I have spent the last 6 years of my life in college and graduate school. This time has been devoted to the study of theology. My knowledge base is much larger than it was when I began. I have acquired skills in different languages and have had many wonderful conversations with people. Out of the hundreds of lectures I have listened to, I vaguely remember only a handful. Out of the dozens of papers I have written and hundreds of sermons/lessons I have taught, I feel ashamed of nearly all of them. Still, I feel the need for the love of God to be proclaimed to the world. It is in that vein that I offer some of my ruminations concerning theological training. It should be disclaimed that most of this is just from the inner wars of myself.
Humility is often lost in the pursuit of excellence.
Within myself there is an incredible desire to be validated. When someone wrongs me, I want to make sure I get the last word. When someone does something better than me, I want my accomplishment, however meager, to be noticed as well. It seems to me that when I pursue excellence and discover the myriads of great thinkers of the past and present,that burning desire to be validated begins to consume me. So I pursue what my goal is with even greater excellence and I may even know a few words that make me sound humble, but inwardly there is a war raging.
Love is the only credible action.
A wise man (Kenny Boles) once told a class I was in that people tend to exclude those who are more liberal than them and to pity (or look down on) those who are more conservative. I have often found myself in that middle position, or sometimes worse, looking with disgust and even a little hatred on both ends of the spectrum. The only credible action to any of this is love. Despite my desire to be vindicated, to be known in later years, loving people is the only action that makes any sense in this world. For there to be redemption and hope, love seems to be the only avenue that those can come about.
Theology done without loving the church in all her marred and vile forms is not helpful.
The only point in doing theology is to help people know God. This assumes that God reveals Godself to us humans, and that we are able to discern what God wants. If a person does theology without loving the church (the community of people who are concerned about understanding God as revealed in Jesus), then that theology is not helpful no matter how correct that theology might be.
Faith should be filled with wonder.
I am not quite sure that faith needs much explanation. Too often I have found people trying to offer explanations for every detail. This is not to say that the stuff of faith should not be explained. This is simply to say that faith should have an aspect of wonder, of awe, of the awareness of the divine. When faith is filled with wonder, I think that faith then has hope to do wonderful things.
This is in no way exhaustive, just a reflective post on a significant part of my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment