THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

Let's talk theology. Let's talk theology and its relationship to other areas of thought and action. Let's look at our ideas as they relate to our behavior.

Mankind has achieved things unimaginable to earlier generations. Our ability to understand and use the resources around us is amazing. We have walked on the moon for crying out loud. We build cities; we travel between them at amazing speed. We can talk to virtually anyone, anywhere in an instant. Plastics -- most people do not comprehend the breadth of materials that word covers, nor the technological complexity it represents. The list goes on and on and on.

All of these accomplishments and many more are based on thought, but more importantly, they are based on thought put into action. Someone has an idea, they try it and it either works or it fails. If it fails, it is discarded, if it works, it is added to our library of knowledge and serves as a springboard for more ideas, and then more accomplishments.

Man is; however, involved in far more fields of intellectual endeavor than just science and engineering. Philosophy, Sociology, Theology, Psychology are also places of ideas. But there is an important difference in these sorts of endeavors. The success or failure of ideas that spring from them is often very hard to measure. Take Psychology for example; experimentation on human behavior is cruel as it denies peoples' essential individuality. Statistical studies reveal trends, but the data rarely if ever comes out with the kind of mathematical certainty one finds in science.

But in some of the fields, the ideas can often divorce from the useful altogether. Theology would be a prime example of this. Theology is the study of what we believe, or know, about God. That definition is kind of amazing if you think about it. We endeavor to catalog, delineate, define, and shape what we know of God! There is a fine line in such a field of intellectual pursuit. In all other areas of thought, we use knowledge to control that that is studied. In Theology we study that which is definitionally beyond control.

I believe there are two trends in modern Theological thought that are problematic. Both are derived from that fact that academic pursuit demands "newness." For those who think, their product is new thought. However, we believe in an eternal God who fully revealed Himself 2000 years ago. He has been the subject on intense intellectual scrutiny for 6000 years. It is entirely possible that there is little "new" to think about Him. Yet we have many people who to one degree or another provide for themselves by seeking such "new" thought, and so we get our trends. The first trend is a tendency to view God as some sort of a construct, and actually subject to our control. These are the people that view God and religion as necessary to the functioning of society, but not necessarily rooted in any objective truth greater than the society. Let's call these the "secular theologians," or ST's for short. The other trend is to deal with ideas about God completely devoid of any sense of their practical applications. Let's call these people, "purely theoretical theologians," or PTT's for short.

Those last two sentences are another way of looking at the difference between ST's and PTT's. ST's are total manipulators and use theology as a device to produce a desired result. PTT's may believe in something, but do not take it so seriously as to let it intrude into making everyday decisions.

Fortunately ST's are pretty rare and reside mostly in academic institutions. In Christian circles on a day-to-day basis, I do not think these people are very effective. They talk, write, and discuss, but such blatant nihilism does not have enough general appeal. However, much of that talking and writing does come into the view of the PTT's and does have effects in that way.

So why is all this important? I think there are three primary reasons. Firstly, I think PTT's stand in the way of real success for the church. Secondly, I think that it is important that Christians come to understand that the Christian experience is much larger than theology. Thirdly, I think the church in general needs to rethink how it approaches theology to avoid both the ST/PTT trap and make sure that the Christian experience is also more than an "ideological fantasy."

Why do PTT's stand in the way of real success in the church? PTT's define success in the church by things like attendance, giving, building programs and other concrete concerns. The question is, "Does God measure success in this fashion?" Well, I have argued over and over in this space that He does not. We have to find some way to balance our worldly concerns, which a PTT concentrates on, and the decidedly unworldly concerns of the spiritual realm. There are people who are too much in the spiritual realm too, but in the places I hang out, the mainstream Protestant denominations, PTT's are most prevalent. While their view dominates, the church can never break through to the real success that can be measured by God's yardstick.

Far more importantly though is that being a Christian must be about more than simply what one believes. Scripture is simply full of references to being a Christian as a transforming experience. If Christianity does not change me, then it is little more than my belief that the sun will come up tomorrow morning. Furthermore, that transformation must be detectable and measurable. One of the big PTT traps is that Christian faith is all about matters spiritual. Here is the way I look at it, if I am transformed spiritually, but you can’t tell, whatever happened is pretty useless. Therefore at a minimum, it is nothing I wish to concern myself with. I want my "religion" to be about the here and now, the real and concrete. It is ALSO about the spiritual and eternal, but not to the exclusion of the immediate.

The biggest way to tell if someone is transformed is in his or her morality. You know, this is the only real difference between a Jew and a Christian. A Jew believes they achieve salvation through their morality. A Christian believes their morality is a result of their salvation. But in both cases it is the same morality. This is the heart of Christ's statement that he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. What I find so interesting is how people think that Christ somehow blocks out some of morality. The focus of Christian ministry needs, desperately, to shift from seeking salvation for all to seeking transformation for all.

So, how can the church change some of these traps? Well I have talked about this in a lot of ways in this space, but here is a new one. We need to remove the seminary from the traditional academic structure. Ironically, the seminary is the founder of the traditional academic institution, but that structure has now been corrupted. The study of theology needs to change its focus from finding the new to cherishing the old. This means a fundamental shift in what is valued in the seminary. Currently it is publication that is valued. We need to shift the value to teaching. Somehow we need to learn to cherish our theological traditions rather than constantly seek to invent new ones.

I think this needs to start in the churches. When churches start hiring pastors on the basis of academic accomplishment AND spiritual maturity, the seminaries will be forced to adopt their curriculums to produce both. I am not sure where this idea that someone's spiritual walk is a personal matter came up, like it is their sex life or something. It is fair, very fair to ask a pastor about their devotions and prayer life. It is fair, very fair, to ask others about how they get along with a given pastoral candidate, because that is a sign of maturity. Jesus commanded us to hold each other accountable. Is there any other way to do it?

With Love,