“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood... But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.” ― C.S. Lewis
There is no stealing past those watchful dragons. Dogma and doctrine are not the et cetera, they are the main thing — everything else is the et cetera. The creeds are not the accouterments, they are clothing.
You cannot domesticate Christianity. You cannot slip past it. There is no safe space for spiritual soliloquies. Those watchful dragons of doctrine do not stop watching. They don't misfire. Many think they can neuter them or distract them. But no one ever has and no one ever will.
Jared Longshore recently brought this up as it applies to the recovery of singing Psalms. Psalms have a way of forcing you to face those watchful dragons that K-Love attempts to sidestep. You are forced to see things about God from His perspective and to consider the world according to His Word instead of ours. If you want revival and reformation, you have to want to get caught. If you are thinking, "Things can't go on like this forever," then you will have to embrace a new way of doing things, which turns out to be an old way of doing them: that is, by the Book.
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