This article is about the “?” in the title.

+”We’ve”—Indeed, most theological wording says what ‘we’ have come up with and believe about God and spiritual matters, more than just what the Bible says.

Go back to the beginning of most distinctive church doctrines, and check the date.

If it is so important, why didn’t the ‘theologians’ in the Bible say it?

‘We’ may not necessarily have more enlightenment than they had.

+”We’ve always done it . . .”—Indeed, theologians do ‘always’ write more theology, and then write more theology to explain their theology.

Theologians get accustomed to doing theology, as a profession, and it builds on itself, becomes an end in itself—just like the experts of Jesus’ day created and imposed a massive superstructure of doctrine and rules to follow—‘they knew more than the people.’

Catholicism carried this to new levels, with unprecedented monopoly on theology for more than a millennium.

Throughout history there is a never-ending tendency to add doctrine to the Bible—to ‘explain’ it, to ‘explain’ God, to offer a ‘better’ understanding of spiritual matters than we had before.

Our guiding rule should not be the pattern of precedent in church history and what church leaders have come up with—clouding the distinction between the Word of God and the words of the church.

Today, we are more conditioned than ever to think our experts in theology and psychology know more—with an unprecedented proliferation of new ideas to improve on the Bible.

We don’t want to say it that way, but now the reality is, we spend more time listening and reading everything else that’s new, more than the Bible.

“Did God really say?” and “Did God really say enough for us to live by?”