theology RSS

Description: A man with a thought bubble above his head that says “God”. An arrow points to that thought of God and says, “Not God!” THOUGHTS OF GOD NOT GOD I remember the first time I realized this. It was a very traumatic moment. To suddenly become aware that all my theologizing amounts to just that: thought, struck fear in me. The word is not the thing. And neither is the thought.

Description: A google translate chart. On the Christianese side, "Do you believe in God?" On the English side, "Do you believe in my god?" DO YOU BELIEVE IN MY GOD When we progress along our theological journeys and perhaps even deconstruct our beliefs, we begin to realize one of the hardest questions to answer is, "Do you believe in God?" Why? Because now we know a couple of things are going on that the questioner is unaware of: One is that there are as many versions of God as there are those who believe in "God". Second is they have...

Description: A man reading the Bible says to Jesus, “Since the Bible is you anyway, you won’t mind if I just read this because I can twist it more easily than I can twist you to fit my theology.” THE BIBLE VERSUS JESUS This is going to upset, again, biblicists, bibliolators, and fundabiblicists.  Which is what I intend. Good theology should say that if God is God, then all is in God and God is in all. You can’t point to anything and say, “That is not in God.” So neither can you point to anything and say, “That alone...

Description. On the left side is a box with nothing in it. It says, "God without a filter". On the right is a box filled with a light yellow. It says, "God with a filter".  GOD WITH A FILTER I see people online who've applied a filter to their selfies that make them look like a highly altered version of themselves. One young woman admitted that even though she thought the filters made her look amazingly beautiful, they also depressed her and made her hate herself and the way she looks because, well, the filter made her look like someone...

Description: An old man writes in a scroll, “Well believed good and faithful servant”, but he crosses out “believed” and writes in “done” instead. THE UNHEALTHY EMPHASIS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BELIEF The Reformation’s important theological development emphasized that good works aren’t going to get you into Heaven. You need to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  That has been pushed to the extreme so that now it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you believe properly. The letter of James is famous for “faith without works is dead”. This is why there is so...