Letting God Speak for Himself

"Add thou not to his [God's] words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." --Proverbs 30:6.

Many times, we try to "help God out" with logic when explaining something to a weak Christian or unbeliever. We add things to what the Bible says to make our explanation make sense. While there's nothing wrong with putting a doctrine into layman's terms, there is a problem when doctrine becomes derived from opinion rather than Scripture. Another way we can see this is with the Christmas story. Now, before you comment blasting me, I LOVE Christmas, and have no problem with the holiday. Yet, there are some things that get taught that are flat out un-Scriptural. For example, the three wise men are often taught to be kings when the Bible makes no such claim (oh, and they went to Jesus' house, NOT the stable), angels in the Bible are always masculine with no mention of wings (when they appear on earth to individuals) even though they are almost always depicted as women with wings, and the manger was more than likely stone instead of wood since trees were scarce in Bethlehem (and the stable was probably a cave). These are just some examples of what we add to His Word, yet if someone researches it, we will be found liars. We need to be careful to distinguish between doctrine & tradition/opinion as we tell others the news of Christ. (Oh, and as a freebie, Christ was probably not born 25 Dec.)