“Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins” (Psalm 19:13).

In the months leading up to the U.S. involvement in the Second World War, we had broken the Japanese secret code.  Army and Navy personnel were reading their messages. We actually knew where they were most of the time and what they were planning.

All signs indicated they were going to attack the U.S. at Pearl Harbor.

And yet, when they did just that–December 7, 1941, that day of infamy–they caught us completely unprepared. All our battleships were parked side by side close up and made a great target for the Japanese torpedo bombers.  All our planes were parked in rows, as though for the sharpshooters at the county fair.

The Japanese had a field day.

How had this happened?  How had they managed to catch us so completely off guard when we were reading their coded messages and knew what they were up to?

The short answer is we did not believe what we were reading.  It was unthinkable that their aircraft carriers could get close enough to attack Pearl Harbor. So, we stupidly walked into that ambush.

There was no one to blame but ourselves. (But did we blame ourselves? Hardly.  We blamed conspiracies, the incompetence of Admiral Kimmel who was in charge of Pearl Harbor, conniving by FDR, and a thousand other scape goats.)

About the same time, Britain had decoded the German war machine’s messages which were sent using a brilliant contraption called Enigma.  This coding machine was so complex that the Nazi leadership refused to believe the Allies could possibly be reading their messages.  Even when confronted with evidence of our knowledge of their messages, they preferred to believe the Allies were “just lucky” rather than admit their precious coding system had been broken.

“Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” is how Scripture puts it in I Corinthians 10:12.

You could mess up royally, Christian worker.  No one is too strong, too mature, and too valuable to the Lord’s work to be subject to the same discipline as everyone else. Be faithful.

You could be wrong, Christian theologian. No one knows it all and understands it perfectly.  Even the strongest and best theologians change positions over the years. Be humble.

We Christians do love our creeds.

For over a hundred years, we Southern Baptists would declare that we were non-credal, meaning we did not go in for creeds. We would sometimes say, “If you believe the Bible, we’re on the same team.”  And then, we made the discovery that this open-ended approach was giving us Bible teachers and seminary professors who were blazing new trails in heresy.  There must be guidelines.  The seminaries came up with their statements of faith which new professors were required to sign. And then, the denomination got into it.

Now, we have something we call The Baptist Faith and Message.  If you think we’re bending over backward to keep from calling it a creed, you’d be right.

It’s a useful tool.  Churches’ constitutions and by-laws no longer have to spell out “what we believe,” but can simply insert an article that “This church accepts the Baptist Faith and Message as its doctrinal positions” or something similar.  Preachers put a line on their resumes that they adhere to that statement.

That’s all fine but ours needs one thing more. At the end, this and all other creeds should include a statement saying something like “This is how we see things. But we see through a glass darkly and our understanding is not always perfect.”

Some would protest, “Oh no. We’ve got this. Scripture teaches this and anyone saying otherwise is denying the Lord.”

That may actually be true on some issues.  But our own document, for one, does not seem to know when to quit adding more statements as to who is in and who is out.  We keep drawing the lines tighter and tighter, shutting out more and more believers who do not cross their T’s the way we do. Those who speak the loudest and insist the strongest will stir the pot and put on a campaign and bring this issue before our denomination’s appropriate groups and the next thing you know, one more article is being added to the BF&M, this time saying that, “Any church not having a sign in front of their campus at least 4′ x 6′ is declared to be in non-compliance and shall have its orthodoxy license revoked.”

I’m being facetious, of course. About that. But not much.

Recently when a church in California suggested that the homosexual issue is not quite as cut-and-dried as some want to make it and the pastor said, as I got it, that it’s possible to be gay but celibate and thus belong to our churches, pastors in their association were so upset that some wanted to kick the church out. Just for raising a point for discussion, for the pastor stating a contrary position.

Sounds like the Joe McCarthy era, doesn’t it?  People in trouble just for wanting to discuss issues, trying to see if there is a better way.

Church splits happen. Denominational fissures open.  Good people differ.  It can happen anywhere. Let those who think they’ve got it all together and have all the answers and need no outside counsel from anyone, let them take heed lest they fall.

To be faithful is to be humble.  It is to love our brethren, not only when we disagree on issues but particularly when we disagree.  Anyone can love their best friends. But let us love the left wing, the right wing, and the no wing.

By this shall everyone know we are His disciples, that we love one another.

I didn’t make that up. It’s actually in the Bible.  John 13:34-35.  You knew that. I’m just pulling your chain.