Theology and the rest of my life

One of the great challenges of my life is consistently relating theology to everything else. It is so easy to compartamentalize. Beliefs about God can get marginalized so that they have little bearing on everyday decisions about schedule, relationships, work, entertaiment, et cetera. Of course, if my theology doesn't rest with some kind of weight (I'm paraphrasing David Wells here) on my activities and affections, I should ask "do I really believe this?"

So, one of the purposes of this blog will be to think through the relationship and application of theology to everything else.

4 comments:

MattFowler said...

I really believe that we are living examples of Romans 12:2 when it comes to applying theology to our lives. We are so "conformed" to the world that often times we cannot even see that the way we live is contrary to gospel teachings. We must be "transformed" through washing our minds with Scripture in order to, as Piper says, "Live to prove He is more precious than life."

Brian G. Hedges said...

So true, Matt. We have good orthodoxy but poor orthopraxy.

As David Wells writes in his book God in the Wastelands: "It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers’ sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness."

MattFowler said...

Great quote! The "weightlessness" of God is one thing that I have found frustrating about my own life and the lives of others claiming to be believers. We claim that we serve an Almighty God who has "pleasures at His right hand forevermore" yet we find our pleasures elsewhere. As C.S. Lewis says, "We are far too easily pleased." Much like the Israelites, we tend to drink from "broken cisterns" rather than from the "river of God's delight." Wretched men that we are, who can save us from our own depravity? Only Jesus Christ!

MattFowler said...

Great quote! The "weightlessness" of God is one thing that I have found frustrating about my own life and the lives of others claiming to be believers. We claim that we serve an Almighty God who has "pleasures at His right hand forevermore" yet we find our pleasures elsewhere. As C.S. Lewis says, "We are far too easily pleased." Much like the Israelites, we tend to drink from "broken cisterns" rather than from the "river of God's delight." Wretched men that we are, who can save us from our own depravity? Only Jesus Christ!