We all think about God.
But when we give thinking about God a name, such as “theology,” we think to ourselves –
b-o-o-o-o-o-o-ring!
Systematic Theology. It even sounds boring.
And then when we hear preachers talking about words like glorification, imputation, sanctification, and plenty of other long words, we say – obviously, my initial thoughts were right on target! This is no fun.
So we occasionally hear people say things like, “I don’t have any use for theology.”
“I love flowers, but I hate botany; I love Jesus, but I hate theology.”
Certainly, when we think of theology as an unnecessarily tedious study of something beautiful, we can “feel” that there is not much value in it. But that just isn’t true.
I think about my own experience with learning History in school. I hated it because my teachers were boring, the textbooks were dry, and I was forced to memorize dates and facts that I never could connect back to my life. But later on, when I read the “right” historians who knew how to share history with creativity and excitement, I realized the truth – that history is not only interesting, but that there is value in knowing history. Certainly at least in the fact of “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
Theology is similar. It can be miserable if presented poorly. But it is so very important, useful, and exciting as we learn more about our amazing God.
We all have our own beliefs about God. The study of God is to help us better understand Him so that we aren’t just relying on our own beliefs, which have the potential to get extremely clouded. By refusing to think deeply about God, we can find that we easily slip into bad theology.
“Theology can be dull, or much worse, it can be ruthless. In Christianity, however, the answer to bad theology can never be no theology. It must be good theology. God gave us minds, and he surely expects us to use them in thinking about his truth” (Bruce Shelley).
You’ve said to someone before, “We were just talking about you,” and you’ve probably heard this reply – “Well then you had a good subject!” And when we are thinking about God, we are thinking about the greatest subject.
Let’s learn to enjoy thinking deeply about our great God as He is the best subject we could possibly think about.
He tells us – whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things. He is the pinnacle of all of these things; theology is the study of who He is. Let’s study Him – we’ll find He is ANYTHING BUT dull!
As an example in closing, here is a great quote that is a statement of theology, and the more I think about it, the more I am amazed by it…
“Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of God” (Bruce Shelley).