Not all talk about God is truth. Not all what we call truth about God is true. The challenge is to discover what is true about God and what is not. The church, as it began, struggled with this idea because of the wide variety of teachings about God and about Jesus. The Church grew so fast and spread quickly into the the Roman Empire which was widely diverse culturally. This led to a theological dilemma as different understandings about Jesus were being taught.
My wife used to hate theology. I'd come home from a day at Seminary to share some new insight and my wife would want to cover her ears and shout, "La, la, la, la...I can't hear you." You see she believed that theology was an attempt to undercut God somehow, to reduce God to some concepts that would depersonalize God's very nature and make God harder to trust and believe. The thing is, theology is just the opposite. Literally theology is words about God (It's Greek, theos = God, logos=words) or God-talk.
Now God-talk can be good or it can be flawed, or bad. Good theology, bad theology. There have been plenty of both. The reason to bring this up today is that the Church in America is having a theological crisis of sorts. It has allowed for so much diversity in its theology that the Message has gotten lost, forgotten, or at least watered down. While the church is nearing 2000 years old some theological diversity is expected coming through those many generations. But the truth remains our goal.
Paul described the Christian faith so simply so many times: the love of God, the promise of God, the Son of God, the grace of God, and our obedience to God. Now I realize that this leaves much room for diversity, but if you read Paul's letters you'll find it consistent, just as God is. Our job is to love God as we are loved, love each other as God loves them, treat everyone fairly, live above the fray, be forgiving, generous and gracious. To define it further, to establish rules and regulations is to miss the point. The Message of God in Jesus was never about keeping people out, rather to draw people in.
Paul described a leader that "He must welcome people, be helpful, wise, fair, reverent, have a good grip on himself, and have a good grip on the message." (Titus 1:9a, The Message)
The Message is the Word of God, the Word of God is Jesus. The closer we get to him, the more we reflect him and the words we learn about him, good theology.
Get a grip...on Jesus and "receive everything God our Father and Jesus our Savior give you." (Titus 1:4, The Message)
Peace ><>
PC
3 comments:
Im in favor of more postings like this one! Not that a Pastor's blog is democratic...
Wow...I'm amazed. Mark and I just shared this converstion late last night. He is experiencing the whole "truth" issue right now with other classmates in seminary. Not all have the same views..even in seminary. What I am amazed at right now is to open up this devotional and it mirrors a conversation we just had last night. This happens so much. Were you a fly on our kitchen wall last night? :-)
Amen, brother Chris! God's truth, just like ethics and morality, is neither situational nor dependent on our acceptance of it!
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