The T Word

I was a Philosophy major in college. OK, stop your snickering.
One day one of our beloved professors was recounting a story of a flight he took back from the east coast and happened to be seated next to a very inquisitive and talkative man. All the way from JFK to Seattle's Airport this guy talked and talked. At one point the conversation turned towards relationships and our talkative friend recounted an experience from dating the woman who would eventually become his wife. As he closed the story he said, "well I guess birds of a feather flock together." Not two minutes later he launched into yet another tale from his love life and concluded with the adage "I guess opposites attract." Up until this point our Philosophy Ph.d had generally played the role of the listener but it was here that he in chimed pointing out that not two minutes ago he had said that he and his soon-to-be wife were birds of a feather flocking together AND attracting opposites which led him to wonder "which is it?"

There is a lot of life that we readily hand over to remain unexamined as Socrates would say. It is a whole lot easier to not have to dig in and examine every aspect of our lives to determine what it is that we thought, believed, understood, or accepted about the world and our role in it. Truthfully I don't really know what I think or believe about a great deal of actually important stuff and so when it comes around to it I am happy to defer to "experts" or memorable catch-phrases like "opposites attract" or "different strokes for different folks." In my opinion this kind of reliance on safe pop-wisdom gets you in me in a great deal of hot water when it comes to some of the ultimate things in life like love, justice and our own faith. Being quick to leave faith unexamined leaves us easily swept up in the ebb and flow of life but even more than that it almost totally cuts us off from the richness that comes when we truly seek, when we try to pair faith and understanding. There is a richness (that is not without pain) when we begin to seriously think about the God that formed us and our life as we seek to live it and as we begin that process we are doing something scary...we are becoming theologians.

The church today needs theologians more than they need CPAs, MBAs, or JDs. Theology is for the people. Theology is for the church and if we let Theology reside solely in the halls of Academia then it isn't real. Real theology happens when everyday people think about the ultimate things in life. In this way we are all theologians. Open yourself up to thinking!

Peace,
Brett