By Chris Surber

I’m tired of faith statements that insulate Christians from activity. I’m choking on statements of faith and creeds that exist purely in the world of ideas.

I can’t get the image out of my mind of a nameless, dirty, half-dressed, skinny girl walking barefoot on a road in a third-world country as I drove past her to an airplane to take me back to the comforts of my typical Christian life in my typical American church, where we proclaim rather than do Christianity.

We’ve cornered the market on truth and bought a lie that truth is about knowing. Truth doesn’t matter if it exists purely in the world of ideas.

Looking at the Bible, studying it, knowing it and then doing nothing with it is exactly like waking up in the morning, examining how wretched you look (and you know you do) and then walking away from the mirror and forgetting how desperately your appearance needs attention.

Would you walk out into the street with scarecrow hair, unshaven face or lipstick smeared across your face like an intoxicated clown with no memory of your desperate need to alter your appearance? Would you gain the knowledge of your need for action, but forget it and go about your day as soon as you turned from the mirror?

It is the same with the Bible. When we read it for what it’s worth, it reads us. It highlights how unlovable we are and showers us with the truth of God’s love. It tells us the story of our need to let that love out to others.

After that revelation, though, many of us walk away from it and forget what we looked like in the mirror of its truth.

In James 1:23-25 the Bible says, “For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.” (NLT)

I’m a scholar who has grown weary of learning without applying. I’m an academic who realizes that you don’t need a theological doctorate to know that Jesus says, “As I have loved you, love others.”

Knowledge is good. Doctrine is good. But it is only as good as it compels us into right action in the world. Jesus taught as He went. He didn’t wait for the world to come to Him.

We have too much Sunday school in the church and not enough of Christ’s love poured out in the streets. I don’t want to preach another sermon until I take that little girl some clothes and love her in Jesus’ name.

Right doctrine is supposed to nail your faith together, not your feet to the floor. We are drowning in a Christian sea of dogma without doing.

Faith-filled action is the only life raft that can save us.

Chris Surber is pastor of Cypress Chapel Christian Church in Suffolk. Visit his website at www.chrissurber.com.