The Need For Extreme Dogmatism

To me, for all practical purposes, there is a difference between

dogma and being dogmatic. Dogma, meaning a religious doctrine or system of doctrines proclaimed by the collective Church throughout the ages as authoritatively true. This word is legitimate, as long as it stays in the confines of its corral (context). But when it jumps the fence and goes wild by asserting its own individual unproved doctrines as truth, its name changes to dogmatic. Such are characterized by an arrogant, egotistical, and overbearing spirit.

A dogmatist simply takes sound dogma too far. They take a good thing to extreme until it is distorted and unrecognizable. For example: the sovereignty of God and the free will of man; faith and works; God's love and His wrath; doctrine and devotion; the local church and the true Church; etc. There are always two extremes, two dog houses, if you please, each at opposite ends of a truth and far apart. Each take one side of that truth and run off to their doghouse to feed innocent pups. There is no middle ground with a dogmatist; only his or her way or the highway! 

But having said all this, as despicable, detestable, and hideous as these dogmatists are, we owe them a debt of gratitude. Because, for the most part, many of us can attest to the fact that because of them we found our scriptural balance by observing where their teaching leads one. And it lead us back to the middle, thus saving our spiritual sanity.   

The Right Thing/The Wrong Way

I’m sure all my readers are familiar with the old saying, “It’s better to do the right thing in the wrong way than to do the wrong thing in the right way.” That is, it would be better to preach on Hell with a bad spirit than having a good one and not preach it at all. We are not to let the weakness of our humanity keep us from performing right. If we do, we’ll never achieve anything worthwhile. Paul said it was an accepted fact in his life that when he did good, evil was present with him.

David experienced this also. Because of the weakness of the flesh, he decided he would refrain from doing anything, therefore accomplishing nothing. By going to the extreme and carrying things too far he wound up having to admit he had kept himself “even from good.” But at such times we, like David, find sorrow is stirred within us, and our hearts burn. It is then, as he, we come out of our self-imposed prison to do right, even if it’s at the expense of our own embarrassment.

All of us want to do the right thing in the right way, but if we can’t accomplish the latter because of our frailties, let us always perform the former, even at the cost of being humiliated.