Theology Is About Life

On the first day of my Theology in Life class every spring, I start out by telling students in the class that theology is about life and can’t be truly learned in a vacuum of a classroom where you can take notes and pass tests. Those two things are important – after all I have to turn in grades at the end of the semester – but they are far from being the whole story.

While I think writing well about theology is a good discipline, I also think that actually doing something that connects what we are learning with how life works is a good discipline. Students in the class do have to write – especially summaries of textbook chapters and supplementary reading responses; but the big project is not a term paper on a theological topic. They are asked to do what I call a “Theology in Life” project.

The process looks something like this. Early in the semester I assign them to groups of four. I do my best to create the groups in a way that doesn’t allow best friends to be in the same groups. I don’t want all athletes or non-athletes to make up a group. I try to create some ethnic diversity in each group. Creating the groups like this in itself makes the project a challenge. For those of us who have been around Point for a long time, we remember the days when everyone knew everyone else and our backgrounds were very similar. That’s not true anymore, and that is one of our great stories to tell!

Today, we are far too big of a school for that to be true and the rich diversity of our student population in so many areas means that in order to do well on the project, students have to learn to work together with people they don’t know, people from different backgrounds, and a whole host of other “different” sort of things. If students succeed in doing that, the project has been worthwhile. Every team either in their classroom report or written assessment of their project noted how good it was to learn to work with people they didn’t know.

This year my class had ten groups of four students. After the groups were formed, they were required to read a collection of comments on issues of social justice and evangelism from the books of John Stott. That assignment is designed to give students an awareness of how the Christian gospel can impact the world around us at every level.

Students know from the start that they can’t do this project in a local church. I’m not opposed to serving the local church, I’ve spent most of my life doing just that. But that’s too easy. I want them to do something that creates a little discomfort and forces them to stretch themselves in ways they aren’t always sure they can. Every team, while making their report in class, had someone on the team say something like “I didn’t think I could do this” but they did!

The ten teams this years contributed somewhere near 250 hours of volunteer work in this community because of these projects. They did everything from working on an elderly lady’s home and yard to having a diaper drive for a ministry in the Greater Valley Area that ministers to unwed mothers. They bought enough diapers for a baby in this area to have a clean and dry bottom for over three months! Another team spent the day with women who are in a home for alcohol and drug addiction issues. Another team had a field day for students at a school for special needs students. They taught them tennis and soccer skills. 

Another team worked with a coffee shop to create an evening of interaction between various Latino groups in the area with others, and several teams did after-school events for students in different schools. A group worked with an animal shelter run by a couple who do most of the work on their own, and helped get a few pets adopted in the process. Still another group worked with Circles of Troup County, a ministry that helps poor people learn job skills, budgeting, and a host of other activities that can lift people out of poverty.

One of the most encouraging moments in each presentation was hearing students say “I plan to go back” or “I can do something like that also.” A few students said something like “I wish someone had helped my family when I was growing up like we did.” For most students, I don’t think these projects end up being a “one shot deal.”

Group Six worked at a local community garden called “Garden Patch.” Mr. Jack Coombs is the one who has headed up that project for years. Four students contacted him and spent an afternoon working with him. They did nothing glamorous – and in fact spent a good bit of time picking up litter on the streets around the garden. In their report, they talked a lot about how appreciative he was of their help and that they had never met a person more grateful for volunteers. They learned some great lessons from Mr. Coombs.

As I was writing this post, a friend who works at Point and lives in this community told me that Mr. Coombs died suddenly last week. I sent the four students an email letting them know and told them that a part of the blessing of this project was that they were among the last volunteers to help him at the garden, and I hoped they would remember how grateful he was – and how their service impacted his life.

These projects weren’t complex, costly, time consuming activities. But each one of them made a difference in the lives of a variety of people – including my students who discovered that I was telling the truth on the first day of class. There is an academic side to theology, but when all is said and done, theology has to be acted on to be learned well.

Finger Pointing . . . And Why It Never Works

If you were alive in the mid-1950s or have read a little US history, the name Joe McCarthy has a ring to it that isn’t altogether pleasant. In his mind, no stone should be left unturned because there was a communist under every rock. President Eisenhower was even in his sights.

Today, looking back at that era, most historians would suggest that the real problem in the mid-1950s was not communist infiltration of the State Department, but the reprehensible behavior of Sen. McCarthy and his abuse of the US Constitution. “McCarthyism” is not a sought after title these days – and rightly so.

The real danger was not from some outside infiltrators who were going to destroy the US and make it bow down to the USSR, the real danger was McCarthy and people like him. In the name of “loving America and what she stands for” he pointed his nasty finger at people who weren’t dangerous to the US or anyone else. Never once did he “prove” anyone to be a “card-carrying communist.” The real enemy was within, not without.

How many times has a story like that been told in human history?

One of those kinds of stories shows up in Acts, Luke’s account of life in the early church. From the Day of Pentecost in Acts forward, it seems like the church was thriving. Luke mentions numbers like 3000 and 2000 (likely only counting men) as becoming a part of the body of Christ. They were not only growing, but modeling what it means to be Jesus to the world. They had all things in common, shared in ways that are remarkable, and there were no needy people among them. 

All of this is happening in spite of the fact that the Jewish opponents of the church seem determined to stop this new movement among Jews. Peter and John, clearly the leading apostles at the time, spend the night in jail are brought before the Sanhedrin the next morning and told “don’t talk about Jesus.” Of course they refused, and the church just keeps growing.

It is only when an internal not external issue arises that something challenges life as Luke describes it in Acts 2-4. A couple named Ananias and Sapphira apparently want the same sort of recognition that Barnabas had been given at the end of chapter four. They, in separate moments, both lied to the Holy Spirit and God by telling Peter things about their gift that weren’t true. Again, in separate moments, they both die – on the spot as it were.

In what surely is the greatest understatement in Acts, Luke says “great fear came upon the church.” Even more importantly, Luke will never again describe the church with phrases like “being of the same mind,” “having all things in common,” and there being “no needy people” among them. We don’t read anymore of people selling their possessions and giving it to the church – which is why, or course, there were “no needy people” among them.

It wasn’t the external attacks of the Jewish opponents of the Jesus story that were the problem, it was the internal behavior of some who claimed to be believers. Internal, not external, issues created this kind of watershed moment in which the way the church functioned as the “earliest, early church” would never be repeated again.

You don’t have to listen very long in our cultural context to hear concerns about the external attacks on the church in our age, often generated by no less than Satan himself. It might be in the form of abortion, same-sex marriage, global warming nonsense, homosexuality in general, persecution of Christians in the Middle East, and the list goes on in endless fashion. I don’t want to sound like I somehow think Satan isn’t involved in some of the evil in our world, but really? It’s all his fault? I thought “nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, . . .” including “powers and principalities.” 

But have you noticed how much easier it is to be opposed to same-sex marriage than it is to work to make your own heterosexual marriage a model of Christlikeness? Or how easy it is to be anti-abortion than it is to offer to take care of an unwed mother and help her raise that yet unborn child in Christ? It’s a whole lot easier to say global worming concerns are nonsense than it is to think about reducing your carbon footprint.

In other words, as long as I can point fingers at someone or something else, it doesn’t take a whole lot to follow Jesus. Yet the Ananias and Sapphira story makes it abundantly clear that it is the internal issues within the body of Christ that pose the greatest challenges to our ability to advance the kingdom.

Peter reminds us that Satan is a stalker. (1 Peter 5:8) But that is one line in an epistle with 105 verses in modern English translations, most of which are directed at our own internal behavior as children of God. It is much easier to point your finger at Satan, but much more productive to create kingdom outposts where everyone knows and accepts that we are called to be Jesus to the world. 

We have all probably heard and/or said that little piece of spiritual advice – “if you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy.” I heard a version of it as an excuse just this morning!  Does Satan actually make me think I’m too busy to pray, to serve, to worship, to confess, to acknowledge Jesus as Lord? Or is that an internal problem?

When our churches and ministries are characterized by that sort of internal thinking, we’re probably the last thing on Satan’s mind. He has bigger, and more dangerous, fish to fry!

Bear

Fourteen years, in dog years, makes one quite old. We all know that age has both its challenges and privileges. For Bear, Bethany and Chad’s first dog, the challenges came to an end early this morning. Age, coupled with some pretty serious health issues, finally took its toll. Knowing he is no longer having to manage those issues is a relief, but relief born of sadness.

Privileges, however, are a different matter. Bear was rescued from what must have been a hell-on-earth situation when he was around a year old. A mixed breed of what appeared to be Huskie and Corgi, his furry face; long, bushy tail; and short legs made for an impressive presence. Bear was an appropriate name.

Bear tended not to be fond of men – but thankfully he liked me. Actually I’d say he loved me! I was privileged to be on a pretty short list of men he would tolerate. My guess is some worthless male figure from his first year of life had treated him poorly. It is beyond my ability to understand when it comes to humans mistreating creatures made by God and I’m glad I’ve never met that guy.

Bear always had clear definitions about personal space. That definition applied to humans and to other dogs – including his two “sisters” Willow and Matilda Jane. It also applied to his dog-cousins, Laila and Miller. I think his fellow dog-creatures understood that as well, if not better, than his human family. The older he got, the more definite – and sometimes larger – that personal space became. Oddly, I see the same thing happening in my own life as I grow older, so I can hardly complain about that.

One thing is certain, Bear knew how much he was loved right up to the very end. No one tired of trying to make his last days more comfortable. All of us – Vicki, Sarah, Bethany, Chad, and me – were more than happy to sit by him and scratch his neck and head. If Bear could talk, that’s how he might define heaven. Even last night, feeling as poorly as he must have felt, when I stopped scratching, he used his nose to nuzzle me back into scratching mode!

Two important ideas are floating in my consciousness as I think about the impact Bear’s life had on me. First, is the value of God’s creatures to add character and substance to our existence.  Despite what must have been a pretty rough year to begin his life, Bear quickly figured out he had been rescued and with rescue, comes responsibility. He loved Bethany – and the rest of us – in ways that can change a long, tiring day into a restful evening. He saw himself as protector of his new family and a bear – no one was going to come through the door who shouldn’t. He apparently understood the adage “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” If you were a male, you had to prove yourself to Bear. He stayed on alert when it came to outside noises and the drive way – never forgetting with rescue comes responsibility. 

The second idea is one of pride on my part. I couldn’t be more proud of the fact that among the qualities of both of my daughters is their willingness to care for God’s creatures. We went through much the same thing with Sarah and Laila just over two years ago. While this is not the kind of moment in life where experience is overly helpful, what I saw with Laila and Sarah, and what I have just seen with Bear and Bethany makes me proud.  I get it that dogs aren’t humans, but I also get that they are a part God’s creation, which according to Paul in Romans 8:18-25, “waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” I think how we care about God’s innocent creatures says much about our own character. 

Bear became an old-man-dog about as gracefully as could happen. In dog years, he passed me a long time ago when it comes to age. Hopefully I will get to be a very old man with the same kind of grace and dignity Bear did.

So, thanks Bear for making a difference in our lives. You were a model of what it means to be a part of God’s creation.We long for the day when God's creation is restored to its God-intended purpose when "creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." (Romans 8:21)