Theology is a bunch of big questions, but when it is good theology the big questions have small answers. The explaining of the small answers will fill up the big books that have lined shelves for centuries, but the answers remain small. They are small because good theology is made of answers that people understand right off. Some may feel compelled to debate what’s meant or how to practice these answers, but people get what’s necessary within the answers.
It’s when we get away from the level of plain understanding that we start to lose the import of good theology and move toward trying to be right.
Being right is a way of staying away from good theology, other people and life in God. It fits well with deciding political party affiliation, choosing a neighborhood in which to buy a house and designing the trajectory of our children’s education. It has little to do with life and life is what good theology is all about. Essentially, good theology is seeking to answer 3 issues. How do we treat the rest of created reality? How do we get close enough to know God? How do we live with other people? No priority in the asking of those questions because they show up at different moments on different days for different reasons. These are the questions that ask themselves as we live. Good theology is the small answers that let us at night.
There was a point in time when we were walked into good theology. It was Jesus. See! This is how you do it! Eventually, we moved from good theology into being right. We always know when we find good theology because it is usually found within a person and they are usually doing something that draws us toward being like them. We want what they have. We want to respond to circumstances in a similar way. We want to look toward the future in the manner they do.
This is because the person is living belief rather than knowing belief. It makes it easy to follow them. We can just start imitating them, but if we really want what they have we need to do one thing more. We have to see the bigger picture, the BIG idea they have. They reveal the big picture when you ask them a question like, “So, why did you just help that person that way?” The first response is either a simple statement like, “Because that’s what they needed,” or it is a look like, “Duh… what’s the question.” The bigger picture, the BIG idea floating within them is them seeing themselves as part of life. They’re not making a life. They have a place in life and God’s in it with them.
I feel like I meet these people all the time and I wonder what’s going to change within me so that I become one of them. And I pray that whatever it is… it’s happening.
Blessings,
Geoff
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