Truth and reality have been on the brain for a while now. They seem an odd pair of words to be following my thought trails into church planting, but they truly are at the heart of Jesus' ministry and with living by faith in God.
What has recently been getting my attention is how it plays out theologically in churches and christians all across the world. Personally, this has come up because I'm beginning to read about theology as a continually evolving thing. In other words, God is continually revealing more and more about Himself to us as time passes. This is considered a "liberal" view and is somewhat scary at first blush.
My initial fear is that people will begin to rewrite the Bible according to whatever they feel like (or wherever "God is leading"). People can do amazingly horrible things with misguided theology (see Crusades, Spanish Inquisition). This fear pushes me toward the other side for safety. As long as everything theological is totally set in stone, I can rest on theology and build my life/church/family/friendships around it.
The problem is I'm not called to safety, or even to rest on theology. I'm called to rest on God Himself, not an understanding of God. Where I'm swinging now is that theology might not be set in stone, it is still a step of faith. Where I stop is the fact that God is unchanging. When I look at the scriptures, it's plain that there is not a hint of wishy-washiness with God. Therefore, in faith, I can know that truth builds on itself- the new doesn't wipe away the old. Even Jesus said he didn't come to abolish the scriptures, but to fulfill them.
Maybe the way theology works is that we don't know it in its fullness. In essence, we are still figuring it out. With that, we also have to hold on to what God calls us to have a hold on. We can't be only wandering through uncertainty. We are called to be certain in faith about some things about God and yet, hold on to the mystery of God. I guess this makes me a liberconservalist.
holding on to / throwing away the truth
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1 comments:
fabulous post Drew. I feel like you hit the nail on the head. it is a struggle, particularly for Christians I think, to be able to accept that there are uncertainties, that we do not actually know every rhyme or reason in this life! that things are not always crystal clear. it's a saftely issue. it's a control issue. we crave clarity. i think we just need to re-think the definition of clarity. i've struggled greatly with so many varying viewpoints of who God actually is. there is so much unknown. we feed off of our experiences and our presumptions. someone once directed me to this thought: there is much available to us to know or experience God's character. we will never fully understand all His motives, or His methods, or His timing, but at least we have His character to trust in. We have enough fragments of Him to know that He deserves our hearts bowed in reverence and trust.
your post was very thought-provoking. i like that!
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