Patchwork Theology
When I was in high school, my math teachers made me show my work. When our class was given a test, we were given a sheet filled with problems and the best teachers would leave plenty of blank space on the test paper to work out the problems. Why? Because according to my teachers, knowing how to work the problem – knowing how to do the math – was as important as getting the right answer.
This made no sense to me. What difference did it make how I came up with the right answer as long as I came up with the right answer? Wasn’t getting the right answer the whole point of doing the problem? Not according to my teachers. Learning how to do math was the point, not necessarily getting the right answer. Of course, they would insist, if I did the math correctly, I would always come to the right conclusion.
I find myself thinking about my math teachers a lot these days, especially as I have more and more conversations with my friends who are believers. Too many of them are proud and sure they have the right answers, but most of them have no idea how they came to their answers. Yes, Jesus is the only way to salvation – that’s the right answer. But how did they come to that conclusion? What was the Scripture that led them to that understanding? What was it in the great salvation story of God that supported the redemptive work of Christ?
Have we done the work to understand our theology sufficiently enough, so when we’re faced with a sheet filled with life’s problems, we not only come up with the right answer, but we do the theological work the right way?
Most of us never take the time to work out our theology. We never do the difficult work required to put together a fully developed world view that we can then translate into daily living. Most of us have an encounter with Christ, become part of a local congregation and then, we start living our lives. As things happen, we do the theology required to live through and then understand what happened and what we believe about this aspect of our theology. Then, we move on.
For instance, if we get married we begin to work out our theology about family. We may reflect on the Biblical images of marriage, Christ union with His church, and what it means to see God as Father. Then, we’ll stop. Our theological reflections will go dormant until there’s another major life event or crisis. The result is an inconsistent patchwork of theological reflections and thoughts about what we believe about Christ, but we never develop a full understanding of our faith. We never construct a fleshed out and completed Christian world view. We end up with several pieces of a patchwork quilt of our theology that never quite connects. There are holes in our theology and thus, there are holes in our thinking and our obedience.
Because we can’t show our work, we end up getting caught in verbal ambushes when we try to discuss our faith with our neighbors and friends. For instance, when we find ourselves unable to agree with our neighbors, inevitably, someone will say to us, “But didn’t Jesus say Christians have to love everybody?”
Yes, Jesus did say that. Loving God, ourselves and our neighbors is a foundational teaching of our faith. But it’s not that easy. Love, for most of our neighbors, is an intense and deeply exciting emotional experience. Our stomach turns, our hearts beat faster, tingling sensations run up and down our spines and we lose our breath – that’s how we know we’re in love. Love is something you feel.
That’s not what Jesus means when He says, “love.” For Jesus, love is the essence of who God is. Love is a commitment to the other’s complete fulfillment in the kingdom of God. When we say we love someone, we say we’re personally committed to making sure that person becomes everything God desires for them to be. When we say “love,” we say we’re willing to give our lives to make it so. For Jesus, love isn’t something we feel. Love is something we do.
Yes, doing the work to fully construct and fill out our theology takes a lot of work. Not only that, but it will take our whole lives to do it. We will never get to the place when we have thought about God all there is to think about God. Like math, that’s the point. The point is to know God at ever deeper and more consuming levels of understanding, thought, belief and obedience. It’s not enough to get the right answer to a particular point of Jesus trivia. We have to be able to do the work. After all, the point isn’t to just get the right answer, but to know God.
To desire to know God means we desire to work out our theology. Knowing how to do the theology behind what we believe means we not only come up with the right answer, but we’re able to live the right lives.
This essay was first posted in Scot McKnight’s newsletter.
