Messy Theology!

Go Ahead. Mess Me Up!

The western world has found itself living under a certain set of precepts and mindsets that govern the very process of cognitive thought. The current post-modern trend has undoubtedly disrupted this learned behavior of so long.

One such example of this is the western desire or even necessity to pack it up and ship it off; by this I mean that this culture has demanded answers and absolutes to questions that intersect social structures and combat popular ideologies. Every tricky question must have an answer, we must find it, reveal it and then put it to bed, never to be woken, and it is upon that foundation that we will search for the next ‘truth’.

One of the reasons that postmodernism has spoiled this particular party is its outrageously empowering stance on free-thought and pluralism - via meta-narrative sub-thought. For all of its flaws and confusion, I would almost definitely not be writing or thinking these thoughts without its effect on contemporary society. (In particular its effect on Christendom)

All of this drivel to say that our learned behavior of placing answers in boxes, storing them away and tossing the key is abiblical. (If you have not learned by now that I make up words and guess at others, I’m not sure how to help you.) A typically eastern mindset would be opposing to this system of thought.

Eastern thought seems to advocate the development and addition of differing and opposing thought structures concerning the same specific topic and living within that tension. Key? What key? What box? Exactly! 

A good example of this would be eschatology in the Fourth Gospel. Many different scholars would claim to see glimpses of universalism, predestination, armeniesm or futurist thought in the Fourth Gospel. I think it is ridiculous for us with our western mindsets to demand that the writer or writers all had just one of these opinions and rejected the rest. I think it is likely that the writer/s held many of these thoughts within a tension and was content without feeling a need to commit to any one of these eschatological streams.  

One of my New Testament professors at college once said something that greatly helped me to develop my own theological thinking. He roughly said that we in a western mindset always place everything in boxes and are reluctant to question their validity, yet the eastern mindset has everything exploded within their mind and sets themselves at an appropriate position in that spiders web of thought. Remove these 2000 years and you will even closer to the necessary dismantlement to see through the eyes of the New Testament writers.

Basically, he said what I have expanded and explained in the previous chapters. Or that’s what I have held in my theological thought web tension ever since.

So, it seems to me that the messier your theology gets, the more exploded, intertwined, interspersed and knowledgeable it finds itself, the more you will stray from answers and long for collections of ideologies to live within and among. 

I have found this process utterly liberating.

In a bit. Love J.

This Theology. That Theology!

“I don’t have a theology”. Someone I met said this to me after I told them of my study of theology. They were and are wrong, maybe about most things, but definitely about this.

Theology isn’t something you can choose not to be part of, nor is it something that you cannot have. A personal theology, which is what most people refer to as their own system of belief, is something that rooted deep within every one of us, whether you like it or not.

Marcus Borg, an American theologian, tells of the many conversations that he has embarked on with many an Atheist; he begins the conversation with a simple question, “tell me about the God you don’t believe in?”. This is the crux of theology; the minute, nay, the second that they start to form a picture of God, they have entered into a personal theology.

The truth is that probably every one of us has at least a slightly different picture of God.

On any one Sunday morning service there may well and almost certainly will be several people sharing the same row, yet their differing views of God would be alarmingly contrasting.

Maybe there are Christians whose PoG would be more closely matched with certain strands of Judaism, Extremist Islam, Charitable Pro-Life Atheists or Old Men’s Social Clubs.

Whatever your personal view of God is, be assured that it does exist. Whether it is the picture of the God that you don’t care about, claim to follow, avidly protest against or attempt to please daily, it is your own theology that leads you to this structure of belief.

Theology affects us all.

What shaped your theology?

What challenges your theology?

Does it change? Why? How?

What could transform your theology?

Experience? Friends? The Bible? Despair?

In a bit. J.