The Problem with Theology

I love theology.  I love talking about stuff… what this passage means, what this greek word means, how this passage effects Calvinism or Arminianism or Open Theism or (insert your systematic theology here).  I love it.  I don’t know why, I just do.  Theology can be and is an important part of my faith… and can and should be of yours too.  Theology can lead us to a greater & bigger understanding about who God is.  It can open our eyes to see things about God we never thought about.  It can deepen our faith.  It can even help us interact with people. But… there’s a problem with theology…

Theology is the study of God. Obviously nothing wrong with that…  that’s what we should be about! studying… reading… learning… The problem with theology is that it can allow a sense of arrival to float into your faith.  It turns from “the study of” to the “knowing of”.

It can get you to this place where you think: “I’ve got this part of God figured out.”  or even better… “I know exactly how God saves people.” Where you STOP studying since you’ve arrived at a conclusion about a certain thing. 

I don’t really know what you believe.  I don’t know how you think God works in this world or how God is redeeming His people or if you even think God is redeeming people or people are redeeming themselves.  :) But I do know that I don’t want to follow a God that I can figure out.

I don’t want to learn and read and talk so much that I get to a place where I begin to think that I KNOW HOW IT WORKS.

I’m not saying there isn’t truth… things that are true no matter what I think.  I’m not saying we can’t study enough that we get a pretty darn good idea how something works.  I’m just saying that I don’t have it all figured out and I bet you don’t either.  I’m just saying that John Calvin, or John Wesley, or Jonathan Edwards, or Mark Driscoll, or John Piper, or Rob Bell don’t have it all figured out.

So I say, let’s keep STUDYING… let’s keep READING… let’s keep LEARNING… let’s keep TALKING… but let’s stop sounding like we have every thing figured out about how the God who exists outside of time and space works.

And maybe let’s think about what it tells people about OUR GOD when we come off like we’ve got HIM all figured out…

…or we bash people who have a different set of systematically educated hypothesis. :)