Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve lately been looking at Christian sound bites. Why do this? Because Christians are supposed to be people of truth and it does not serve us to unthinkingly pass on cliches that are devoid of substance.
Somehow, many of the church have got the idea that it’s holy to believe something blindly. When Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris condemn believing something without evidence, I agree with them. Unfortunately for them, they also believe in a definition of faith without evidence.
This is common in the idea that we don’t need theology. We’ll just have Jesus and that will be enough!
Oh? Which Jesus? Do you want the Mormon Jesus who is the spirit brother of Lucifer?
Do you want the Jehovah’s Witness Jesus who is Michael the archangel and who became Jesus?
Do you want the oneness Jesus who is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
Do you want the new age Jesus who is an avatar?
Do you want the Muslim Jesus who is a great prophet and virgin born and the sinless Messiah but who is not God nor ever claimed to be?
Do you want a humanist Jesus who just went around doing good?
Do you want the Jesus of orthodox Christianity who is the second person of the Trinity?
All of that will depend on your theology. What role of Christ will you have? Will you have Christ as He is or will you find a Christ who suits your desires and longings?
And you know what? You might actually have to study a little bit about that. It’s amazing that when you send your kid to college, you’ll want them to study the colleges and choose wisely. When they have someone they want to marry, you’ll want them to really look at the person they’ve chosen and you’ll want to meet them and make sure they’re a good match.
When it comes to their faith, the substance doesn’t really matter however. Are you going to say that your child’s belief about God is less important than where he attends college or who he marries?
If you’re not teaching your child theology, you already have said that.
Of course, it helps if you’re living out that same lifestyle. Do you make it a point to study your religion, or did you put more effort into studying to buy a TV or automobile in Consumer Reports? You don’t want to spend that time thinking about religion, but you sure won’t stop thinking about what the season is going to look like for your favorite football team.
Of course, I fall too in some ways here as well. We all do. None of us think about God as we should.
However, the sound bite dealt with today is one plaguing our church. A people that are ignorant of what they believe are sitting ducks for the new atheists. In fact, the reason the new atheists are making any leeway at all is because Christians are too ignorant by and large to realize that straw men are being attacked.
I do believe that the world has lost its intellectual bearings and has moved into a position where metaphysical questions and such are too difficult to think about so we’ll just go with science and let it answer all our questions. We can rightfully condemn that. However, the reason I think the world lost its bearings in the intellectual world is because the church lost them first. We can talk about the mess the world is in today and what we can do about it, but let’s not act like we’re innocent.
Our laxity on such issues has led to the rise of atheism and secular morality. There is blood on our hands when we realize if maybe we’d never stopped fighting the battle that 4,000 babies would not die every day in abortion. Why did we get to the point where it was believed life was not valuable and good from conception? It is because we were not there. We were too busy feeling good about ourselves to make sure the world was good. But hey, we were safe. We didn’t have to enter that heavy intellectual stuff.
Theology is not just a nice little addendum to the faith. It is a necessity. It is not just a pastime. It is a lifetime work. I have often told my wife that theology and philosophy are not an option. We all do them. The question is if we will do them well or not. I pray that you Christian will start doing good theology because as Lewis would say with new atheists on the rise, bad theology needs to be answered.
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