Anybody home?
I know. I know.
Last time I wrote a post I said I'd write again a week later.
I know that was 8 months ago.
But Seminary is no joke, y'all!! It is a time-sucking, family destroying, killer of souls!
Okay, maybe it's not.
Well, sometimes it is.
But mostly it's not. (well, it's finals week... so right now it is.)
I saw a friend at church last week. She asked how my family was doing and if the hubby and I had had our bi-annual, "end of semester" fight yet. I cracked up! Because yes, yes we had. 2 weeks ago. And then we discussed the idea of having a Spouses-End-Of-Semester-Support-Group. :)
Because Seminary is hard! Like, really hard. Like so hard that our school offers free and reduced counseling for couples and families, as well as a number of marriage strengthening classes and retreats. This is not a, "Well, I just graduated from a Christian University and I can't find a job so I guess I'll go to Seminary" type decision. (Please, please try to find a job at McDonald's first!)
But sometimes, you just can't help it. Sometimes, you work a job for ten years and all you can think about is teaching people about Jesus. And you take all the classes and attend all the trainings that your church offers. Then all you can think about is helping people who want to teach people about Jesus. So you spend lots of time talking to people who teach people about Jesus and you realize that you need more training. And your wife tries to talk you out of it, and you take a few online classes so that "our life doesn't have to change all that much," and you get permission to work remotely and finally, one day, you admit to your wife, "I think we need to move to Wilmore." And she sighs and says, "I know. God has been telling me the same thing." And then she cries in Jimmy Johns.
Or something like that.
And then working and studying and babies and small townhouses and papers and biblical languages... and a few weeks ago, I was done. I was ready to tell M that we have to quit school because the kids need a dad and I need a husband and we're tired of sharing him with his classmates, teachers, homework and books. So I prayed. And I pleaded. "God, if you want us to stay, you have to give me a vision for what's next. You have to give me a reason bigger than a degree." And God, in his mercy, did.
At the end of April, I was out with my girl running some errands on a Saturday morning. And since it was only the baby in the car, I was able to listen to NPR. (Yeah for hearing adults talk!) An episode of This American Life called "Heretics" was playing. In it, a young pastor starts his ministry feeling like it's his responsibility to "get as many for Jesus as possible because everyone is headed for hell." Now, he preaches from a place of feeling like nobody is going to hell, because Jesus died for everybody and it doesn't matter whether you believe in him or not. Hearing this, I thought, "No wonder people think Christians are crazy. This guy is using the Bible to say BOTH that everybody is going to hell and nobody is. I'd think we were crazy, too! ugh! Bad theology!!" (I should clarify... it's not the fact that he changed his mind.... because faith has to be a living, moving journey... or it dies. I felt like he started from a place of bad theology and ended in a place of bad theology. What happened to the middle ground, people?)
And the next morning, God brought that moment back to my mind while I was worshipping in church... it felt like He was saying, "Bad theology doesn't just lead to bad choices. Bad theology gives Jesus a bad name."
You see, M and I have long been fans of the saying, "Bad theology leads to bad decisions."
For example:
"We can't really afford this car but God isn't stopping us from buying it so he obviously wants us to have it." (or God's way of telling you not to buy it is that you can't afford it...)
or "I need to find a different church because there are no single people here and the Bible says "it is not good for man to be alone" and "be fruitful and multiply" so I need to find a church where I can get married." (or there's a whole part in Corinthians about how good it is to NOT be married...)
or "I'm not allowed to tell my husband, "No" because 1 Corinthians 7:4 says "the wife does not have authority over her own body..." (um, I don't think you read the whole verse... it says the same thing about the husband's body belonging to the wife and that whole section of the letter is talking about not manipulating each other with sex. So, there's that.)
But this seemed different... this seemed bigger: Bad theology gives Jesus a bad name.
Bad theology makes pastor's say, "Give all that you have to my church and God will abundantly bless you."
Bad theology can be used to justify holding up signs and saying horrible things like "God hates gay people."
Bad theology convinces a husband that he is allowed to beat his wife because "the wife does not have authority over her own body..."
Bad theology has created an image of Jesus that is manipulative, hateful, superior, takes advantage of the poor, suggests women stay in abusive marriages, only blesses hard work, and requires strict adherence to church tradition in order to be saved.
and I gotta tell you, that's not who Jesus is.
and it breaks my heart that that's the only "Jesus" that some people see.
M is in school so that he can be a teacher. He doesn't want to preach, he doesn't want to lead a church. He wants to help the people who do those things. And now I understand why... because Bad theology gives Jesus a bad name. And if a PASTOR is the person teaching the Bad Theology... well, then that's all sorts of bad-ness.
So that's our vision. That's our purpose. We're not in seminary so we can get a degree. We're in seminary so we can learn the difference between good and bad theology; how to use the original language of the Bible to put it's message in the correct context; and how to help others learn the difference between good and bad theology within their own cultural context.
Because GOOD theology can introduce people to who Jesus REALLY is.
And that's a vision I can get behind.
