:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

While in college I called my Dad and told him I was dropping my English major in favor of Biblical Studies. By the time I hung up the phone, he had convinced me to stick with English and to add Bible as a double-major.

He didn’t raise his voice or tell me what to do. I remember him spending more time reminding me of what I liked.

By the time I stumbled out of seminary unsure of what to do with my life since a career as a pastor wasn’t an option, I was really grateful to have that English degree. If anything I understood the jokes in Prairie Home Companion about the Professional Organization of English Majors.

However, during that fateful phone call, my dad saw something that I should have seen all along. Writing and books are important to me.

My teacher in sixth grade assigned free-writing activities every week in our notebook called an “Anything Book.” I filled up every scrap of white paper in my Anything Book. My imagination went crazy, even spilling stories into the number charts on the back cover.

During seventh and eighth grade, my friend and I would toss around a football after school and then sit down at his MS DOS computer and rewrite fairy tales with a twist. The one that stands out had something about the big bad wolf being framed by those horrible pigs.

In high school I moved away from fiction and toward more academic forms of writing with lots of research. I thought that writing was just a nice thing I did in addition to my other work. I also had no clue about what to do with my life. I didn’t know how people found jobs or selected careers.

The post-college world was terrifying to me. Books and writing always made sense, and I’m thankful that my family never questioned my English major in college. The English program in college became a safe haven for me until I thought that I had another path figured out as a pastor.

My dad wisely persuaded me that I shouldn’t toss away all that I’d already invested in studying literature and academic writing. Even after sticking with the English degree, I’m writing stuff today that I never pictured myself doing.

Today I help pay the bills by writing for blogs and websites, while I plug away on a novel that most closely resembles the zany stuff I scrawled in my Anything Book in sixth grade.

It’s fascinating to see that our parents can’t tell us exactly what to do. There’s no way my Dad could know that I’d end up writing for websites or I’d love writing fiction so much. However, he tried to keep me faithful to what he’d seen of me so far.

Parents aren’t perfect, but I’m grateful for the times when they keep us pointed in the right direction at the right time. I couldn’t have asked my dad to do anything more, and I’m forever grateful for that conversation.

Read more Father’s Day themed posts at Faith Barrista for the Thursday Jam.

While in seminary, a small conservative church hired me to teach their Wednesday evening Bible study. It was the perfect opportunity to get some practical ministry experience, even though I never saw myself leading that kind of church one day. I was also planning to get married in the near future, so the extra money didn’t hurt.

The group was rarely larger than ten people, but I took it very seriously. I dug through commentaries and prepared some pretty substantial sermons each week. I didn’t know how to lead a discussion, but I think they wanted a teacher, not a discussion leader.

They were very nice people, but as I drove home each week, I’d think to myself, “Phew! That was hard work. I’m glad that’s over for this week.”

Around the same time I was visiting my bride-to-be up in Vermont, and while there I’d go into the local prison with her parents for a church service. They had a very different approach to ministry that led to a rather different kind of car ride home from the meeting.

I’ve learned a lot from them about how to prepare for ministry. While there still may be occasions when I need to consult a commentary or prepare something, the most important preparation comes when I pray and worship the Lord each morning.

I don’t need perfect planning to minister. I don’t need to be perfect. I just need to be present with God.

While praying before going into the prison yesterday, the Lord put Luke 11 on my mind, which is Jesus’ teaching on prayer. I read it for a little while and thought of some stories I could share.

As I drove to the prison that evening, John 16 also came to mind, which is Jesus’ teaching on the Holy Spirit leading us into all truth. I thought that I could teach on John 16 in order to encourage the men to share some testimonies at the beginning, and that Luke 11 would serve as my main text before we moved on to the Alpha lesson about the church.

God wanted to teach us from those passages, but he didn’t need me to do it.

I sat down, introduced myself, and then the Holy Spirit taught us how the church works as one person after another shared what God was teaching him. One guy taught us for about 30 minutes what he’d been learning about prayer, faith, and pleasing God.

I kept my eye on the clock and nodded my head as each guy raised his hand to speak, but otherwise I did nothing. The Holy Spirit taught us our lesson. I saw John 16 unfold right before my eyes.

As if God wanted to drive home the point that he had things under control, the second hour of the meeting focused on how to dialogue with other faiths in the prison and how to respond to insults and anger. I’ve studied a lot about the mission of the church, but it seems that when the Holy Spirit is given room to work, the mission takes care of itself.

The men sang as they stacked the chairs and walked back to their dorms for the evening, smiling and encouraging one another. A lot of ministry happened last night, and I did very little of it. I did one thing: I got out of God’s way and followed his lead.

I drove home last night joyful and encouraged, thankful that ministry does not have to be hard, draining work bearing unknown fruit that we may never see. Perfect preparation doesn’t take place through studies but through God’s Spirit.

Today’s post on perfection is part of Bonnie Gray’s Thursday series. For more posts on perfection, visit Bonnie’s blog and begin with her post: The Top 5 Lies of Perfectionism.

This morning I read an article by Skye Jethani in the latest issue of Leadership (I have an article on volunteering in there) that brought up a point related to yesterday’s post about Peter and the way God gives us shoves in unexpected directions.

Skye wrote that radically following Jesus does not necessarily mean committing to sharing the Gospel on the other side of the world or living among the poor. In fact, those acts can become a kind of idol that we serve and pursue, rather than pursuing God first and letting our actions flow out of that radical commitment.

In other words, radically following Jesus begins with a personal commitment to him and then is manifested in our actions. If we seek to follow Jesus by pursuing works of service without first serving our Lord, we’ll miss out on what is most important as well as the empowerment God provides to do ministry.

I know that I’ve often wondered, “How can I follow Jesus radically?”

The sense I get is that we don’t do big things for God all at once.

The Kingdom starts in us as a small desire for God, for his presence in our lives, and we learn to seek him and his Kingdom first. As we learn to listen to God, we begin to train ourselves to tune out other desires. In drawing near to him, we learn what he would like us to do.

Never think that you can’t approach God because you don’t have your act together or because you aren’t serving him enough or any other excuse tied to your actions. You’ll only exhaust and discourage yourself.

God wants to guide his people step by step. The first step is to quiet ourselves before him in worship and in listening prayer. Every leap I’ve ever taken, and I really haven’t taken too many to be honest, was preceded by prayer and listening where God slowly worked on my heart and made his desires my own.

Radically following Jesus may involve incredible acts and radical choices, but it begins with quiet, still moments.

One day you’ll be praying just like Peter and you’ll have a vision of what God wants you to do or an opportunity will come knocking on your door. Though you wouldn’t have known what to do on the day before, you’ll make the right choice because of that time in prayer before God.

When I began to dig into the world of biblical studies at a Christian college, I began to read commentaries. Some focused on the literary forms and cultural settings of each book. Others dug into what the books of the Bible meant.

Both had value, but neither provided particularly interesting reading. Sometimes I felt like they focused on the pieces of scripture to the detriment of the whole. While there is a place for commentaries that dig into the language and historical setting of the Bible, I longed for something that would help me read scripture with fresh eyes and do a better job of connecting its implications to everyday life.

It was as if I understood Jesus alright in his setting and found the Bible fascinating, but I was still reading scripture in a rather detached manner.

The books that tried to fill this need didn’t quite work for me.

Perhaps the NIV Application Commentary tried the hardest to bridge this divide, but it was still tough to dig into. Today NT Wright has produced a wonderfully accessible commentary series “For Everyone” that makes good scholarship accessible, but I still hadn’t found a commentary focused specifically on connecting the narrative scope of each biblical book with today, that is, until I learned about the Resonate commentary series that is edited by Paul Louis Metzger and David Sanford.

I write about Resonate as an endorser with a free copy by my nightstand, but I honestly dislike reviewing books so much that I would only put myself through it for a book that I truly enjoy and value. Metzger is a theologian who has successfully managed to engage culture without becoming captive to it, and he has given us a readable series of essays on John that make for great reading.

I’m a big fan of Metzger’s book Consuming Jesus, and after reading this commentary of John, When Love Comes to Town, I’m impressed with his approach. He describes his angle in the following way:

“The aim of the Resonate series is to provide spiritual nourishment that is biblically and theologically orthodox and culturally significant. The form each volume in the series will take is that of an extended essay” (12).

Resonate offers a big picture view of the biblical text, digs into some of the key points (remember, the goal is spiritual nourishment, not comprehensive explanations), and works readers through a reflective essay that seamlessly integrates the message with application to today. It doesn’t feel contrived or clunky, which is nothing short of a miracle if you’re familiar with books that try to do this.

Perhaps my greatest pet-peeve is the “Kids today!” approach to some Christian writers take in opposition to culture—as if the writer needs to attack everything suspect in the culture today with “solid biblical truth.” Metzger gives priority to the Bible and its controlling narrative for creation, while studying and interpreting culture in order to apply the Bible to culture. His approach is more conversational and ultimately more constructive.

The Gospel of John commentary in the Resonate series is readable and presents a fresh reading of scripture that is far more readable than a commentary, but still quite substantive. You won’t find insight into the language and history of the Bible, but then again, you can find that elsewhere—Resonate does not aim to offer those things because we’re practically buried in commentaries and dictionaries.

I mean, have you seen one of those Christian book catalogues???

This is a book that pastors and students can dig into when their eyes are crossing after parsing Greek verbs and reading primary source material from ancient times.

This is a book for the church-goer who won’t pick up a thick commentary, but still craves a thorough explanation and application of John’s Gospel.

I’m currently reading NT Wright’s commentary John for Everyone in my small group, and I think Wright and Metzger provide an excellent one-two punch—Wright offering some accessible background material and details, with Metzger tapping into the big picture of the story and some critical application points for today.

Reader be warned, this is a thick book with lots of text on each page, but it is quite readable and engaging. The pages go by pretty fast, the insights are helpful, and Metzger writes with a personal engagement and honesty that is lacking in many books in the biblical studies category.

For more info, swing by the IVP Resonate page or read a sample chapter.

My thanks to Paul, David, and IVP for the review copy!

I wrote a monologue for Palm Sunday that told the Easter story from the perspective of Caiaphas the high priest. It was part of a larger project involving 3 total monologues to be performed by actors.

While writing them, our team of writers tried to encapsulate the central belief of each person. We settled on the following:

Judas: I didn’t betray Jesus, Jesus betrayed me.

Caiaphas: I saved God’s people from destruction by killing Jesus.

Pilate: I hate my job and the scheming Jewish leaders—if they want Jesus dead, I want him to live.

Each character study drove home a chilling point to me. I could understand each character’s perspective. Once you see their values and their hopes, you can understand why they conspired to kill Jesus. This drives home that the Bible is both true factually and incredibly relevant to us.

Even the worst villains in the Bible have their own logical consistency when taken in context.

I doubt that none of them set out to be the villains. In fact, the high priests and Pharisees saw themselves as the protectors of God’s people, the temple, the land, the traditions, and the law. They prove that God’s supposed people can become so concerned with things about God and close to God that they miss out on God’s actual work among them.

At a certain point, characters like Caiaphas became so wrapped up in political schemes, national hopes, and religious ceremonies that that they forgot the simple law to love the Lord their God. When Jesus arrived, many remarked that he taught with power and authority compared to the teaching of the priests and Pharisees that lacked both.

One summer we were vacationing at my wife’s family’s cabin which is surrounded by other cabins and houses on a lake. We usually gathered on Sunday evenings for a time of prayer and Bible study. While one distant relative taught us, I remember this feeling of the Holy Spirit opening my mind. It was like the words on the page came alive to me.

There was a God-given authority to the way he taught us.

On other occasions I’ve received prayer from Christians who knew what to say and how to pray for me. Their words carried weight and power. In fact, God powerfully used a friend’s recent prayer for us as we prepare for our move to Ohio next fall.

In contrast to the villains of the Easter story, God’s people are in touch with the Father and his ways. They are united with Jesus, the Son, and can therefore act, pray, and teach with his authority and power.

I’m reminded of Paul saying that the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power (1 Cor. 4:20).

At a certain point, Caiaphas and his fellow leaders settled for talk and forgot what God’s love and power felt and looked like.

When we depart from the love, power, and authority of God, we settle for cheap substitutes.

We need something large to satisfy our longing for influence, so we cling to political power and seek influence in our culture.

We need something authoritative to cling to, so we overemphasize the importance of traditions and/or theology.

We need something powerful to help us, so we ask truth and teaching to do it all for us.

With our emphasis in the wrong place, we forget what it feels like to be God’s beloved children.

We forget what it feels like to be led by God’s Spirit.

We forget what it feels like to be empowered by God to act and pray in faith.

The villains of the Easter story remind us of the terrible consequences of losing sight of God’s love, power, and authority. There are plenty of other options out there for us to choose.

We won’t make the wrong choice tomorrow. It will happen gradually. We’ll set ourselves up to make the wrong choice when we begin to allow our love to grow cold and we stop seeking more of God’s influence in our lives.

I can relate to the villains of the Easter story. Over time they got mixed up in a tangled web of distractions, unable to find the true love and power of God. The more I understand them, the more I can appreciate the compassion of Jesus, who forgave them while he hung on the cross.

He saw a group of people who had lost their way from God, and even as he hung on the cross, he called out in love for them to come back.

I’m going to made a statement based on tons of anecdotal evidence—both my own and what I hear from others. I’m pretty sure it’s true.

Large numbers of church-going conservative to moderate evangelicals (especially the conservatives) would flip their lids if they really knew what the professors in many leading seminaries and Christian colleges/universities believe.

Some schools are more diverse than others, permitting a wider range of views, and for my purposes here, I’m focusing on those with greater theological diversity. And believe me, when I’ve mentioned what I learned in seminary, I’ve had to help a few friends put their lids back on…

Perhaps you aren’t easily rattled, which is great, but we need to look at what our leading Bible scholars are saying and then how their teachings reach us in the pew. It may help us relax a bit when new Christian theology “scandals” hit if we learn where some of our theological trends come from and how we learn about them.

An example? Let’s start with a tame one.

A leading Old Testament scholar at my seminary, who worked on little-known projects such as the NIV and NLT translations of the Bible, taught the following in his class:

• The days in Genesis were most likely long, indeterminate periods of time. Least likely? 24 hour days.
• God’s image is fully reflected in the creation of man AND woman—together.

The implications drawn from these two points are striking. They would rattle the interpretations and practices of many Christians who put a lot of faith in the world being created in 24-hour days and who teach that women are somehow below men—especially when it comes to teaching men.

The Diversity of Evangelical Scholars

It gets a little stickier in many seminaries and universities. How does salvation work? Well there are a couple prominent schools of thought that range from paying a debt to God to buying us back from Satan—both have biblical support among other views.

How was the Bible written and edited? Wait, did I just say the Bible was edited? And don’t get me started on who wrote which book when. I mean, Isaiah can’t be scripture if it had two different authors, writing in two different settings, can it???

Hell? Well, it’s not easy for some scholars to say something for certain about hell since Jesus spoke so much about Gehenna, a literal place in his day that we translate as hell. Are there consequences for rejecting God? Absolutely. However, the exact details of the punishment are not a matter of consensus among evangelical scholars. 

I could go on with debates about the impact of culture on our theology, the problems of American nationalism in the church, or different views on the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts. There is a lot of diversity among our leading scholars, but we don’t always glimpse that from the pew.

How Christian Authors Use Theology

Which brings me to my other point. You see, we have a lot of theologians who pioneer ideas or challenge the status quo of our theology, but not all of them are able to communicate effectively to wide audiences like a Max Lucado or dare I mention a certain pastor in Michigan… And then Brian McLaren is another good example of a Christian author who reads a lot of theology books by conservative scholars, but he also mixes in liberal scholars.

So we have quite a few theologians in our seminaries and universities who are immersed in the Bible, theology books, and church history who have limited access to the folks in the pews—the folks who would have a heart attack if they knew what their scholars are teaching. There are exceptions (say NT Wright for one), but by and large, our scholars are rarely the ones who carry new ideas to the church.

That falls to writers.

There are a number of Christian writers who take the existing theology that’s already out there and make it accessible for the average Christian. That’s what Brian McLaren did in  A New Kind of Christian. McLaren took the theology that had impacted his own life powerfully and wove a simple narrative with two friends having a spiritual conversation. He didn’t think a lot of that stuff up on his own for the most part, though he certainly included his own spin or innovations at times.

So when we’re concerned that a popular writer is introducing new ideas that will somehow corrupt Christianity, there’s a good chance those ideas are being pulled from some scholars who have already been teaching them to college students and pastors. Their ideas are already being considered among many learned Christians, but have not made a splash in the popular Christian market.

The good news is that the Gospel is still being preached and the many students and pastors who interact with these supposedly “dangerous” ideas are fully committed to following Jesus.

In many cases we have Christian scholars who are deeply committed to the scriptures and to Jesus who find that some of our “traditional” views aren’t quite on the mark. This presents an interesting quandary. There’s the traditional line by which “faithful Christians” have been defined for a particular belief. However, being a faithful Christian demands a commitment to the teachings of scripture.

What happens when a commitment to the teachings of scripture lead a scholar to believe something a little different from the traditionally “faithful Christian interpretation”? It’s not an enviable position.

However, there are many Christian scholars who have tweaked their conceptions of salvation, hell, theology and culture, and the nature of the Bible’s composition after carefully studying the scriptures. We often don’t know about their views widely until a talented Christian writer/communication takes the work of these scholars and presents them in a book for popular audiences who wouldn’t persevere through a 300-word theology book with tiny font and footnotes that sprout like weeds.

I write all of this because we often hear that this or that author is spreading a teaching that will somehow destroy the church. While we should certainly be careful about what we teach, often enough today’s raging theological controversy was yesterday’s tame class discussion at a Bible-believing, Jesus following university or seminary where everyone left class, checked their text messages, and then promptly ate lunch.

Do the Disturbing Passages Negate the Rest of the Bible?

I’ve read quite a lot about the disturbing passages in the Bible, and I know that many learned authors have tried their best to sort out the nature of God and possible explanations for events such as the conquest of Canaan. Some of us may accept their theories, but I’m going to guess that many of us are dissatisfied by them.

I’ll admit it. I don’t have satisfactory explanations for certain events in the Bible that I simply can’t match up with Jesus.

What now?

For me, 99.9% of the Bible fits together relatively well. There are just a few instances that are hard to stomach. I don’t want to set myself up as a judge of God, and therefore I have an important choice to make. We all do.

Do we let a few troubling passages overshadow everything else in the Bible and the experience of God in our midst today?

After spending so many years studying theology and wrestling with tough passages, I hit a point where I just needed to follow Jesus, worship him, and live in a daily loving relationship with him. There are some gaps in what I understand, but I take these gaps as further evidence that I am not God.

I’m sure my wife appreciates that.

What blows my mind is that God has created us with intelligence and the ability to discern moral choices. I believe he wants us to wrestle with these issues. He wants us to read about the conquest of Canaan and ask him, “What the hell?”

However, he doesn’t want us to stay there feeling bitter, self-righteous, or superior. We have to bring our honest questions to God, while also remembering that we aren’t in this to get 100% on the test, to prove the Bible is flawless, or to prove we are most clever with our theology.

We are committed to Jesus because he is passionate for his people. He doesn’t have to explain every single detail to us, even if we can’t quite understand why he’d leave us hanging sometimes when we bring questions to him.

At the end of the day, we can rest assured that we know quite a lot about God based on the Bible, Jesus is right Savior to follow, and we’ll have to rely on faith when we run into mysteries. I’m OK with that.

I don’t need to spend my time knowing every little thing in the Bible because I am fully known by God, and, despite this, God still wants to be with me.

What do we gain by explaining difficult Bible passages?

Yesterday I mentioned that I generally expect the Bible to provide comfort, guidance, and direction rather than challenging or disturbing me. Today I’d like to discuss what we gain by trying to figure out the disturbing passages of the Bible.

When I read the Psalms, I often run into difficult questions. Why are you far away God? Why do the wicked prosper? Why has calamity fallen upon me? Why do the righteous suffer? This reveals a complex picture of God that defies simple rules or our hope that the Bible fits together neatly.

The God of the Old Testament and the God revealed in the love and suffering of Jesus are the same. And this leaves us with an important question. What do we gain by trying to weave them together seamlessly?

Conservative and liberal Christians have tried to make them fit together and offer a series of scenarios to explain the tough, disturbing passages of the Bible. I’d like to ask, Should we do this?

I’m not saying that it can’t be done. I’m just saying that we may not be able to do it, and in fact, there are some good reasons to believe that our attempts are not necessarily grounded in good reasons.

Mistake #1: God Must Always Make Sense

If we want the Bible to fit together perfectly and to never disturb us, I think we reveal some presuppositions about God and the Bible. We presuppose that God will always act within our understanding. In fact, if God can’t act in ways that we understand, then he can’t be God or at least a good God.

Christians and atheists make this mistake. I’m at a place in my faith where I’ll certainly try to figure God out, but I’m leaning more toward faith and mystery when I can’t make sense of things in the Bible.

Mistake #2: The Bible Is Our Foundation

Many Christians also presuppose that the Bible can’t have unexplained mysteries in order to be the foundation for our faith. There are two problems here. First of all, our faith stands and falls on God himself and his revelation to us. The Bible is part of his essential revelation, but it does not make up the whole.

In fact, we read in the Bible that Jesus lamented how the teachers of the law searched the scriptures and missed the fact that the scriptures pointed to him—as in the person of Jesus. Paul also asserted that there is no other foundation than Jesus Christ. And therefore, our faith surely benefits tremendously with the Bible, but if every Bible was locked up, Christianity would still continue.

In addition, in order for the Bible to be God’s inspired message to us, we should expect it to baffle and confuse us sometimes. If we are dealing with a deity who is truly greater than us, I think it’s reasonable to expect some uncertainty in the Bible. In fact, I’d say that the Bible encourages hard questions and sometimes does not offer the simple, assuring solutions we crave.

What Do We Gain by Explaining the Bible’s Tough Passages?

I’m driving at this simple point: we don’t really gain all that much by trying to “solve” the passages in the Bible that disturb us. No matter where we land on the issues at hand, such as the conquest of Canaan, we’ll have a measure of uncertainty and dissatisfaction.

We can still try to understand the baffling and disturbing passages of the Bible, but we should expect to sometimes hit a number of possible turns that leave us confused and lost. A disturbing passage in the Bible may rattle our faith, but our faith can endure because God is alive today and calling us to follow him despite our doubts.

God can live with our doubts. Can we?

The Next Post: Do the Disturbing Passages Negate the Rest of the Bible?

We Don’t Expect the Bible to Disturb Us

I know this may sound hard to believe, but most days I’m not interested in waking up, opening the Bible, and running into questions about God’s relation to things like genocide or the way divine election works. Call me hopelessly idealistic, but I thought the Bible was supposed to just tell us how to love God and to love others, making it easier for me to follow Jesus in my everyday life.

We are told to read the Bible devotionally, for the purpose of “spiritual growth.” Preachers lament our lack of biblical literacy. Commentators posit that our problems would be solved if only we opened the good book more often.

Lost in this push to get our noses in “The Word” is any notion that the Bible may disturb us, feed our doubts, and possibly even push us further away from God sometimes. For all of the comfort and joy I find in the Bible, we can’t overlook the times, even if they are few and far between, that the Bible rattles us.

Disturbing passages in scripture throw a wrench into things.

We could mention the flood, the conquest of Canaan, or the particulars of divine election. All of them bring up potentially troubling issues for us and have divided Christians over the years. God’s relationship with violence has been especially controversial of late in some circles.

As a follower of Jesus, I believe that these are tough questions, but we ultimately have nothing to fear from them. I have no intention of messing with anyone’s faith here. The questions are out there, so we need to figure out how we should deal with them. I’m sure there will be some who walk away dissatisfied by my conclusions. However, when I wrap this series up on Wednesday, I hope we’ll arrive at a place where we find a healthy mix of logic, faith, and mystery.

This week I’m not aiming to explain away any particular problem in the Bible. Rather, I’d like to take a broader look at how we approach disturbing passages in the Bible, what’s at stake, and how Christians committed to following Jesus can live in the tension they create. 

Tomorrow’s Post: What do we gain by explaining disturbing passages?

Over the past two days we’ve established that Jesus defines faithfulness according to the ways we demonstrate our love for others, particularly how we serve the least of these by our words and deeds. This raises the matter of what we should do with our beliefs and theology.

If God wants us to love him and one another, basing our faithfulness on whether or not we have imitated his service to those who are most vulnerable, isn’t theology a waste of time?

For me, this creates a sort of chicken and the egg dilemma. We are making a deeply theological statement when we say that serving others is most important to God. We can’t escape the implications of Matthew 25, but we also understand Matthew 25 by putting theology to work for us.

In putting this another way, if we want to dismiss theology in order to only serve others, we are essentially destroying the foundation that gave us the perspective we needed to see the priorities of God clearly. If we decide to move into service without a foundation of theology, we’ll end up serving without God’s leading and power, eventually losing the perspective and insight that theology provides.

Service without theology is every bit as problematic as theology without service. The two are linked.  

Our problem isn’t theology. Our problem is theology that leans in close to God, but keeps him and others at arm’s length. In addition, theology can be used to build glass walls between ourselves and God so that we can look at him but remain untouched by him and his heart for others.

Good theology connects us with the heart of God and enables us to read Matthew 25 and James 1 with the result that we take these messages seriously and put them into action.

We can try a shortcut to the action that God calls us to without theology, but in a brief period of time we’ll lose our way if we aren’t grounded in the leading of God’s Spirit and the message of scripture.

May we remain immersed in the scriptures and Spirit of God.

May we discover ways we can put our theology into practice.

And may we be refreshed with the new things God teaches us and calls us to do for him.