Good Theology Produces Action
How to replace old narratives with good theology
Our stories and experiences shape our view of reality. Our view of reality is what causes us to act. The problem is, sometimes, our experiences and stories aren’t telling us the correct version of reality. If you’re a member of the Kingdom of God, your stories and experiences will honestly fly in the face of what reality looks like in the Kingdom of God.
I grew up painfully shy. This part of my personality developed before I have memories. I was scared of people, particularly of interactions with others. When I got to elementary school, my goal was to avoid situations in which I had to talk. I was mostly successful in this area, only really gaining a few friends along the way that were similar in disposition to me. The fear of interacting with others was escalated by the person’s position of authority: teachers inducing more fear than students and police officers or anyone in other authority positions inducing the most fear. This disposition slowly taught me that I could do things for myself and that I didn’t need to ask for help, I didn’t need too many interactions and I would eventually get to the goal by myself.
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, it did get *a little* better, but overall mostly remained the same where I would jump through 10 hoops just to make sure I could do something myself rather than ask a question of a teacher or person of authority. My view of reality was that people were intimidating, interactions would lead to embarrassment or social death and things were really better off on my own.
We would be kidding ourselves if we thought our relational capacities did not affect our spiritual lives. Our faith is not just a set of moral or religious rules that we must uphold, but once we truly dive into it, it is a relational, interactive experience with God himself.
The way I grew up induced in me a self-sufficient attitude in which I would deal with and solve all of my problems so that I wouldn’t have to “bother” God with them. I also wasn’t really sure that God was intimately involved in my life.
As I’ve read through the book of Isaiah, there has been a theme that really has resonated with me: good theology that takes root makes way for faith which then makes way for Kingdom living.
The theological concepts that Isaiah references is also quite interesting. I’ve observed in circles that I’ve been in that theology is absolutely not missing from conversations in the church. However, it’s often obscure or divisional theology that loses many of the hearers in the process of sharing it. These conversations often just end in a left-brained conversation that doesn’t invite intimacy or change in the listeners.
So what theological topics does Isaiah lift up as the ones that are important for building up our understanding of who God is in order to live by faith?
Knowing God as creator (Isaiah 42:5)
He has made all things, sustains all things from nothing
Knowing God as the sovereign of all peoples and history (Isaiah 44:6-8)
God has foretold how history will be, and it has been fulfilled. God has directed the steps of His people in situations they wouldn’t have succeeded without Him (the exodus story, Jericho, etc.).
The God who calls His people & redeems them (Isaiah 43:16-21)
God has had a direct relationship with His people, and as a part of this relationship He has given them a special identity. When they failed His holy people through their own actions and sinful nature, He made a system of sacrificial offerings to redeem them. He has redeemed them from slavery and oppression from Egypt and delivered them many times over and over again in the Old Testament
He is a God living, active and interactive, and is not like an idol (Isaiah 46)
He compares the idols made with human hands and out of wood that must be carried by man to Himself who carries His own people through history and guides them gently and lovingly
God, through Isaiah, knows his people. He knows their failures. He knows their struggles, their most intimate thoughts and why they struggle to follow through in their faith. He knows they’re looking at the strength of Assyria, and then Babylon and wondering if perhaps following their gods might improve their life circumstances. He knows what they need to hear in order to change, to transform and become the people He has always intended them to be. He is offering them invitation through the theological reminder of who He is.
This concept of adopting theological truth in order to have faith is continued in the New Testament through Jesus’ own challenge to “repent and believe” (Mark 1) and then Paul’s exhortation to “renew your mind" so that “you may offer your body as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12).
For me, my previous view of reality was that I was the best person to solve my problems. People and intimacy could lead to embarrassment or shame. Asking for help was not an option. Others (including God who was far off) could not solve my problems or were not involved in them. It was up to me to take care of everything.
Good theology comes against that.
Instead, God is the God who created the universe. He is in control of all matter, every atom, every electron. He commands them where to go. He sustains life itself.
God is the God who has influenced history over the existence of life. With a wave of his hand, empires fall. With his blessing, grassroots movements succeed. An entire population of people were released from slavery with His plan.
God is the one who created man, and began a relationship with Him. God created man to reflect His glory and live with Him in harmony. God called Abraham and led him by faith. God called Moses, Elijah, Samuel and led them to their destiny in His grand plan for the redemption of humanity. God called the twelve disciples, and He continues to call for us back into relationship with Him today.
God is strong, able to stand up under the crumbling idols which we worship including finances, sex, power, and self.
Good theology has been reshaping me slowly, gently and removing the past reality that I had once held onto so tightly. I had adopted that reality because it protected me and it helped me walk through life, understanding a role in it that worked with my fears and my disposition. I survived for many years with this reality. However, God calls me to more. He calls me into intimate relationship with Himself, and others.
My first leap of faith to try to live out what I was trying to believe was to start a journal interacting with God about the things that I needed to bring to Him. I gave the Lord my time, and I hoped that He might show up. I experienced the intimacy of God for the first time in my whole life throughout this process.
The second leap of faith was to lead a small group for my college ministry back in 2010. I remember actively shaking while I opened up the time of bible study for the “small” group of 14ish women. I remember thinking I was insane and there was no way I would have enough energy or time to lead this small group well. I remember almost having a panic attack as I asked women in my small group out to lunch. I also remember cancelling on several meetings because the anxiety was just too much.
I’ve been in ministry now for almost 12 years. I find it beautiful and enchanting that God took my previous life that was anti-social and hyper-independent and decided to give me a ministry of relationships. While Scott, my husband, is gifted in speaking and teaching in front of groups, talking to strangers and doing evangelism, God has given me the gift of intimate relationships. Ninety percent of my work at the BCM at JMU includes meeting with women in small groups or one-on-one. I don’t *usually* shake the whole time anymore. I do still fight some of my self-sufficient tendencies, but God is always reminding me of spiritual reality over what I’m tempted to believe.
The thing is, my reality is always being tempted to be distorted. Whenever we let our experiences and circumstances shape our theology and outlook on the world, we loose. The enemy is looking out to do this to us, and the enemy was looking to do the same to the Israelites in the time that Isaiah was writing to them. The challenge isn’t to let theology shape you once and have a great testimony, but it’s an on-going process of submitting our feelings, our experiences and the way we experience the world to God and what He says is true about Himself and the world and letting them be changed.
We’re in a constant battle of being changed and shaped by God’s reality, but the thing is, we have to spend the time to let theology do its work. How do we do this? Well, I love the question and I’d love to offer a few suggestions in which we can submit our realities to God and let Him shape them:
1.) Be aware of your “realities” that may not be real
This is the most important step, and one of the hardest especially if you are not an internal processor. Much of the time, we aren’t even aware of the false realities of the world that we’ve adopted. Many times we experience the realities we’ve extracted from our circumstances as absolute truth. This is a fallacy. There is pain, hurt and sin in the world, but sin doesn’t get to define what is the ultimate reality. Tips for even becoming aware of these un-realities in your life would be:
Join a bible study where the word of God and good theology is shared that will come against your un-realities
Begin to understand your own story by writing it down, and look for themes that may have shaped some of your un-realities
Attend a church service and listen for good theology
Share details of your spiritual life and journey with trusted friends
Ask a friend to help you see your own life clearly
Journal your struggles and frustrations. Bonus points if you can read them to someone who is trusted
2.) Immerse yourself in Good Theology
This is a step in which you become a disciple (see my previous post about how to be discipled) and learn good theology and what the Kingdom of God is like and how to live in it
Spend time in the Bible, asking questions, being curious and learning all that you can
Immerse yourself in regular community where you see people pursuing God
Read books of respected church Fathers. Some of my favorites are C.S. Lewis, Martin Lloyd-Jones, Dallas Willard.
Find a mentor
3.) Take steps of faith away from your unreality and into the Kingdom of God
This will look different for each individual as the Spirit leads, but here might be some examples
For me, it looked like turning away from a life of hyper-independence and leading a small group which ultimately launched me into a ministry career of helping others
Saying yes to taking a family a meal even though you’re budgeting to the dollar and anxious about whether you’ll “have enough”. Say yes to supporting a missionary or a compassion child in the same situation.
Agreeing to put time in your week to meet with a mentor in order to grow and be changed
Stepping away from a comfortable job in order to pursue a path career wise that you feel the Spirit is leading you to
Staying in your marriage and working to grow it though your romantic feelings have faded away
Having children a little earlier than you originally planned to trust God with the outcome
When Jesus said to repent and believe, He was asking us to change out minds, and live into the Kingdom of God that He inaugurated. Though we know it is here and “not yet”, it still is very much here ruling and reigning in the hearts of those of us who choose to follow Him. If you’ve felt stuck or stagnant in your faith, perhaps there is an unreality that you’ve adopted that God is inviting you to leave behind and instead follow Him in faith.
What does that look like for you, right now?