The posture of our heart reveals more about who we are than what we do. That doesn’t mean action is superficial. It just means that actions have heart roots, and it doesn’t help anyone to ignore them.

It’s fascinating how much you can learn about secular culture when it’s not trying to express its beliefs. This comes out in films, TV series, and popular fiction, among other places. I guess that’s another piece of support for the argument that we’re most ourselves when no one’s looking.

One theme that comes up repeatedly is very popular, so popular it’s assumed to be a core doctrine: what you do matters more than what you believe. Morality should trump religion. Doing is always worth more than believing.

You can see both the appeal and the danger of the mantra. One the one side, it’s appealing because it seems easier to show goodwill and moral character through actions, especially actions that appear detached from a system of belief (I say “appear” intentionally). In fact, it’s almost as if such acts (e.g., donating to a local food drive, affirming someone’s worth with verbal encouragement, being environmentally conscious, making meals for someone in the hospital) build up credibility for people so that they can (if they dare) someday hint at their personal beliefs. We’d never lead with personal beliefs. In the words of Captain Hook, that would just be “bad form.” On the other side, the morality-over-religion mantra is dangerous because it ignores the truth that all actions are tied to underlying beliefs. There’s no such thing as an action detached from a belief system. There are only actors ignorant of their belief systems.

The greater problem for Christians is that all of this is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Scripture.

In the Beginning There Was Doctrine

I love how J. Gresham Machen could cut cleanly to the heart of an issue simply because he knew his Bible so well. In Things Unseen, he has a chapter that I think is worth the price of the whole book. It’s called “Life Founded upon Truth.” (see my full review here). Here’s some of its wisdom.

Do not be deceived, my friends. This notion that it does not make much difference what a man believes, this notion that doctrine is unimportant and that life comes first, is one of the most devilish errors that is to be found in the whole of Satan’s arsenal. How many human lives it has wrecked, how many mothers’ hearts it has broken! That French novelist is entirely right. Out of the Pandora box of highly respectable philosophy come murders, adulteries, lies, and every evil thing…

What does the Bible say about the question whether doctrine is merely the changing expression of life or whether—the other way around—life is founded upon doctrine? You do not have to read very far in the Bible in order to get the answer. The answer is given to you in the first verse. Does the Bible begin with exhortation; does it begin with a program of life? No, it begins with a doctrine. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). That is the foundational doctrine upon which everything else that the Bible says is based.

The Bible does present a way of life; it tells men the way in which they ought to live, but always when it does so it grounds that way of life in truth.
J. Gresham Machen, Things Unseen, p. 63

In the beginning was a doctrine, a teaching, a truth claim. That’s how Scripture starts. Our first response to revelation is not doing; it’s believing. In the beginning, there was doctrine.

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