Doctrine matters because it's what keeps our eyes on Jesus

This is something which anyone who takes their faith seriously ought to understand more or less automatically. Tragically, too few Christians, especially in America, do. While doctrine is often seen as dividing Christians,  the opposite is the case. Doctrine is what unites us. Doctrine, after all, is nothing more or less than another word for teaching, and the crucial in consequences between believing sound and unsound teaching are enormous.

They're enormous because unsound teaching has the potential to separate us from Jesus.

That Jesus is God is a doctrine. It isn't important to get that right because being right feels good. It's important because otherwise, He couldn't have died for our sins.

That Jesus is truly human is important. It's important because otherwise, He couldn't have died at all. And just as importantly   That faith and even our good works are gifts rather than achievements (Ephesians 2:8-10) is a doctrine. And it's important if we're going to put our trust in God's grace rather than our own merits. A realistic, biblical doctrine of the Lord's Supper is important not only lest we are deprived of a powerful, objective reminder that Jesus died not only for the world but specifically for us, but because the very logic on which a symbolic understanding depends ends up denying a real Incarnation and leaving us unredeemed.

Doctrine isn't about "being right," as if that were an end unto itself. It's about bearing in mind that misbelief can at best deprive us of tools God wants us to have, and make our life as Christians struggling daily to put the Old Man to death through repentance so that the New Man can arise through faith harder than it has to be. At worst, it can deprive us of our salvation by making it impossible for us to trust Jesus to save us.

And that's the bottom line. Scripture needs to be studied carefully, and all the tools of solid, proper exegesis need to be implied in understanding it. But as Luther pointed out, the acid test of a teaching is "was Christum triebt-"  "what conveys Christ." Jesus and the salvation He came to bestow on the world through the forgiveness of sins, apprehended by faith, is the whole point of the Bible. Nothing that obscures the Gospel can be allowed to stand.

Of course, it's not the correct doctrine that saves us. Biblical, saving faith requires assent and trust as well as knowledge. And where one does believe and trust in the saving Word, emotions will come.

But not all the time. All Christians go through spiritual dry spells, in which feelings are hard to come by. All the greatest Christians of history have written about "the dark night of the soul." But it's those times, rather than in the days when we are filled with joy and being a Christian seems easy, that we grow. God even uses the valleys of our lives for our own spiritual welfare, as tools with which to bring us closer to Him.

Joy and positive feelings are certainly not to be despised. They are among the tools which the Holy Spirit uses to power our Christian lives and commitment. But nobody is saved by emotions, and the Mormons to the contrary, emotions are no test of truth.

Church history is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between an emphasis on doctrine and truth and an emphasis on feelings. Christians have seemed throughout history to be like the drunken peasant Luther talked about, only in the middle of the road when staggering from one ditch to the other. But it's not as if we could do without either truth or "experience." The former powers the later.

But never look to "experience" or to your emotions as a test of truth or a resource telling you what to believe. Look to the Word. And in interpreting the Word, always remember the acid test of one's own understanding: was Christum triebt.

Directly or indirectly, the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit always are pointing us to Jesus. As long as Jesus is the bottom line, and as long as your lifelong journey keeps coming back to Him for forgiveness and renewal and as your only source of righteousness; along as you keep up your struggle against sin despite having failed, and continue to live the baptismal lifestyle of drowning the Old Self so that the New Self can arise,  you'll be safe. Jesus will keep you safe.

But the very Gospel is doctrine. You can't do without doctrine, and to try is not only to deprive yourself of the comfort and strength God supplies and which you desperately need but inevitably to go astray. Just knowing correct doctrine saves nobody. But when we take our eyes off Jesus or allow ourselves to be distracted by teaching which leads us away from Him and throws us back upon our own resources, we put our salvation in peril.

The answer isn't being right for the sake of being right. But the answer is always Jesus, and Jesus only. As long as your eyes are on Him, He will keep you safe.