I’ve heard quite a few people ask the question ’should christians really be watching big brother?’ (a reality TV show) and it reminded me of similar questions banded around when I was younger: Questions of christian policy: “How much should a christian drink?” “How far is too far?”  Rarely did I hear a satisfying answer - as a child we could be persuaded by the tone of voice or attitude used to explain the solution - but as one gets older the authoritative tone fades, the lack of logic in the argument becomes apparent and we find ourselves feeling somewhat aggreived and unsatisfied by the solution, its proponent and anyone that repeated it.

It’s funny how things don’t change - people just introduce complexity - sounding like geniuses I do wonder if they’re way off the mark. Like, I’ve read quite a bit of Grudem (an evangelical theologan), and read lots of CS Lewis, and one day I’ll get around to finishing reading Berkhof (another evangelical theologian, however you spell his name), and the fundamentals are often correct, but sometimes I do wonder if these people are at all for real. It seems as though that in trying to understand God they end up building a cold, clinical, logic framework of Christian philosophy - somewhere they missed the point…?  God can only be understood through the Holy Spirit’s revelation of the Scriptures [2008 Note - I still very much hold to this], purely logical extrapolations from the Word often mean we miss Jesus as the pharisees did: “you search the Scriptures for me…” (John 5v39). One of the things I have a habit of saying is “always write your theology in pencil”, they are wise words that unfortunately I did not pen (meaning that you should be ready to edit your theology!).  So over time I, like most analysts and theologians, try and create in our minds a philosophy of ‘the way it is’ kinda thing (if that makes any sense), and I’ve found that if you don’t write your theology in pencil when confronted with truth you insist it is not. However there are only a certain number of times you’ll rewrite a fragment of your philosophy before you define it in a looser sense so that it doesn’t break as easily - consider the difference between a bamboo pole and a bone china pole perhaps.

So after a decade of constructing, reconstructing and deconstructing fragments and linkage of my internal philosophy I’ve come to realise that it’s mostly meaningless drivel if it information rather than revelation, if it is just data input rather than divine input.  So often this information, this data input is actually destructive input - time-consuming mind-diverting puffing up of hot air so we can sit around and argue over syntax & semantics rather than getting on with the job of making disciples.  Laurence Keith summed it up well on Sunday when he said, and I paraphrase, that ‘most evangelical theology is like a fairy story you tell your kids’. For me, I would say that it’s counterfeit God - it looks like God, you spend time thinking about God and our relationship with Him, but it isn’t. It’s knowledge, not love. It’s theory not revelation.

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