Healthy Christianity

What you believe matters, because we all live theologically. If you say you believe in prayer, but you don’t pray (or you think of it as “the least you can do”), then you don’t actually believe in prayer… you just believe in the idea of prayer. This is why the Apostle Paul instructed both Timothy and Titus to teach “what accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1 , 2 Timothy 4:1-5 ). The biblical term “sound doctrine” literally means “healthy teachings.” So it begs the question: is your understanding of Christian teachings healthy, or sick?

Lifeway and Ligonier Ministries conducted a study that we released in 2016 that surveyed 3000 American Christians about their doctrine. A shockingly high number of professing Christians responded to the survey in ways that actually aligns them with various heresies that have been condemned by all sects of Christianity since the days of the Early Church. Digging into theology isn’t the most exciting thing in the world for most people, but it is incredibly important because our theology is an explanation of what we believe about who God is, what God has done, and what God expects of humanity.

Every time the phrase “sound doctrine” appears in Scripture, it is in the context of godly living. Again – that’s because we live theologically. May we become men and women whose stated-theologies and lived-theologies agree with each other, so we become a living display of who God is and his power to redeem and transform lives.