This concept from Ecclesiastes keeps resurfacing in my life of late. It’s all vanity. Kind of a “life sucks” concept. Well, actually, life doesn’t suck right now, it’s amazing, because I’m planning a wedding with someone I’ve barely known a month. Oh well. When you know, you know. So life is awesome, with one small exception. It’s called grad school.
Specifically, Seminary. I’m in my fourth semester of Seminary currently. I’ll graduate with my master’s next December. And I am so disillusioned I cannot even relate it accurately.
I came to Seminary with this really incredible concept of what it would be. I love to learn, and I couldn’t think of a better topic to study that God. I had this idealistic view of how amazing the next three years or so would be.
So now, if I were to list the top three things in my life that have drawn me the farthest away from God, I would place Seminary at the top of the list. Because Scripture is very rarely a topic of conversation in Seminary. Administrative professional training is, and even that is taught from a pretty twisted perspective. A huge majority of your time is spent wrestling with useless things like theology.
Yes, I said it. Theology is useless. We can’t wrap our brains around God. We should stop trying. The Bible is simple. We can understand that. The rest of these academic debates are frivolous and completely stupid, and, quite honestly, I think they tick God off.
When asked about what the greatest commandement was, Jesus said to Love God with all your heart soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s as complicated as it gets. Maybe we should get back to that?
Or would that not seem “academic” enough?
Hello Dave 🙂
I don’t get over here enough! First let me give you and BIG hug and say “congratulations” on the upcoming wedding. That is awesome news.
Second let me say a resounding, “Thank you.” I agree about most folks making it much more difficult then it has to be when it comes to God. I believe in testing the spirit, which is what God says to do.
And I will admit to doing a great deal of pondering and even debating with Alan, but it seems as if organized religion is more about pride and superiority then about Gods fundamental teachings of love. Of course there are other points as well, but getting back to the basics would be refreshing.
Take care darlin…and once again, Congratulations!
Always, Carly 🙂
Dave,
Yes, I am still alive!! I’ve been feeling a bit down, so I’ve not posted that much because I don’t want my blog to sound too negative. It probably sounds pessimistic enough even when I’m in a good mood!
And my haven’t you been busy!! Getting married?! Congratulations.
You make some excellent points in this post. I am at on the one hand fascinated by theology and the differing views and at the same time almost repulsed by it. It is, as you’ve said, much simpler than we make it.
I’ve finished Blue Like Jazz now. At first I wasn’t sure what I thought of the book, but by the time I finished reading I liked it a lot. That’s not to say that I agree with everything Miller says, but I like his writing style and I could relate to a lot of what he said about being sort of a loner.
Hey. I don’t know you; I just stumbled across this because my wife was reading it as a link from somewhere else.
I don’t think that theology, or even seminary, is the problem. Theology is not useless. When Paul, under the command of the Spirit, tells Timothy, “Mediate on these things. Give yourself to them, so that your profiting will be evident to everyone. Give attention to yourself, and to your doctrine. Persevere in them; for in doing this, you will both save yourself and those who hear you,” he’s talking about theology. Maybe your seminary has a warped view of theological training (I don’t know what school you go to). Or maybe the struggle has just got you down — I can identify with that.
But let’s be serious — the Bible isn’t simple to understand. Is it lucid enough to guide us through our lives? Yes. Are we led by the Spirit into a greater understanding? Yes. But ‘laboring in the word and doctrine’ — that’s theology.
I like what Dave Talbert said.
Perhaps you are thinking of “theology” as debating points of doctrine without the goal of knowing God better or pleasing God or serving God more faithfully or helping others love God. If your seminary professors haven’t been teaching the Scriptures in a humble way, the “academics” should certainly cause disgust.
I enjoyed my seminary years. I grew in my love for God in my Exegesis of Deuteronomy class. I was challenged to be more committed to God in my Greek Exegesis II class. I grew in my love for Scripture in my Theology I class. The Scriptures are an awesome gift to us. Wow! I came to long more for Christ’s coming in my Theology IV class.
It makes me wonder what your professors are doing over there.
Guys, we’re going to get to Heaven one day with all of our theology, and God is going to slap us in the head and ask us what we were thinking, because none of us have it right.
I’m not degrading studying God and gaining an understanding of what He has revealed to us that is possible for us to understand. My point is that theology has been elevated to some sort of personified deity. The focus should be on the Scriptures, on the Christ. The problem is that it isn’t. We would rather debate dichotomy/trichotomy or sovereignty/free will instead of fulfilling the Great Commission. I have a huge problem with that.
Dave-
Wasn’t Christ practicing “theology” when he was on the Emmaus road?
The great commission is critical, and if I tried to argue with that, I’d be a heritic. But that just goes to illustrate my point.
Christ talks about baptism in the great commission. What does he mean by that? It’s not enough just to say that our denomination does it this way, or that good people disagree so do whatever you want. If you’re taking the Lord Jesus seriously when he commanded us to baptize people, then we have to be able to scripturally define and defend what that means. And since you’re in seminary, you know that baptism has an extremely wide range of intepretations. Does that mean that we’re bogged down in externals? Not unless we’re doing it for the wrong reasons. If we really love God, we’ll be interested enough in doing things his way to really get down into the text and work out what that way is. And that’s theology.