A colleague of mine recently said, “My friends tell me I’m a terrible atheist.” He was being both humorous and serious. He had tried to doubt the existence of God, but in the end, his belief in God was not as disposable as he thought it might be. Given the freedom of doubt, his faith only grew stronger. Like Einstein, he concluded that belief in God is more logical than not believing in God. What you do with faith after that basic point is another matter. The question becomes relational. There is God, for sure, but did God create and then go on vacation, or does God actually care about how who I am and what I do with my days and nights and attitudes and lifestyle? More importantly to most people, does God care about what I go through?
This is where theology comes in. Theo means God, and -ology means the discussion of, study of, or interest in a subject. So theology is a deep dive into the search you find yourself on after you’ve realized you’re going to have to contend with this power greater than yourself, this God of God’s understanding, and either stop with a “Thank you for creating us,” or go on with a “What now?”
It’s hard to believe there can be love so big that the Northern Lights keep dancing in the sky, the sparrows keep singing, babies keep being born, and for the most part, people are decent and care about one another. It’s hard to believe that on your worst day God wanted you to be okay and find peace, and on your hardest day, God cried with you and for you and wanted you to be happy again.
How many “yeah buts” come to mind when I make such an innocent assumption of God’s heart? And the search goes on.
In my experience, theology is a search to understand God’s heart. A bunch of terrible atheists asking, “Now what?” as they work studiously to understand the indisputably existing God. We seek a revelation of God. I get the idea that God is all up in the study, perhaps smiling when a preacher gets a nugget of inspiration or a congregant lights up with an ah-ha moment during a message.
But there’s just no explaining some things. The truth of it all comes when Jesus touches the broken places of your heart, the darkest places of your past, and the scariest places in your mind. Don’t give up on the miracle of truly knowing God. Your eyes cannot always see the love that is right in front of you. Just ask the blind man.
John 9:3 Jesus answered, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”