Rather than focusing on Christ’s death, burial and resurrection as testified by a multitude of reliable witnesses and written in advance throughout the Scriptures, many Christians today have chosen to proclaim a different gospel entirely. This new and improved gospel is The Story of Us. This story is one that is perceived to be much more credible and effective than the story of Jesus, because, unlike the story of Jesus, it can’t be refuted. 

In her book, Spirituality for Dummies, Sharon Janis writes, “In a nutshell, spirituality relates to your own personal experience and relationship with the divine…Dogma can muddy the waters of a spiritual path.”¹ Similarly, in his book Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch writes that “leaders, ministers, books, and even the Bible itself are not authoritative sources.” In fact, he claims that God specifically directs us to, “Listen to your feelings…Listen to your experience. Whenever any one of these differ from what you’ve been told by your teachers, or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyor of truth.”² Madonna apparently agrees with this advice. In her song, “Bedtime Story,” she sings, “Words are useless, especially sentences. They don’t stand for anything. How could they explain how I feel?”

Of course, if words are so useless and unreliable, perhaps we could ask why Madonna and Neale Donald Walsh felt compelled to use so many of them. But the more important question to ask is why so many people in our day are attracted to the view that feelings and experiences are more important than words and ideas. Taken to the extreme, this is actually a recipe for anarchy. As just one example, if the words of various “traffic laws” begin to be thought of as “useless” and drivers end up focusing more on their own internal feelings (such as “the need for speed”), then a simple trip to the grocery store will increasingly become hazardous to your health.

The preference for feelings and experiences over words and ideas is ubiquitous in our day, even in the sphere of American Christianity. Doctrine is presented as cold, dull, and divisive—what we really need is an authentic “personal relationship with Jesus.” Unfortunately, few seem to have noticed how similar this is to the “spiritual-but-not-religious” approach of writers like Sharon Janis and Neale Donald Walsch. At the end of the day, spirituality relates to our own personal experience, which is why it holds our interest. Dogma, on the other hand, is rooted in the beliefs and ideas of other people, which is inherently more complicated and definitely less captivating.

If you think about it, those who suggest that doctrine is cold, or that “dogma muddies the water of true spirituality” are actually guilty of spreading their own doctrines and dogmas. Curiously, it’s a kind of “anti-dogmatic” dogma, but at the end of the day, it’s dogma just the same—words and ideas are being employed in order to affect the way we think. So while it’s common to hear, even in conservative Christian circles that “true Christianity isn’t a bunch of doctrines, it’s a personal relationship with Jesus,” perhaps we should follow up that assertion with a few questions, such as: “Who is Jesus?” “Was he a man, an angel, or God incarnate?” “Is he still alive?” “Did he actually atone for sin or not?” All these doctrinal questions simply can’t be avoided.

Nearly a century ago, J. Gresham Machen observed that “What many men despise today as ‘doctrine’ the New Testament calls the gospel.”³ His point was that the gospel, which lies at the very heart of our faith, is itself an announcement of a particular set of facts. In fact, the word “gospel” (Gk. euangelion) simply refers to the announcement or proclamation of “good news.” Paul famously gives a succinct summary of the gospel message in 1st Corinthians 15:

I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, ² and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word that I preached to you—otherwise you believed in vain. ³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me… ¹⁴ And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

We should pay close attention to the specific “words” and “sentences” employed in this important passage, since it happens to convey the beliefs and ideas of the earliest Christians. Specifically, Paul decided to unpack the main tenets of the gospel, which he calls the thing of “first importance.” He’s not attempting to generate religious experiences or to inspire certain feelings but is simply reminding the Corinthians of a particular series of events that had recently transpired. These events had to do with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, which had been announced centuries in advance throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. And he concludes by saying that if Christ was not actually raised from the dead, then Christianity is a waste of time—“your faith is in vain.”

So, according to the very clear words of 1st Corinthians 15, Paul didn’t think of the gospel as a spiritual tool for lifting you up when life gets you down. He didn’t provide us with tips and instructions to deepen our relationship with the divine or suggest that we follow our hearts wherever they happen to lead us. No, the thing of first importance was that Jesus died for our sins, that he died and was buried, and that he rose again on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures. And, of course, all this is dogma.

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