When We Focus on Theology We Miss the Point of Following Jesus A lot of people today work hard to form a correct theology. Almost every church has a theology, be it formal or implicit. They use theology to determine who’s in and who’s out. Every seminary has its own theology as well. If you […]
In matters of faith, it’s not what we believe, it’s what we do One of the promises during the modern era was that through the Age of Enlightenment (Age of Reason) we could pursue truth and it would eventually converge on a single understanding of reality. This didn’t happen. Instead of converging to reach consensus, […]
Debates Over Theology Cause Needless Distractions and Actually Keep Us from God My theology is an enigma to most people. It’s an enigma to me, too, but I’m okay with that because I don’t much care about theology, at least not how most folks pursue it today. In some respects, I hate theology. Theological Discussions […]
Most Christians Carry Unexamined Criteria that Others Must Agree with Before They’re Accepted I was once interviewed for a volunteer position at my church. The pair of interviewers cranked through a series of pre-assigned theological questions to determine my supposed worthiness to lead. For some queries the answers were straightforward; others, not so much. On […]
God Wants Us to Know Him and Be in a Relationship, Not to Study Him or Try to Explain Him When people learn of my deep interest in studying the Bible and my passion for God, they often ask me a theological question. I groan when they do. You see, I hate theology. While a […]
Studying Scripture Teaches Us about Classic Literature and Inform Our Literary Perspective My post “13 Reasons Why I Love the Bible” started out as a top ten list, but I couldn’t stop at a round number. I kept going and couldn’t pare my list down to just ten reasons. And if I had kept thinking […]
When Paul writes to his protégé Timothy, he instructs Timothy to warn the people not to quarrel over words. Isn’t that what most theological debate is, people arguing about words? People who claim to follow Jesus end up arguing about the meaning of certain words. They build their own theology around their understanding of these […]
Be Careful What We Sing at Church The tempo was upbeat and the song was inviting. Though new to me, I picked it up quickly. On the third time through the chorus, I started really contemplating the words—and I stopped singing. Really, I did—right in midsentence. The words were wrong. Though it’s technically illegal for […]
Consider How You View and Approach God Two weeks ago, in my post Don’t Make God Boring, I mentioned my dislike for an area of study called systematic theology. Systematic theology is a theological discipline that attempts to present God and Christian faith in an organized and logical structure. Some people have dedicated their entire […]
In farming, a silo is a tower used to store grain. The business world, however, turned silo into a metaphor, such as information silos or organizational silos, symbolizing assimilation and isolation. These business silos function as a repository of information or power—hoarded and not shared, either by plan or by practice. With silos, there’s an […]