When I choose to waste breath on conversation, I prefer longer, one-on-one conversations to group banter about the weather, headlines, or what’s popular. Seeking to justify myself, I once asked a well-known Christian counselor if my approach was the one everyone should use. He responded, “What if some people need to talk about the weather before they are comfortable talking about deeper things?”

I was dumbfounded. He was absolutely right, of course. In my pride I had allowed a gem of wisdom to become folly by assuming I had no more to learn in this area.

I’m still learning—hopefully with a humbler attitude. But I haven’t given up hope that many of my conversations about weather, news, sports, politics, and trivia will at times evolve into deeper, richer conversations that make us better people.

Call me crazy, but I’d love to see that happen on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. If you took the trivial out of social media, little would be left. Even the deeper discussions are likely to disappoint. Rather than thoughtful, roundtable discussion, we are usually treated to clever hit-and-run bytes or to combative jabs in the social-media boxing ring.

I guess a lot of people are just like I am—prone to thinking selfishly even when they believe they are selflessly bestowing gems of wisdom on others. Interestingly, Christ set up the church so that progress depends on our working together. We are a body with many parts, and those parts move and work independently at great peril to themselves and to the body.

Not only must we work together, but also we must think together. We don’t sacrifice our individuality, but we recognize that others will bring wisdom and experience to the table that we don’t have without them, and others might mention aspects of scriptural truth that we hadn’t considered on a given issue. We might also help to correct or refine each other’s perspectives. “In the multitude of counselors there is wisdom.”

This alone seems to be good reason for things like confessions and catechisms in the Church. “Scripture is not of any private interpretation.” When a group of godly and respected people get together with discerning the Scripture as their aim, that can shed a powerful light for us, including as we seek to apply the Scriptures to the issues that face us today.

These confessions and catechisms are a wise teacher and also an able bodyguard. They protect us from all those hit-and-run opinions about what we should or should not be doing. They focus our attention on the important and eternal. They are our companion in the trenches, on the sickbed, in the prison, whenever we seem all alone.

I heard a lot of characterizations about the Reformed Presbyterian Church before I became a member, but all of them were rather unhelpful compared to my reading of our confession, catechisms, and Testimony. Here, I thought, is a denomination that is firmly rooted in the truth and that can help me to grow.

—Drew Gordon