Tag: Theology

“Theology Needs Periodical Rejuvenation”

“Theology needs periodical rejuvenation. Its greatest danger is not mutilation but senility. It is strong and vital when it expresses in large reasoning what youthful religion feels and thinks. When people have to be indoctrinated laboriously in order to understand theology at all, it become a dead burden. The dogmas and theological ideas of the early Church were those ideas which at the time were needed to hold the Church together, to rally its forces, and to give it victorious energy against antagonistic powers. Today many of those ideas are without present significance. Our reverence for them is a kind of ancestor worship. To hold laboriously to a religious belief which does not hold us, is an attenuated form of asceticism; we chastise and starve our intellect to sanctify it by holy beliefs. The social gospel does not need the aid of church authority to get hold of our hearts. It gets hold in spite of such authority when necessary. It will do for us what the Nicene theology did in the fourth century, and the Reformation theology in the sixteenth. Without it theology will inevitably become more and more a reminiscence.

The great religious thinkers who created theology were always leaders who were shaping ideas to meet actual situations. The new theology of Paul was a product of fresh religious experience and of practical necessities. His idea of the Jewish law had been abrogated by Christ’s death was worked out in order to set his mission to the Gentiles free from the crippling grip of the past and to make an international religion of Christianity. Luther worked out the doctrine of “justification by faith” because he had found by experience that it gave him a surer and happier way to God than the effort to win merit by his own works. But that doctrine became the foundation of a new theology for whole nations because it proved to be the battle-cry of a great social and religious upheaval and the effective means of breaking down the semi-political power of the clergy, of shutting up monasteries, of secularizing church property, and of increasing the economic and political power of city councils and princes. There is nothing else in sight today which has the power to rejuvenate theology except the consciousness of vast sins and sufferings, and the longing for righteousness and a new life, which are expressed in the social gospel.”

-Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, pg. 13-14

God as the Clockmaker: Thinking Through Deism and an Active God

Next week, I travel to Lincoln, NE to attend a Candidacy Summit for ordination candidates in the Great Plains conference. This will be a great opportunity to learn and fellowship and connect with others who are on the same journey I am on right now.

In order to afford the expense of this trip while living on a single income, I set up a GoFundMe page to raise money. Earlier today, I easily rolled past the goal I had set. The gifts I received from so many are wonderful and gladly accepted. It’s heartening to know all the support I have as I begin this new phase of life.

I want to meditate here for just a minute on the blessing from God that this money really is, and how I reconcile that in my mind.

My understanding of the active nature of God generally falls along the “Clockmaker” line of thinking. (I have in fact self-identified as a deist in the past.) In my view, God set up an orderly, rational universe that moves according to the laws of nature as initiated by God. God wants us to understand the world around us, so that we might not live in fear and darkness, so he lets the world run according to nature. He may not cause hurricanes, but he doesn’t stop them either, and he has given us brains and abilities to be able to avoid and survive the worst nature has to offer.

(I don’t, however, subscribe to the traditional clockmaker doctrine of predestination. God set the world into motion, but gave us free will to act. We have bearing upon the operation of the clock, and can but positively and negatively influence it’s operation. “Clock” refers to the world we live in. This is convoluted, I know. I’m not the most coherent theologian yet. I’ll get there.)

Let me explain. I don’t say this to mean God is uninterested and checked out on human kind. Quite the contrary. I believe he is intimately concerned with us and our actions. But I don’t think God actively interferes in the day-to-day happenings of out lives. I don’t think God magically “heals” the sick from heaven, or pushes our car a little farther forward to avoid the oncoming semi. I think a God who would do these things is a sick God. Because everyday millions of people suffer and die from illness, car wrecks, poverty, war, and a million other reasons. Thus, a God who chooses to save some but refuse to act in the case of others is a cold-hearted God who is anything but “all-merciful.”

So in the past, I abstained from crediting any earthly happening to the hand of God.

But I’m starting to acknowledge some nuance in my view.

This money that I have received is truly an example God providing, of God making something that seemed impossible, possible, in an active way. Without these donations, I could not go to Lincoln and continue on my journey of ordination. But, through trusting in the goodness of others inspired by the spirit of charity that God imbues in us all, I can make the trip. Through this, God has led me to the proper path for my life.

Think of it in contrast to past attempts at fundraising on my part. As many of you know, last year, I briefly campaigned for elected office in Oklahoma. “Campaigning” mostly consisted of making phone calls asking people for money. I was terrible at this. I didn’t raise much money at all. I was awkward and uncomfortable and needless to say, didn’t pursue campaigning for very long. Fundraising in that way is not a gift I have.

And that is a commentary on God leading me in life. I was created and born with certain gifts and abilities. As I grow and learn and realize who I am, I awaken to those gifts and abilities and recognize my proper place in the world. And that has lead me to ministry.

To say that God played no active part in this guidance is to deny the existence of God.

God may not have reached into people’s bank account and moved money. He didn’t whisper in my ear saying “You should go into ministry.” But God’s mark is all over my journey. And that is the true essence of a “Great Clockmaker.” Even in things that seems completely disassociated from any mention of God, God’s touch is still present in the very existence of those things.

Thanks again to everyone who donated, and keep an eye out here for my thoughts and experiences during the Candidacy Summit next Friday and Saturday in Lincoln.