:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

At the start of 2011, I knew one thing for sure: I did not want my life in the new year to resemble the frustrating mud pit that was 2010. Things were ho hum spiritually and my professional work had only advanced in short bursts without becoming secure and steady.

I don’t know why I waited so long to do this, but I began asking God, “What’s happening? What needs to change?”

God’s answer came back, “Seek first my Kingdom.”

That seemed sort of like a no-brainer. That’s right in scripture. I know that. Why did God need to remind me?

Well, because I had forgotten it. I was stuck pursuing goals that were leaving me frustrated.

So I had to figure out the next big question: What does it look like for me, Ed Cyzewski, to seek first God’s Kingdom?

That was a tough question to answer. I mean anyone can take the theology test and fill in the blank:

“Seek __________ the Kingdom of God.”

Applying it is another matter.

The Kingdom isn’t a test we pass or a creed we recite. The Kingdom is something we seek by changing our to do lists and our actions. Based on my actions, the Kingdom was something I had sought third, fourth, or fifth in my life.

What did it look like to seek first God’s Kingdom? I began to ask God for help, and with his guidance, I took action. Here are a few things that I changed in 2011:

Minister in Prison

I don’t write about serving in prison much because I don’t want it to ever sound like I’m bragging about something that I count as a privilege and blessing. However, I want to share just how much serving in prison means to me. At the start of 2011, I’d put off some training and paperwork related to serving in prison, and God prompted me to get moving on it.

Each Wednesday night I’m part of a 2-hour meeting where I share what God is doing in my life, other volunteers share, and the inmates share what God is doing with them. Sometimes we encourage one another, and often we pray for each other. Driving home last night, I sensed that I had just been with members of my family.

I serve in prison because I looked into it, I had the opportunity, and God prompted me to do it. When God burdened me to serve someone else, I needed to obey his lead if I wanted to receive his blessings.

Pray Intentionally

I don’t quite know how to say this, but I felt that I needed to pray differently. For starters, I try to pray on my knees if possible, but otherwise I at least try to stand or sit up straight—communicating respect to God through my posture.

I’m also praying out loud when I’m alone, which both keeps me better focused on my prayer and feels a bit more powerful. There’s nothing like confessing sin by speaking it out loud before God and then claiming his forgiveness and healing power verbally.

Wake Up Early

This changes depending on how much sleep I need, but I generally try to wake up between 5 am and 6 am most days. This provides me with enough time to pray, read the Bible, and wander around the kitchen until I’ve had some coffee.

Waking up early also ensures I have enough time to work on some fiction and my blog posts for the day. My writing is a ministry, and writing for this blog is a big part of that. I want to make a significant investment in this site so that readers will be encouraged and built up.

Early mornings leave plenty of time to hammer out and edit my posts, while also providing enough time throughout the rest of the morning for my business writing.

Manage my Time

As God challenged me to seek first his Kingdom, he also prompted me to write this at the top of my to do list on my computer: “Be faithful with a little.” If I had one article to do during the week, I made sure I wrote the best piece I could as quickly as possible. Soon additional projects began to arrive, and I was grateful to have improved my time management skills. Here’s what I did:

I set up a simple schedule on my Google calendar for my time between 5 am and 5 pm. It’s grouped by hour or half hour-long chunks such as work for a company, magazine projects, search for writing gigs, marketing, networking, etc. I leave the calendar open in my browser so that reminders pop up when it’s time to move on to the next project.

Each morning I assign 30-60 minute tasks to each block of time so that I ensure I’m hitting the right mix of business writing, magazine work, and searching for new gigs. 

Some Results

Praise God, 2011 is nothing like 2010. It’s not that 2010 was a total waste of time. Some great things happened during that year, and I certainly learned some lessons about what not to do.

However, there were some places in my life where I felt stuck, and the biggest game-changer for me was figuring out what it looked like for me to seek first God’s Kingdom each day. That means I serve in a prison, wake up early to pray, and faithfully use my God-given talents for writing.

My hope is that the next time I face a theology test about the Kingdom of God, I’ll be declared exempt from it. I won’t need to be tested on my knowledge because the right answers to the test will be evident in my life.

What is something new God is asking you to step out in?

For more posts on this topic, visit Bonnie Gray’s blog today: 5 Principles of Starting New.

During the NHL playoffs I watch a lot of games through Canadian web sites that broadcast Hockey Night in Canada. It’s like I’m watching a different sport. The announcers are really into the game, commentators offer unfiltered opinions on the players, and features in between periods share interviews with the game’s best players.

The interviews of players add an element of human interest that makes it feel like HGTV for men. The sport of hockey is glorified, and you feel swept along by this great, amazing game with so many noble representatives.

Part of me wants to drive off to the nearest rink to practice skating backwards.

About a year ago, I spoke with a friend whose talented son considered taking a shot at professional hockey, but he decided against it. He offered a completely different perspective on the culture of hockey that didn’t necessarily spoil my Hockey Night in Canada moments, but revised the way I view the sport.

His angle gave me a dose of reality.

And honestly, why wouldn’t we want a dose of reality? Sometimes it hurts to realize we’ve had something wrong, but in the long run, we are usually better off, even if we’re a bit disillusioned.

As a growing Christian, I value doses of reality and challenges to my beliefs because I want to be sure I’m placing my faith in something solid. If my faith in Jesus is real, then it should stand testing. If it can’t, then perhaps I’ve had my faith in something other than Jesus.

Growing in Christ means changing our beliefs sometimes. That’s something that Peter, Paul, and John all had to learn. We’re in good company.

Our interpretations of the Bible and our theology may change sometimes, but how do we know we’re making a wise change? Here are some thoughts on how we can revise our beliefs faithfully:

Are We Departing from Tradition and the Global Church?

If we’re aware of what the majority of Christians throughout history and the world believe, then we should find out whether our revisions move us closer or further away from them. While joining the majority doesn’t always lead to the truth, it is proper to recognize the work of God’s Spirit among believers outside of our culture as a critical guide (see my book Coffeehouse Theology for more on this).

If we choose to depart from tradition or the global church, then we should have some really, really good reasons for doing so. Christians have been wrong about slavery, women’s rights, and colonialism, and there’s a chance we’ve made some other mistakes as well.

Are We Represented by a Minority in Christian History?

There are some church fathers who have both laid the foundation for our faith and held to some views that we would find quite disturbing today. Origen is one who preserved the Christian faith at a critical time and suffered for it, while also holding some views that would later be declared heretical.

Beliefs are tricky things, and sometimes our lines between heresy and orthodoxy are not as clear as we’d prefer. There are some church fathers who would probably like to have another shot at reframing some of their beliefs, and if the greatest minds of the church are in that boat, we’re in good company, even if we’re in the minority on a particular issue.

Are We Overreacting?

Christians are really good at swinging too far in one direction. Our latest trend is a movement away from certainty to doubt and questions. The danger is that we’ll embrace doubt, deconstruction, and questions to the point that we’ll never put in the hard work and faith required to find answers and to consequently do anything.

We can do this in our shifts over theology. On Friday I hope to apply some of these questions to our beliefs about hell, who goes there, and why. We’re at a time when perhaps an overemphasis on hell and punishment could be countered by an overemphasis on grace and salvation for everyone.

I’m not particularly interested in landing in the dead center of the two extremes, but I think it’s helpful to remember that in every time of shifting, we’ll be tempted to shift too far.

Friday’s Post: Perhaps we’ve made too much of hell in relation to the Gospel message, but let’s be careful that we don’t make too little of God’s justice, judgment, and the reality that anyone can reject God’s love and forgiveness

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Christianity after growing up with it, studying it in college, really studying it in seminary, and continuing to read extensively after seminary, it’s this one simple thing: I’m always wrong about something because I’m always changing or shifting one belief or another (usually small stuff, but still…).

Error is inevitable for every Christian.

N.T. Wright, the patron saint of theological awesomeness, often tells his students that significant bits of what he teaches them are wrong, but he’s not sure which bits are wrong.

I used to imagine God sitting up in heaven with the Westminster Confession or Ladd’s Theology of the New Testament and a scantron sheet with a pile of number two pencils. Perhaps he’d whip out a Wesleyan hymnal for an examination on classic hymns.

Perhaps he’d just tell me, “That bridge to life explanation of the Gospel was a good try, but you didn’t quite know enough about how the cross works. Sorry pal. If only you’d done a better job on your seminary homework…”

While I have no doubt that I’ll be amazed at how far off some of my beliefs are, I also have no doubt that God will be merciful to us even though we’re stupid.

Perhaps you think I’m overstating the stupidity of humanity, but scripture is quite conclusive on the matter. God declares, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” and then for good measure he adds, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

We may think we have a solid grasp of God, but it will always be a dim, imperfect sketch of God’s full-colored reality.

To my utter amazement, God seems OK with this.

Whether we rely too much on grace, the cross, God being a pushover, God being a wimp, sacraments, the Bible, icons, meditation, emotional worship songs, fixed hour prayer, incense, creeds, theology, or whatever else, God is still able to save us.

I’ve been switching between the New and Old Testaments quite a bit for the past few years, and I continue to notice over and over again the same theme loud and clear: Love the Lord.

Isn’t that refreshing in its simplicity? It’s as if God knew we are hopelessly stupid, that we would mix up our theology, that we would confuse worship of God and worship of country, that we would commit sins that we’d never see on this side of heaven, and that we’d need to repent times without number.

Loving God and letting him change us overshadows our faltering efforts and the times when we mean the best and still stumble into error.

A few years ago I began to wonder what a parody of myself would look like. It was a bit painful to consider at first.

Why would I put myself through such pain?

I felt like I was taking myself and my beliefs way too seriously. I feared that I was losing my balance and not putting enough of my faith into practice. I had shifted from the more conservative (possibly fundamentalist in some ways) end of evangelicalism into the more progressive end, and I sensed myself making the same mistakes under a different banner.

A parody of myself would force me to look at myself in a different light, take some of my beliefs to their extremes, and help me figure out where I needed to change and what needed to stay the same.

As I grew more comfortable with the concept of a parody, I began to experiment with a series of posts called “Sarcastic Saturday.” It was quite hard to do, and it didn’t quite pack the punch I wanted as a parody of myself.

So I sat on the idea for a while.

In the midst of the Rob Bell “HellGate” debate, the wheels began to turn.

I began thinking of a parody that would hopefully help all sides step back, laugh a bit at themselves, and hopefully cool things off a bit. At the very least, a parody helps us step back and take ourselves less seriously for a moment. That has done me a world of good in making me a more loving and open conversation partner.

Out of the ideas swirling in my mind, I mashed together a parody of Bell’s book Love Wins with a parody of Twilight and all of the other vampire TV shows and books in pop culture and wrote a novella e-book that I titled Love Bites (you can still download the whole 15,600 word e-book). I didn’t have an agenda other than helping us step back from the angry debates, laugh a bit, and hopefully returning to our conversations with a little less… well… bite.

I want to make it clear that I really like Rob Bell. His book Velvet Elvis echoed many of the things I’ve been thinking (you could say it’s a more accessible take on some of the stuff I say in Coffeehouse Theology).

Hopefully everyone who reads the book noticed another character: Ned Ciwinski. Ned is a parody of myself: a bumbling, dorky writer obsessed with being relevant with theology and culture. One of my friends thought he was the hero of the story, but that was purely a mistake on my part if anyone thought that. I really wanted Ned to just provide comic relief, to get lucky at a few key points with his half-witted ideas, and to provide that parody of myself that I’ve longed to put together.

Ned Ciwinskiy reminds me that I can get lost in my theology and isolate myself to the point that I end up forgetting how to relate to others. To a certain degree, Ned was my round-about way of getting to the excellent point made by Don Miller that Jesus doesn’t need theology experts to advance his Kingdom. Sometimes the theology experts can lose their way.

I currently have a book proposal that I’m sending around that examines what we can learn from the people who rejected Jesus. The majority of those who rejected Jesus were the theology experts of his time. I’ve often written on this blog that the New Testament reads like a horror story for seminary students.

I have a feeling that Ned wouldn’t want to read a book like that, which is why I needed to write a silly story about our theology debates with vampires and a self-absorbed and self-proclaimed theology and culture expert named Ned fumbling his way through the story.

Ricky Gervais once said to Steve Carrell (who plays Michael Scott on The Office), “If you don’t know someone like Michael Scott, then you are Michael Scott.” Along similar lines, if I couldn’t write that story with Ned in it, then the truth is that I could very well become just like Ned—without the vampires I hope.

My annual April 1st book release is happening a day early due to some traveling we’ll be doing today and tomorrow. So, without further ado, I’d like to announce my next book release that you can both download AND read today:

Love Bites: A Story about Life, the Undead, and the Fate of Every Person Ever Bitten by a Vampire (Download It Now)

In this novella by Ed Cyzewski, Eva attends Stoker College in dreary Sporks, Michigan after a voice calls her there and finds intrigue, danger, and the kind of love that bites in a beautiful stranger named Thomas who believes unusual things about the undead. In fact, Thomas believes that all of the undead may be able to live forever.

Will Eva find true love without having to sacrifice herself? Will Thomas ever stop asking questions? Will Ned Ciwinski ever find a publisher for Coffeehouse Vampirology? Will Max the werewolf ever find a shirt? Unfortunately you’ll have to read all 15,600 words of this Love Wins/Twilight parody in order to find out.

You can download the full novella (all 15,600 words of it) for free here.

If you can, please consider chipping in $.99 for an ebook download from Amazon.com. It’s a huge help to me, and enables me to continue offering fun projects like this at no cost to the general public.

Don’t forget: There’s more to this than just this blog post. This is a real book you can download and read.

If you enjoy this book, please consider:

• Tweeting: “Farewell @edcyzewski! #LoveBites http://bit.ly/dPXYBy.”
• Posting to Facebook: “Farewell @Ed Cyzewski! Love Bites: http://bit.ly/dPXYBy.”
• Returning to http://inamirrordimly.com/love-bites in order to download Love Bites for $.99. Every little bit helps!
• Contacting Ed, edcyzewski (at) gmail (dot) com, so that you can learn when the Love Bites Special Edition is coming out with a discussion guide, a sample chapter from Coffeehouse Vampirology, and an exclusive interview with Ned Ciwinski.

Previous April 1st book releases:

The Lost Tweets of Jesus: Uncovering the World’s Greatest Ancient-Digital Mystery (book to download)

Coffeeshack Theology (blog post)

When Should Christians Part Ways?

Yesterday I mentioned that in our family relationships we can usually figure out when we need some distance from relatives who hurt us. When we withdraw from one another for a season, our long-term goal is healing and restoration.

Sometimes we need to cut ourselves off from ongoing conflicts in order to heal and to gain some perspective that will help us sort things out in the future.

I believe that Christians, especially evangelicals may be at such a point.

In my own evangelical family, there is a lot of concern about the warring of progressive and conservative factions.

The conservatives fear the progressives aren’t committed to the Bible and are tossing aside ancient doctrines in favor of the cultural flavor of the day.

The progressives have been damaged by some of the misguided theology and practice of their conservative pasts, ask hard questions based on their study of scripture, and fear that evangelicalism will be defined by the narrow parameters of the “truly” Reformed camp. They fear that evangelicalism will lose it’s broad consensus that has historically included both Arminians and Calvinists.

Both sides wring hands, worry, and write blog posts about some looming threat or danger.

Will evangelicalism split? Will there be even more division in the church?

Lately I’ve noticed so many blog posts where Christians are worried about being condemned or judged or excommunicated by someone else. From what I can tell, the minute someone sets himself or herself over me as a judge, that person is irrelevant to me.

If the leaders of some convention, coalition, board, or generative friendship want to pass judgment on me, I really don’t care. I have a diverse group of friends, pastors, and colleagues that I trust to confront me if I step out of bounds.

If someone wants to play heresy detective by evaluating how I interpret the Bible’s teachings on salvation, hell, women in ministry, homosexuality, war, inerrancy, or politics and then issues some kind of decree that I’m out of the family, I have no trouble ignoring that person.

There are plenty of Christians out there who should be ignored.

And here’s the thing, if reading what I write upsets you, you can ignore me too. I won’t take it personally. To be honest, if college-age me met 30-something me, both of us would probably need a time out.

God can use all kinds of Christians to do a lot of great things. God could use fundamentalist me to accomplish his work, and he can use progressive me to accomplish his work. The cross and resurrection retain their power even if my answers to the Christian theology quiz have evolved.

For who I am, where I’m at, and what God is doing in me, sometimes I need to shut myself off from those who are too combative and can’t see beyond their own narrow limits for the faith. I’m sure that I exasperate others who need to do the same to me.

As I mentioned yesterday, we find in the New Testament Paul and Barnabas separating over John Mark, and even in the case of Peter and Paul, there’s an understanding that each was called to a different people group. Given the ethnic tensions found elsewhere in the New Testament between Jew and Greek and Peter’s own waffling on the Jew/Greek issue, I think it’s safe to presume they could have been agreeing to disagree.

Everyone was reconciled in the end, but they needed the perspective that only time could give.

Though I see parting ways as a last resort, there are times when I think it’s necessary. If the evangelical camp is a kind of diverse and sometimes dysfunctional family, I think we’re at a place where certain parties need to keep their distance from other parties—at least for now.

If someone says I’m not a real Christian, I’ll continue to pray with prisoners, share the Gospel daily, read scripture, and deliver food to the local soup kitchen. Whatever some conservative watchdog says, nothing really changes. I’ll continue following Jesus, regardless of what label is being stuck on me.

Faithfulness to Jesus is what matters, and that’s why we sometimes need to ignore criticism.

There are times when I don’t like who I become: fearful, angry, and defensive. Defensiveness usually tips me off that something isn’t right.

Sometimes I’ve been wronged, and I feel defensive. At the moment when I feel defensive, I have to decide how to respond. That’s when I have to choose between working toward redemption or retaliation.

Other times I haven’t been wronged personally, but I fear the impact of what someone else believes, teaches, or practices. Whether or not my fears or evaluations are correct, the moment I feel defensive, I begin to think of ways to protect what I believe and value from a perceived threat—typically another person or movement.

The moment I become defensive about beliefs, practices, or values, I’m no longer in a position where I can love another person, seeing him/her from God’s perspective. I’m rooted in my perspective, and I become convinced that the existence of another perspective could upend everything I hold dear.

Usually defensiveness is rooted in misperceptions and overreactions. However, even if my defensiveness is warranted, I need to decide whether I’m going to reach out in redemptive ways or strike in order to protect myself.

When my Christian faith was all about finding the right answers and holding onto the truth rather than holding onto a person, I was defensive all of the time. Everyone who differed from me was a threat who called into question the beliefs that my faith was built upon.

When my Christian faith and salvation rested on having the right answers and holding onto the truth, defensiveness made sense.

Allegiance to truth or a particular perspective demands defensiveness in order to preserve it from criticism.

It’s no secret that Christianity stands and falls on one foundation: Jesus Christ. We can all agree on that, but if our foundation is found in a person and in his revelation through the Spirit, scripture, and Christian community, where does that leave us with truth?

That is where Christians tend to differ.

From where I sit, I’ve learned to see truth, or what we believe, as something important, but not something I’m supposed to necessarily defend. No matter what someone teaches, Jesus is still Lord. He defines the truth, he alone knows all of the truth, and there’s nothing that I can do to enhance that.

I see my role as that of a messenger who needs to pass along a message, not a warrior who has to protect something. Even when I meet a Christian who is missing a key part of the Christian faith, I’m a messenger who should affirm what is right and gently correct what is wrong with the ultimate goal of helping others know and experience Jesus as fully as possible.

If someone is committed to Jesus and holds to beliefs that I consider wrong, I gain nothing and they gain nothing when I become defensive. I may be able to encourage that person to see things differently, but if I feel the need to defend the truth or attack someone, the larger problem is my insecurity, my desire to control, and the possibility that I’m resting more on having the right answers instead of the right savior.

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.

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.