not it tends to be forgotten. Some of them have been happy accidents, like when Craig Moss's finger fumbled and he video called me. We had a really good talk for like an hour and a half! Hollie has tried to keep in contact as well, and she too has had varying success. Good video calls. Good chats with friends, but no matter how much we talk on facebook messenger or whatsapp, it just doesn't feel like enough.
And we know that it won't be enough, it can't be enough. We (all of us) have invested time into the relationships that we have and wrenching people apart for any reason, much less ministry, makes it difficult and painful to maintain those relationships.

For us though there seems to be an added measure. Since we are missionaries, we are viewed as odd, no odd isn't the right word is it? Outsiders? Super-Christians? Hmm...well, regardless of what the word actually is, feeling we get is that we are different. In some ways we are. Most American families live in America, they have "normal" jobs and their kids don't have to learn another language just so they can play with the neighborhood kids. But we are still very similar in quite a few crucial ways. We still have problems, we still have struggles, we still have trials and temptations. We have the responsibilities to help care for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We also have a normal life here: We get up and have breakfast, do our work, hang out with our kids, go shopping, run errands, deal with jerks in traffic. We still need Christian community. We still need encouragement and prayer, and we need to be able to encourage and pray for our church family back home. While I know for a fact that we do indeed get that support from our church, it is hard to give that support back. When we message people asking about how they are doing and what things they need prayer for they seem confused. 'Why would I need prayer compared to you?' We had quite a few people who actually said things like "Me? Shouldn't I be praying for you?" Of course! But we are still family, still people who were created for community. And foreign missions is sometimes very lonely. For as much as I want to think that I can go alone with just my family, I know it's not true. I need community, I need to not only get support from brothers and sisters, I need to be able to give it.

I'm not trying to shame anyone with this. I'm not trying to make anyone upset. All I am saying is we miss you guys. We want to know what's going on in your lives, even if it is all happening half a world away. We want to be able to pray for you here, and tell our Local Family ways they can pray for our Stateside Family, ways they can lift you guys up with us. Trust me, we want to help you carry your burdens just as much as we want to share our own with you. We want that communication, we want the late night video calls or the early morning message marathons. So don't feel like you don't want to burden us with your problems, go ahead and write those long emails, snail mail, carrier pigeon, bisan unsa (what ever)!

The Importance of Theology in the Christian Life

Now, I love theology. I love the popular theology books as well as the more academic theological books. I love to try to see how the theologian tries to make his case for his particular view, use (or misuse) Scripture and other authors as argument or counter-argument. I enjoy (in the most Christian and holy sense) to see someone take another person to the floor (figuratively speaking) for their bad use of Scripture or church history or logic.

It's not just the reading of big books by people with phd behind their name or the big ideas being thrown around and discussed. It's the community experience of theology. Theology should be a community experience, where people pray through and discuss the big thoughts of our glorious God as revealed in the Bible. That is where iron sharpens iron and we grow in our knowledge of God, are corrected for faulty or dangerous beliefs and generally grow in fondness and adoration of God, the ultimate subject of theology.

But sadly, most people don't feel this way. Now are our home church I was blessed to be involved with multiple people who loved reading and discussing theology almost every time we saw each other. Most lay people nowadays are afraid to read theology, or they don't know where to begin, or, even worse, they think that its not important to living a fulfilling Christian life.

Why is that? Why would people shy away from studying the big things of God? One reason is that they see theology as a purely academic exercise, reserved for seminary professors or really smart pastors. Others think that they are not theologians because they were taught that learning (when it comes to the Bible) what other people think about the Bible is dangerous and that if you learn about the various atonement theories or whatever you are squelching the Spirit from being able to lead you. Others actually see doctrine as being divisive, and they see how people can get worked up over whether one holds to a amil, post-mil, or pre-mil view of the end-times and they don't want to be apart of that and either be hurt or hurt someone else over something as "silly" as theology.

All of these excuses are really bad. They ultimately show that the people who hold them don't understand the importance of theology in the life of the Christian, even the average, run of the mill believer who has never taught a Sunday-School class or even been asked to lead prayer at the annual men's breakfast. They don't understand that what you believe actually matters, that they influence your views of God, His work in the world, in salvation, in history and in your life. They don't understand that theology, when done right, leads to praise and adoration of God. They don't see that through reading and discussing various doctrines of the church they are actually growing in godliness and intimacy not only with God but also with the people they are discussing these glorious topics. They have a stagnant Christian life and they think that everything is hunky-dory simply because they go to church on Sundays and have no interaction with the Bible on deeper levels of thinking, really dwelling on the Word and thinking about the implications of how a particular passage plays out in the real world, because that is what theology is!

So let's take a quick look at some of the excuses that I gave and try to talk through them a bit, this is in no way comprehensive, there is so much more that can be said in each of these points. Ok, here we go!

1. Theology as Academic
One of the main problems that the church faces is that most of the local congregations are theologically weak and anemic. Sure the pastor and teachers may be up on what's going on in the theological world, but quite a few people see it as a specialized field of academia. I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying there is a problem with that. Theology is first and foremost for the church as a whole. It should not be just for those ivory tower guys, but theology is also for people living in the trenches of everyday life. Studying various doctrines of God and His immutability could help remind a person whose life is spinning out of control that God never changes, and therefore will keep His promises. Or someone who has prayerfully studied through the doctrine of assurance can rest a bit easier when he is having a dark night of the soul.

2. Learning about the Bible is dangerous
This, for some reason, is the excuse that you hear from mostly rural churches that are in the Deep South. Or Arkansas. The people who think that all that education at a Bible college will mess you up and turn you into an atheist and a democrat, so don't mess with books, even about the Bible. This is so crazy, considering the multiple places in the Bible itself that we are told to guard the deposit of faith, to make sure that we are qualified to teach and preach the gospel correctly, to be able to rightly divide the Word. To be able to understand and properly interpret the Bible is very important, not just for pastors, but for the average layman. As Baptists, we believe in the priesthood of believers and therefore we all have the right and responsibility to read the Bible and should be able to interpret the Bible. The fear of education corrupting good men called to the ministry comes from the modernist/fundamental crises from over a century ago, where seminaries actually did corrupt and destroy the faith of good men because of bad theology. But now there are good books by good men who love the Bible and all that it contains, who want for the men who preach in the pulpit to be able to read, interpret and defend his own sermon and approach to interpreting the Bible, and therefore their faith. I would be hard pressed to find any pastor worth his salt who said that he would rather not have a theologically (and therefore biblically) literate congregation who had the ability to call his error when it occurs.

3. Doctrine divides
There is a saying, that theology divides, it divides the sheep from the goats. That may sound harsh, but I think that it's true. The fact of the matter is this: everyone is a theologian, everyone believes something. Whether they take what they get from the pulpit as gold and never question their pastor, or get their theology from the plethora of garbage from televangelists who promise God's blessing for a little seed of faith, more money with which to buy their next jet. Or they might get it from the pop section of their local bookstore, where soft heresy is floated as being ok and for the most part, directed at unsuspecting Christian women it seems.
There is good doctrine. There is bad doctrine. The good doctrine agrees with Scripture, the bad does not. The good doctrine will be edifying to the church as a whole and will deepen the relationship of the believer with God and his fellow brothers and sisters. Bad doctrine will cause a person to have a crisis of faith when God is not blessing them the way they feel like they deserve, or they will allow sin to be tolerated because they want to be seen as "loving" because they hold to bad doctrine that does not reflect the truth of the Bible.
So yes, doctrine divides, but if we say that we don't want to read and study the glory of God through various doctrines or theology then we are ultimately of the opinion that theology and doctrine is itself, merely opinion and not an attempt to define and explore truth. We will run the risk of having bad theology ourselves, maybe even tricking ourselves into a false sense of security with regards to our salvation. The truth is that theology and doctrine, what we believe and how we articulate it, has eternal weight attached to it. Not all doctrine is of the same level as gospel-level importance. Christian unity is centered on doctrines regarding Christ first, and doctrines that naturally flow out of that (justification, sin, good works, etc.) come to play very important roles within the church. We need to try to make sure that as much as we can, we hold the same theology as the Bible, and good theology starts with the Bible itself. These doctrines are worth dividing over, worth disrupting congregations and denominations over truth. These types of doctrines are precisely why the Protestant Reformation even happened in the first place. Other doctrine, like how the end of the world plays out, whether you are amil or pre-mil, that is not a gospel issue and should not hinder two people from having unity in Christ. Some doctrines are more important than others, some are worth causing division over, some are not, wisdom is learning which is which.

For Christians who have no interest or have a fear of studying theology, I hope they understand there is nothing to be afraid of, as long as we are faithful to God and His Word. Theology and doctrine naturally flow out of a desire to know and understand God better, to take what His Word says, to see how He has revealed Himself to us, and try to articulate that truth.
The next step for us is seeing that theology cannot be done by ourselves in a vacuum. It needs to be first and foremost accompanied by a robust walk with God. One where the Bible is treasured and devoured daily as sustenance to carry us through our various trials and tribulations of our days. If/when we decided to take up theology, then we need to be humble and do so in community, ask your pastor, ask your small group or Sunday-School leader. Read through something with a friend and meet for coffee and discuss it. Pray over your theology, but do not worship it. Pray that it is honoring to God and bringing Him glory.
Once we have begun to study and to revel in the knowledge of our God and King, then we can take the natural next step and worship Him because of what we read and how we grow in grace and understanding.
As the old saying goes, theology leads to doxology.