Most of the time, the things churches and denominations argue, fight over, and defend to the point of "dying on that hill" are things that God doesn't even seem to consider important in the Scriptures. Things like the Doctrine of the Trinity, for example. This is one of the most important doctrines in Orthodox Christian faith, literally what defines Orthodox Christian faith, and yet it's not something God ever really puts a priority on laying out or explaining in the Scriptures. Not in the Prophets, the Writings, the Torah, or the writings of the New Testament. Are the hints and makings of it there in these writings? Of course. Could these hints and writings be interpreted other ways? You bet. The same is true of the other "major" doctrine of Orthodox Christianity, the hypostatic union. Do I disagree with that doctrine? No, not at all. But like other "major" doctrines, or doctrines which the churches consider worth going to war and schism over, the Scriptures don't lay it out like a systematic theology. There are hints. There are the makings of it. But like the doctrine of the Trinity, the Scriptures can be interpreted differently than what the Great Ecumenical Councils laid down as Orthodox Christian Doctrine.
Want to know what God does consider major enough to continuously harp on in the Scriptures, and lay out in no uncertain terms? Loving others and being kind. According to the Prophets of the Old Testament, including David in the Psalms, God could care less about all the religious ritual, sacrifices, and religious observances in the world, but if someone wasn't being kind, was abusing the defenseless (especially widows and orphans), was profiting off the harm of others, was proud, and in general wasn't being merciful, showing loving kindness and compassion or just basic decency... Oh, empires would fall, whole nations would be sold into slavery, and the Angel of Death would be overwhelmed with his caseload that week.
Really, about the only bit of theology God was interested in hammering home in the Prophets was that "I, and I alone, am Yahweh. I and I alone am God. There is no other like Me. I own everything that exists. I work, and who can reverse it? I brought everything into existence and ordered it. No, there's nowhere you can go where I am not. I have no beginning and no end. There's no way you can represent Me with a carving, so don't even try." The second bit of theology He hammered home was that all other "gods" were carved rocks and wood, and bowing down to them was certifiable lunacy.
Outside of these things, God wasn't really concerned with how human beings understood Him, because He knew there was no way they really could understand Him. When He first begins His relationship with Abraham, Abraham pretty much understands Him as one God among many, and calls Him "El-Shaddai," which was actually not too far removed conceptually from a Greek calling Him "Zeus Pantokrater," as "El" was actually the name of the king of the Canaanite Pantheon. Every other name given to Him up until He gives the name He chooses for Himself to Moses is some kind of combination of "El." And God doesn't argue about it. He takes these people where they're at in their understanding and just goes with it. And so He is called "El Shaddai," "El Rapha," "El Gibbor," "El Olam," and so on until no one can remember who "El" originally referred to. In the New Testament, John writes about the Logos incarnating as a human being. The Logos was clearly an important Stoic concept referring to the ordering principle of the cosmos, more powerful even than the Olympian gods in the Greek thought of the first century. John wrote about Jesus Christ being this Logos incarnate, and God didn't bother to correct it in what He knew would be taken as Holy Scripture. Why? Because that was as good of a way of explaining it in that time period as any other.
The concept of the Holy Trinity wasn't formulated until the fourth and fifth centuries by the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, but even this was based on an older Egyptian concept of their deities. It is no coincidence in my opinion that its chief proponent against Arianism was an Egyptian Christian named Athanasius:
“The Hymn to Amun decreed that ‘No god came into being before him (Amun)’ and that ‘All gods are three: Amun, Re and Ptah, and there is no second to them. Hidden is his name as Amon, he is Re in face, and his body is Ptah.’ . . . This is a statement of trinity, the three chief gods of Egypt subsumed into one of them, Amon. Clearly, the concept of organic unity within plurality got an extraordinary boost with this formulation. Theologically, in a crude form it came strikingly close to the later Christian form of plural Trinitarian monotheism”(Simson Najovits, Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, Vol. 2, 2004, pp. 83-84.)
Instead of arguing, defending, and fighting over the things about which God Himself just "went with the flow," it is the things which God Himself said were the most important that we ought to be focusing our energies on: loving Him, loving one another, being kind, empathizing with one another, being compassionate, forgiving, merciful, and letting go of condemning others for the same things which we ourselves are inclined to do. Whether or not someone believes God to be Trinity, whether or not someone believes God to be all there is, whether or not someone's theology is Orthodox, heterodox, or just plain "mistaken" really, in the long run, doesn't matter as much to Him as the things He repeats Himself about over and over and over again in the Holy Scriptures. It is not one's personal theology which they will have to account for at the Bema Seat, or Life Review. It is how they treated others.
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