Recently in Theology Category
Another group of believers were sincerely convinced they knew the date and time of Jesus' return and that they would all be raptured from the Earth to escape the coming tribulation. And another group was wrong.
Harold Camping of Family Radio was certain he was right. The people who listened to his radio show found his arguments convincing. And here's something to consider: if someone you trust tells you to choose between financial solvency with a future eternity in Hell and bankruptcy with a future eternity in Heaven, it's a pretty easy choice. If you're not sure which is going to come true, it gets a bit more complicated, but you're still gambling your temporary comfort against your eternal comfort.
I completely understand the kind of fear this argument instills. I grew up in the Evangelical Free church, and we were taught about the rapture. Sometimes I even worried that the rapture had happened and I was left behind.
So with one's immortal soul at stake, it makes a certain amount of sense to prove one's faith by selling everything, cashing in IRA's, pensions and 401(k) funds, and pouring all that money into billboards, vans, and RV's. These people are not crazy; they're frightened.
And now, of course, many of them are broke, unemployed, and homeless.
So first we need compassion for people who did what they thought God was calling them to do. They stepped out in faith to a degree most of us are too afraid to. Where we can, we ought to help them. They are our sisters and brothers.
Second, maybe we can start taking apart the idea of the pre-tribulation rapture so this sort of thing is less likely to occur in the future.
The modern concept of a pre-tribulation rapture came about in the nineteenth century. There have been many people who have proclaimed the date of the rapture: William Miller (see The Great Disappointment), Charles Taze Russell (whose Studies in the Scriptures were the basis of the beliefs of the Bible Students, a sect with which I was involved for a while) and others. Needless to say, none of these have come to pass.
It would be silly for a progressive theologian to say new ideas are inherently useless. There are plenty of new theological ideas, and some of them are very interesting. So I'm not going to say that a pre-tribulation rapture can't be true because it's a relatively young idea.
What I will say, however, is that I find a pre-tribulation rapture a little odd for Christianity. Here's why:
Jesus (however you understand Jesus - human, divine, both, neither?) could have avoided torturous death, but didn't. And Jesus not only suffered a sacrificial death, he lived a sacrificial life.
So I find it a little odd that people who claim to follow Jesus, the one who said "take up your cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23), should be looking for a way to escape the trouble and leave others to suffer.
One possible problem with such a theology is neglect of the environment. There have been people who argued against ecological concern because they expected an imminent rapture. To me, that's a bit like trashing the apartment when you move out.
Another problematic symptom can be smug superiority. "In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned" is one bumper sticker. I've seen comments like "I'll be laughing in heaven while you suffer on Earth". Imagine Jesus taunting a prisoner this way - is that the Jesus of the Gospels?
One could also not care to help the suffering in this world, because it will all be over soon (at least for the righteous). Forget "blessed are the poor", and never mind the oppressed.
Of course, not all believers in a pre-tribulation rapture act these ways. The primary problem I have with the pre-tribulation rapture is that it suggests that some set of us with the right faith, the right knowledge, a kind of Gnosis... can escape trouble.
But we're Jesus' people,
and if we are to follow Jesus' way,
and serve like Jesus,
and take up our own crosses,
and be faithful unto death...
I don't think we get a pass on the struggles of life. Rather, I think we ought to be in the midst of them, struggling with our sisters and brothers.
However we believe our lives - and our world - will end, if we are followers of Jesus, we will love our neighbors as ourselves.
If we see how Jesus came as a servant, we will also be servants.
If we have been blessed by God, we will pour those blessings out on others.
We may not die a sacrificial death as Jesus did, but we can live a sacrificial life. Perhaps we can't do so to the degree that Jesus did, but as best as we are able, our call is to stay here to help those who struggle, to love the unloved, to care for the suffering.
Today, I will offer this prayer:
Harold Camping of Family Radio was certain he was right. The people who listened to his radio show found his arguments convincing. And here's something to consider: if someone you trust tells you to choose between financial solvency with a future eternity in Hell and bankruptcy with a future eternity in Heaven, it's a pretty easy choice. If you're not sure which is going to come true, it gets a bit more complicated, but you're still gambling your temporary comfort against your eternal comfort.
I completely understand the kind of fear this argument instills. I grew up in the Evangelical Free church, and we were taught about the rapture. Sometimes I even worried that the rapture had happened and I was left behind.
So with one's immortal soul at stake, it makes a certain amount of sense to prove one's faith by selling everything, cashing in IRA's, pensions and 401(k) funds, and pouring all that money into billboards, vans, and RV's. These people are not crazy; they're frightened.
And now, of course, many of them are broke, unemployed, and homeless.
So first we need compassion for people who did what they thought God was calling them to do. They stepped out in faith to a degree most of us are too afraid to. Where we can, we ought to help them. They are our sisters and brothers.
Second, maybe we can start taking apart the idea of the pre-tribulation rapture so this sort of thing is less likely to occur in the future.
The modern concept of a pre-tribulation rapture came about in the nineteenth century. There have been many people who have proclaimed the date of the rapture: William Miller (see The Great Disappointment), Charles Taze Russell (whose Studies in the Scriptures were the basis of the beliefs of the Bible Students, a sect with which I was involved for a while) and others. Needless to say, none of these have come to pass.
It would be silly for a progressive theologian to say new ideas are inherently useless. There are plenty of new theological ideas, and some of them are very interesting. So I'm not going to say that a pre-tribulation rapture can't be true because it's a relatively young idea.
What I will say, however, is that I find a pre-tribulation rapture a little odd for Christianity. Here's why:
Jesus (however you understand Jesus - human, divine, both, neither?) could have avoided torturous death, but didn't. And Jesus not only suffered a sacrificial death, he lived a sacrificial life.
So I find it a little odd that people who claim to follow Jesus, the one who said "take up your cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23), should be looking for a way to escape the trouble and leave others to suffer.
One possible problem with such a theology is neglect of the environment. There have been people who argued against ecological concern because they expected an imminent rapture. To me, that's a bit like trashing the apartment when you move out.
Another problematic symptom can be smug superiority. "In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned" is one bumper sticker. I've seen comments like "I'll be laughing in heaven while you suffer on Earth". Imagine Jesus taunting a prisoner this way - is that the Jesus of the Gospels?
One could also not care to help the suffering in this world, because it will all be over soon (at least for the righteous). Forget "blessed are the poor", and never mind the oppressed.
Of course, not all believers in a pre-tribulation rapture act these ways. The primary problem I have with the pre-tribulation rapture is that it suggests that some set of us with the right faith, the right knowledge, a kind of Gnosis... can escape trouble.
But we're Jesus' people,
and if we are to follow Jesus' way,
and serve like Jesus,
and take up our own crosses,
and be faithful unto death...
I don't think we get a pass on the struggles of life. Rather, I think we ought to be in the midst of them, struggling with our sisters and brothers.
However we believe our lives - and our world - will end, if we are followers of Jesus, we will love our neighbors as ourselves.
If we see how Jesus came as a servant, we will also be servants.
If we have been blessed by God, we will pour those blessings out on others.
We may not die a sacrificial death as Jesus did, but we can live a sacrificial life. Perhaps we can't do so to the degree that Jesus did, but as best as we are able, our call is to stay here to help those who struggle, to love the unloved, to care for the suffering.
Today, I will offer this prayer:
God, I pray that I will not be raptured,
and that you will help me to show my faith
not by impoverishing myself to prove my trust,
but by using the ways you have blessed me
to bless others.
Do not let me escape the trouble that comes to my neighbor
But let me be a help to her and to him
As you have been a help to me.
Amen.
I should be studying right now, but this was in my head and I had to let it out: it was taking up far too much space.
Lately, I've been thinking about how theology - and, primarily, I'm acquainted with Christian theology - tends to diminish God.
I believe that, at least in most cases, this is unintentional., We're just trying to figure out how things work and, with our narrow vantage point on the fuzzy outside of a rock with a molten core, flying around what amounts to a mid-sized (in cosmological respects) fusion reactor, which itself is flying with billions of other reactors (of various sizes) around a gravitational center which may well be densely-packed matter, which itself is moving... well, you may begin to see the problem. Forget about seeing the forest for the trees. We'd be lucky to see the forest for the fuzziness of the moss.
What troubles me is how our clearly simple understandings of theology become the stuff with which we condemn each other as apostate, heretic, blasphemer, and damned. What troubles me is our lack of humility in our theology. What troubles me is that we too often call our theologies "truth".
For example, let us consider the question of works versus grace. This has been raging for centuries, and even those who fall entirely on one side or the other have trouble working it out.
On the works side, we have a simple proposition: do what God tells you (and avoid that which God prohibits) and you'll be rewarded; get it backward and you'll be punished. This is easy to understand if one has had a parent or guardian, teacher, police officer, or other authority figure in one's life. And, if one doesn't think too hard about this, it seems to work well.
The problem with a works theology is that God's plans are dependent on people. God's plans for Adam and Eve can be interrupted by their disobedience; God has to rely on Samson's parents raising him as they're told; God even has to rely on Judas selling out Jesus in order to get to the sacrifice. If I have a choice to do as God desires or to do otherwise, I can personally change the course of God's plan. It makes me, at least in a small way, more powerful than God.
So let's put all the power in the hands of God: nothing happens unless God wills it. If the entirety of the universe is planned by God, then none of us have any choice at all - we're part of the plan. This works well with scenes such as God hardening Pharaoh's heart (Ex 4:21, 7:4-5) or God allowing "the satan" to direct the Sabeans to kill Job's servants and steal his Oxen (Job 1:15) and the Chaldeans to kill Job's servants and steal his camels (Job 1:17).
Of course, that means nothing we can do will affect the outcome. This is where John Calvin went, and it led him to double predestination - which he didn't like but had to accept: before the universe was created, God decided who was created for eternal punishment and who was created for eternal bliss. How else could it be? Isn't God in control?
Both of these viewpoints deal with a variation on the riddle "Can God make a rock (humanity) so heavy (able to affect its own destiny) that God can't lift it (determine its fate)? In short, what does "all powerful" (omnipotent) mean?
In Christian theology, there are recurring bubbles of universalism (relatively recently Carlton Pearson made a bunch of waves, and it looks like Rob Bell may as well). These theologies of the redemption of all people (or all of Earth, or all of creation) have many different flavors, but they settle a problem: If God predestines everything, nothing - and no one - is responsible but God. But if God's responsible, why do people do bad things? Why are there disasters? What's the point of cancer?
There are several theologies that make us co-creators with God. "But" complain some theologians "if we have any input at all, doesn't that mean God makes adjustments because of us? Does that mean God changes? And if God changes (which is, of course, against scripture as we know it), how can we trust God not to change again?" And, besides, if we're doing part of the lifting, how great is this God character anyway?
As I noted in a previous blog, these theologies all put God on the same timeline as we are. Most of us recognize the hold time has on us: just remember something embarrassing you did in your life and try to change things so it never happened. We may have a future of many (perhaps infinite) possibilities, but we have a single unchangeable past.
Most of us are willing to free God of space - we let God be everywhere (omnipresent). We allow God to be eternal - in the sense that God has always been, and ever will be. But we don't give God the same transcendence through time as through space. The God of the Pleiades is the same as the God of the Moon and the God of Jerusalem and the God of far western Joliet IL USA, but the God of today remembers the God of yesterday.
And that's a problem for me - because it makes time greater than God. How great time is! Shouldn't God be greater than time? Should God be the creator of time (at least as we know time)? For many theologies, basic cause and effect creates a theological problem where time is greater than God.
This, however, is no big deal, as long as we accept that we have a theology where the greatest (small g) god is time. And if we want God to be, as Anselm put it, "that greater than which nothing can be thought", then we have to accept that "God is greater than time, even if our theologies cannot account for it".
Now, in a previous blog, I suggested that God may be on another timeline. This does not by any means make me a superior theologian. The truth is, I have no way of knowing whether God experiences any kind of time or space outside of what God created - it's just a way for me to get a handle on my relationship with God. My developing theology, like all theologies, is full of holes, contradictions, and inconsistencies.
The point of this article is not to convince anyone that my life-as-improvisation theology is the one right theology, a ground-breaking theology, an important theology, a novel theology, or even a useful theology.
The point is that every theology makes God smaller than God is. It has to: nothing in human experience is adequate even as a metaphor for God. And if our theologies are only our weak attempts at grasping the greatness of God, then they are insufficient as a means of judging one another.
It's not that you're right and I'm wrong, or I'm right and you're wrong. We're all wrong. As the Apostle Paul writes: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." (I Corinthians 13:12).
So let us speak our theologies, and listen more than speak, for each of us may learn from many. But let's not wield our theologies as weapons; rather, let us exchange them as recipes, tasting from each other's pots, adding, stirring, and seeking to get ever closer to understand what God - and we - are made of, realizing that our efforts will never get it exactly right.
Lately, I've been thinking about how theology - and, primarily, I'm acquainted with Christian theology - tends to diminish God.
I believe that, at least in most cases, this is unintentional., We're just trying to figure out how things work and, with our narrow vantage point on the fuzzy outside of a rock with a molten core, flying around what amounts to a mid-sized (in cosmological respects) fusion reactor, which itself is flying with billions of other reactors (of various sizes) around a gravitational center which may well be densely-packed matter, which itself is moving... well, you may begin to see the problem. Forget about seeing the forest for the trees. We'd be lucky to see the forest for the fuzziness of the moss.
What troubles me is how our clearly simple understandings of theology become the stuff with which we condemn each other as apostate, heretic, blasphemer, and damned. What troubles me is our lack of humility in our theology. What troubles me is that we too often call our theologies "truth".
For example, let us consider the question of works versus grace. This has been raging for centuries, and even those who fall entirely on one side or the other have trouble working it out.
On the works side, we have a simple proposition: do what God tells you (and avoid that which God prohibits) and you'll be rewarded; get it backward and you'll be punished. This is easy to understand if one has had a parent or guardian, teacher, police officer, or other authority figure in one's life. And, if one doesn't think too hard about this, it seems to work well.
The problem with a works theology is that God's plans are dependent on people. God's plans for Adam and Eve can be interrupted by their disobedience; God has to rely on Samson's parents raising him as they're told; God even has to rely on Judas selling out Jesus in order to get to the sacrifice. If I have a choice to do as God desires or to do otherwise, I can personally change the course of God's plan. It makes me, at least in a small way, more powerful than God.
So let's put all the power in the hands of God: nothing happens unless God wills it. If the entirety of the universe is planned by God, then none of us have any choice at all - we're part of the plan. This works well with scenes such as God hardening Pharaoh's heart (Ex 4:21, 7:4-5) or God allowing "the satan" to direct the Sabeans to kill Job's servants and steal his Oxen (Job 1:15) and the Chaldeans to kill Job's servants and steal his camels (Job 1:17).
Of course, that means nothing we can do will affect the outcome. This is where John Calvin went, and it led him to double predestination - which he didn't like but had to accept: before the universe was created, God decided who was created for eternal punishment and who was created for eternal bliss. How else could it be? Isn't God in control?
Both of these viewpoints deal with a variation on the riddle "Can God make a rock (humanity) so heavy (able to affect its own destiny) that God can't lift it (determine its fate)? In short, what does "all powerful" (omnipotent) mean?
In Christian theology, there are recurring bubbles of universalism (relatively recently Carlton Pearson made a bunch of waves, and it looks like Rob Bell may as well). These theologies of the redemption of all people (or all of Earth, or all of creation) have many different flavors, but they settle a problem: If God predestines everything, nothing - and no one - is responsible but God. But if God's responsible, why do people do bad things? Why are there disasters? What's the point of cancer?
There are several theologies that make us co-creators with God. "But" complain some theologians "if we have any input at all, doesn't that mean God makes adjustments because of us? Does that mean God changes? And if God changes (which is, of course, against scripture as we know it), how can we trust God not to change again?" And, besides, if we're doing part of the lifting, how great is this God character anyway?
As I noted in a previous blog, these theologies all put God on the same timeline as we are. Most of us recognize the hold time has on us: just remember something embarrassing you did in your life and try to change things so it never happened. We may have a future of many (perhaps infinite) possibilities, but we have a single unchangeable past.
Most of us are willing to free God of space - we let God be everywhere (omnipresent). We allow God to be eternal - in the sense that God has always been, and ever will be. But we don't give God the same transcendence through time as through space. The God of the Pleiades is the same as the God of the Moon and the God of Jerusalem and the God of far western Joliet IL USA, but the God of today remembers the God of yesterday.
And that's a problem for me - because it makes time greater than God. How great time is! Shouldn't God be greater than time? Should God be the creator of time (at least as we know time)? For many theologies, basic cause and effect creates a theological problem where time is greater than God.
This, however, is no big deal, as long as we accept that we have a theology where the greatest (small g) god is time. And if we want God to be, as Anselm put it, "that greater than which nothing can be thought", then we have to accept that "God is greater than time, even if our theologies cannot account for it".
Now, in a previous blog, I suggested that God may be on another timeline. This does not by any means make me a superior theologian. The truth is, I have no way of knowing whether God experiences any kind of time or space outside of what God created - it's just a way for me to get a handle on my relationship with God. My developing theology, like all theologies, is full of holes, contradictions, and inconsistencies.
The point of this article is not to convince anyone that my life-as-improvisation theology is the one right theology, a ground-breaking theology, an important theology, a novel theology, or even a useful theology.
The point is that every theology makes God smaller than God is. It has to: nothing in human experience is adequate even as a metaphor for God. And if our theologies are only our weak attempts at grasping the greatness of God, then they are insufficient as a means of judging one another.
It's not that you're right and I'm wrong, or I'm right and you're wrong. We're all wrong. As the Apostle Paul writes: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." (I Corinthians 13:12).
So let us speak our theologies, and listen more than speak, for each of us may learn from many. But let's not wield our theologies as weapons; rather, let us exchange them as recipes, tasting from each other's pots, adding, stirring, and seeking to get ever closer to understand what God - and we - are made of, realizing that our efforts will never get it exactly right.
December 28 is one of the liturgical dates for the feat day of the innocents (others are December 27 and 29). This marks the story of Herod killing infants in order to end the threat of "the newborn king" (Jesus) as told in the second chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew:
Can it be only to fulfill the prophecy?
Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the idea of killing an infant Jesus nor any other infants who may end up as collateral damage in Herod's insecurity. But if the point of Jesus is the crucifixion, we have no need for the life of Jesus, and especially not the ministry of Jesus.
The story of the massacre of the innocents tells us that Jesus had something to do instead of, or in addition to, dying. When we focus merely on the death, or even the death and resurrection, of Jesus, we miss the point of Jesus' life.
And if there is a point to Jesus surviving to adulthood, and to His healing the sick, and his preaching justice for the poor and oppressed, then there is probably a point to our living to adulthood as well. We may not see it - sometimes we may despair that there is such a point - but I believe there is a reason why we're here.
On this day, I will mourn those who die as infants - in first century Palestine and in the entire world in the twenty first century - due to senseless violence, hunger, and neglect. I will be grateful that I have been spared, and seek out what my ministry - my reason for surviving to adulthood - may be. I will look at the example of Jesus, who was not merely faithful in dying, but was faithful in living as well. I will examine who I serve, and make corrections as best I can.
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men,* he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.* 17Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:Jesus escapes this slaughter because his parents had been warned:
18 'A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.' (NRSV)
But this makes me wonder: if the point of Jesus' birth is substitutionary atonement, that is:
13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.' 14Then Joseph* got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, (NRSV)
- God dies as an infinite payment for the sins of finite humans against an infinite God, or
- A perfect human (Jesus) dies as payment for the sins of a perfect human (Adam), or
- Jesus dies to trick Satan into taking a blameless person, who he can't keep, and thereby rescuing all who Satan has taken, or
- any number of other schemes in which Jesus dies for our sins
Can it be only to fulfill the prophecy?
Isn't prophecy merely to tell of the times (or sometimes the future), rather than for events to make prophecy true? Surely this could have been omitted from prophecy and Jesus killed with the rest of the children.
15and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I have called my son.'
Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the idea of killing an infant Jesus nor any other infants who may end up as collateral damage in Herod's insecurity. But if the point of Jesus is the crucifixion, we have no need for the life of Jesus, and especially not the ministry of Jesus.
The story of the massacre of the innocents tells us that Jesus had something to do instead of, or in addition to, dying. When we focus merely on the death, or even the death and resurrection, of Jesus, we miss the point of Jesus' life.
And if there is a point to Jesus surviving to adulthood, and to His healing the sick, and his preaching justice for the poor and oppressed, then there is probably a point to our living to adulthood as well. We may not see it - sometimes we may despair that there is such a point - but I believe there is a reason why we're here.
On this day, I will mourn those who die as infants - in first century Palestine and in the entire world in the twenty first century - due to senseless violence, hunger, and neglect. I will be grateful that I have been spared, and seek out what my ministry - my reason for surviving to adulthood - may be. I will look at the example of Jesus, who was not merely faithful in dying, but was faithful in living as well. I will examine who I serve, and make corrections as best I can.
Anything worth doing has a something that makes it worth doing. So what is that something for theology?
We could use theology to figure out how the machinery of reality works. And, in fact, we used to do that: imagining the spheres God created in the sky into which the celestial bodies were fixed, for example. But we have a better tool for that these days. Hard science: math, physics, chemistry, and biology not only dream up possible ways for our universe to work, but also go back and test it. Theology isn't about testing hypotheses.
We could use theology to figure out why people act the way they do. And, in fact, there is much theology that works with this issue - with sin, disobedience, and love. But we have other tools for this: social sciences like psychology and sociology. What makes theology different than these?
We could use theology to figure out why we're here. But isn't that what philosophy does? Why theology?
Theology is unique in that it contemplates what happens outside of the testable reality we inhabit. If we were characters in a novel, we would be contemplating the author and readers. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, how would Elizabeth Bennet imagine the author? How would Mr. Darcy? How about George Orwell's Animal Farm, would the animals imagine the author as a human like Mr. Jones and Mr. Frederick, a pig like Snowball or Napoleon, or a horse like Boxer? If we were in a play or movie, we would be contemplating the author as well, and perhaps wondering what's beyond the "fourth wall".
Of course, theology is not testable the way science is testable. There are no experiments to test whether what we believe about God is actually true. All we can do is hypothesize from the evidence.
And to what end do we consider God? For one, it's interesting. It's a form of mental exercise. But Theology deserves to be more than a Rubiks Cube or Sudoku game.
Another thought is to understand God's rules and the consequences. This is a quite common use of theology: to try to figure out the author's intent for the characters, play them as close as possible to that intent, and avoid whatever terror we imagine comes from that punishment. But we already have plenty of secular laws with immediate consequences, and some far-off penalty is often less effective at modifying behavior.
To my mind, there is one thing that theology can offer that these other practices cannot. For anyone dissatisfied with the universe as it is, anyone who wonders at the pain and misery from human cruelty and indifference; and from natural causes such as hurricane, earthquake, volcano, flood, drought; we want to believe there is a possibility of something better. We want to believe that the universe itself answers to something even more powerful. We want to believe in God.
We can believe in a lot of gods. We can believe in a god who condemns everyone to eternal punishment, but that god is not a god to whom we can appeal in our suffering. We can believe in a god who has chosen a set of us to be saved from such punishment, but still there can be no appeal to one who has already decided, so we can only hope we have been picked for god's team. We can believe in a disinterested god who doesn't care about us - still we cannot appeal to god. We can believe in a god whose mind can be changed, and at least we can appeal to this god, but this god's mind could change again, and we have nothing on which to rely.
Finally, we can believe in a God who wants the best for all of us. In this God we have hope. We hope for something better - either for the future in this universe, or outside the universe.
Of course, our imaginings are not testable, so we cannot know for certain which of these gods, if any, exist. But when we believe in a God who wants the best for all of us, we have hope. Furthermore, we have a model for our own behavior: we can also desire the best for all of us - we might call it love. Such an aspiration stands in contrast to fear of retribution: fear leads one to try to avoid punishment, while love leads one to try to make someone else's life better.
Theology is at its best when it leads us to hope for something better, and inspires us to participate in making that hope into a reality for all people.
For me, that's what theology is for,
We could use theology to figure out how the machinery of reality works. And, in fact, we used to do that: imagining the spheres God created in the sky into which the celestial bodies were fixed, for example. But we have a better tool for that these days. Hard science: math, physics, chemistry, and biology not only dream up possible ways for our universe to work, but also go back and test it. Theology isn't about testing hypotheses.
We could use theology to figure out why people act the way they do. And, in fact, there is much theology that works with this issue - with sin, disobedience, and love. But we have other tools for this: social sciences like psychology and sociology. What makes theology different than these?
We could use theology to figure out why we're here. But isn't that what philosophy does? Why theology?
Theology is unique in that it contemplates what happens outside of the testable reality we inhabit. If we were characters in a novel, we would be contemplating the author and readers. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, how would Elizabeth Bennet imagine the author? How would Mr. Darcy? How about George Orwell's Animal Farm, would the animals imagine the author as a human like Mr. Jones and Mr. Frederick, a pig like Snowball or Napoleon, or a horse like Boxer? If we were in a play or movie, we would be contemplating the author as well, and perhaps wondering what's beyond the "fourth wall".
Of course, theology is not testable the way science is testable. There are no experiments to test whether what we believe about God is actually true. All we can do is hypothesize from the evidence.
And to what end do we consider God? For one, it's interesting. It's a form of mental exercise. But Theology deserves to be more than a Rubiks Cube or Sudoku game.
Another thought is to understand God's rules and the consequences. This is a quite common use of theology: to try to figure out the author's intent for the characters, play them as close as possible to that intent, and avoid whatever terror we imagine comes from that punishment. But we already have plenty of secular laws with immediate consequences, and some far-off penalty is often less effective at modifying behavior.
To my mind, there is one thing that theology can offer that these other practices cannot. For anyone dissatisfied with the universe as it is, anyone who wonders at the pain and misery from human cruelty and indifference; and from natural causes such as hurricane, earthquake, volcano, flood, drought; we want to believe there is a possibility of something better. We want to believe that the universe itself answers to something even more powerful. We want to believe in God.
We can believe in a lot of gods. We can believe in a god who condemns everyone to eternal punishment, but that god is not a god to whom we can appeal in our suffering. We can believe in a god who has chosen a set of us to be saved from such punishment, but still there can be no appeal to one who has already decided, so we can only hope we have been picked for god's team. We can believe in a disinterested god who doesn't care about us - still we cannot appeal to god. We can believe in a god whose mind can be changed, and at least we can appeal to this god, but this god's mind could change again, and we have nothing on which to rely.
Finally, we can believe in a God who wants the best for all of us. In this God we have hope. We hope for something better - either for the future in this universe, or outside the universe.
Of course, our imaginings are not testable, so we cannot know for certain which of these gods, if any, exist. But when we believe in a God who wants the best for all of us, we have hope. Furthermore, we have a model for our own behavior: we can also desire the best for all of us - we might call it love. Such an aspiration stands in contrast to fear of retribution: fear leads one to try to avoid punishment, while love leads one to try to make someone else's life better.
Theology is at its best when it leads us to hope for something better, and inspires us to participate in making that hope into a reality for all people.
For me, that's what theology is for,
