Making life decisions is...well, a big part of life. It's especially a big deal when you're in your 20's and 30's and these decisions have a major impact on the rest of your life. I think its important to have a multi-dimensional view of what these decisions actually consist of. It's not just who you marry and what your career is. It's largely the things you choose to significantly give yourself to.
Moving to Saint Louis has been a life decision and not an easy one. The decision making process has been anything but clean and certain. There was no burning bush telling me attending Covenant Seminary was the right choice. Because of this there has been some level of self-doubt. I want to hum a few bars about the process I went through and maybe touch on the criteria we use for thinking about the things we give ourselves to.
It all began this spring. The context is I'd been ready to move on with my life, looking for that "calling." Something I could completely invest in, something that used my gifts and desires, and something that rightly challenged me. I recently finished college, only four years behind schedule, and my current job, a church internship, definitely didn't fit my calling. I was sitting down with my campus minister, sometime this spring, and he convinced me in a single conversation that I should pursue Covenant Seminary for this Fall. There were no plans for me this Fall. I could stay in town, move to another town, or pursue graduate school. None of these were perfect. That day I gave a quick call to my Dad and asked him what he thought about graduate school, and more specifically seminary. My Dad, who is one of these shoot-for-the-moon type of guys in the best way possible, tells me I should apply for graduate school. I decide to follow the his advice and my Dads and apply for Seminary.
As much as we hate it, these decisions are often made by being practical. I would love to go travel Europe for a year, get a Ph.D from Oxford or build a roller coaster made of pure energy. None of these are very practical. The immediate options open to me were: stay in town, move to another nearby town or graduate school. My current town and the nearby town both had practical reasons to avoid living in. Guess I'll go to graduate school.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
Theology
Telling Christians that I'm in seminary studying theology raises some eyebrows. The word theology has a lot of connotations associated with it, many of them negative. More than once I've also questioned the value of pursuing theology. So what is the point?
Maybe the best way to understand theology is to start with how its been misunderstood. Our culture, and even the church, have demoted the mind to pursuits that are academic and irrelevant. Because of this the mind has been divorced from our daily lives. There are two ways that people work from this starting point. Either they only think about the things that they find irrelevant (the intellectuals) or they don't think about the things they find relevant (the anti-intellectuals). Each side trys to show how they are in the right. The intellectuals will make dichotomies between base and noble living, showing how a life of reflection is committed to some higher kind of living. The anti-intellectuals justify themselves by making caricatures of the intellectuals; people who know three syllable words but aren't able to tie their own shoes. Or by ironically using theology to show how theology depersonalizes our relationship with God, etc.
There are half-truths in the mud slinging but they both miss the main point. It's both impossible and unhealthy to separate theology from our daily lives. This is impossible because each Christian is up to their necks in theology. I recently read a cool metaphor from J.I. Packer about the function of theology. Imagine a mountaineer who wants to climb a big, dangerous mountain. To reach the summit they have to understand a whole slew of different things: where the summit is, the route and what to expect, the dangers and how the gear is to be used. Its easy to see that the mountaineers understanding of these things is essential for them safely and successfully reaching the summit. Theology plays a similar role. It tells us as Christians what the goal is, how to get there, what to expect on the way, if we're lost and how to get un-lost. When I say that the its impossible to separate ourselves from theology I mean that we all have a view of the goal, the means, etc. It's just that these views are either conscious: were developing them, altering them and using them for problem/solving. Or these views are unconscious: were going through life with no understanding of where we are or where we're going. I think this position is as bad as it sounds. But either way we're still operating out of our Christian beliefs, our theology.
What does good "the-o-lo-g-i-zing" look like? So far we know that it means thinking Christianly about our daily lives. I would add that this means understanding the discreteness of our internal and external life. Life is complex and the more we appreciate the complexity, the more we're able to successful navigate it. This is really something that we all agree with. We want a car mechanic who has a thorough understanding of car. Why? Because this understanding is essential to the mechanic successfully identifying the problem and fixing it. Our understanding of God, his involvement in the world, and our right and wrong responses is essential to enjoying God and becoming more like Jesus. Generally, the more discrete this understanding, the more attainable the goal and means. This is a problem that the anti-intellectuals have. As soon as they are confronted with something that's hard to understand they immediately think its useless. I think the opposite is true.
I guess the short answer is that theology is good for us and those we care about. More to say but probable not. I don't like thinking discretely about something for too long.
Maybe the best way to understand theology is to start with how its been misunderstood. Our culture, and even the church, have demoted the mind to pursuits that are academic and irrelevant. Because of this the mind has been divorced from our daily lives. There are two ways that people work from this starting point. Either they only think about the things that they find irrelevant (the intellectuals) or they don't think about the things they find relevant (the anti-intellectuals). Each side trys to show how they are in the right. The intellectuals will make dichotomies between base and noble living, showing how a life of reflection is committed to some higher kind of living. The anti-intellectuals justify themselves by making caricatures of the intellectuals; people who know three syllable words but aren't able to tie their own shoes. Or by ironically using theology to show how theology depersonalizes our relationship with God, etc.
There are half-truths in the mud slinging but they both miss the main point. It's both impossible and unhealthy to separate theology from our daily lives. This is impossible because each Christian is up to their necks in theology. I recently read a cool metaphor from J.I. Packer about the function of theology. Imagine a mountaineer who wants to climb a big, dangerous mountain. To reach the summit they have to understand a whole slew of different things: where the summit is, the route and what to expect, the dangers and how the gear is to be used. Its easy to see that the mountaineers understanding of these things is essential for them safely and successfully reaching the summit. Theology plays a similar role. It tells us as Christians what the goal is, how to get there, what to expect on the way, if we're lost and how to get un-lost. When I say that the its impossible to separate ourselves from theology I mean that we all have a view of the goal, the means, etc. It's just that these views are either conscious: were developing them, altering them and using them for problem/solving. Or these views are unconscious: were going through life with no understanding of where we are or where we're going. I think this position is as bad as it sounds. But either way we're still operating out of our Christian beliefs, our theology.
What does good "the-o-lo-g-i-zing" look like? So far we know that it means thinking Christianly about our daily lives. I would add that this means understanding the discreteness of our internal and external life. Life is complex and the more we appreciate the complexity, the more we're able to successful navigate it. This is really something that we all agree with. We want a car mechanic who has a thorough understanding of car. Why? Because this understanding is essential to the mechanic successfully identifying the problem and fixing it. Our understanding of God, his involvement in the world, and our right and wrong responses is essential to enjoying God and becoming more like Jesus. Generally, the more discrete this understanding, the more attainable the goal and means. This is a problem that the anti-intellectuals have. As soon as they are confronted with something that's hard to understand they immediately think its useless. I think the opposite is true.
I guess the short answer is that theology is good for us and those we care about. More to say but probable not. I don't like thinking discretely about something for too long.
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