What is Theology?
Dr. Moore explains:
It’s not about quarreling about words, or setting up partisan divisions. Theology is helping a shellshocked widow clean up after a suicide. Theology is about crying with a teenage boy who’s body is shaking with crystal meth. Theology drives you to rock orphans in India, singing “Jesus Loves Me” while you pray they learn what that means. Theology is hugging an animist African’s neck while you tell him Jesus can protect him from the spirits he fears…or hugging a self-righteous Southern Baptist American’s neck while you tell him he doesn’t fear those demonic spirits nearly enough.
He then goes on to explain what this means for his classroom:
That’s why we’ll start this semester off throwing the textbooks on the floor, pulling our chairs out, and getting on our knees to pray for the people in our future, those whose names we don’t know, that this semester would be profitable for them.
Satan doesn’t mind hearing us debate supralapsarianism or the days of creation or the noetic effects of the Fall (and we’ll do all of that). But what he trembles at is what we’ll start out doing today–calling out to the Lord Jesus: “Have mercy on us, sinners.”
It’s not about quarreling about words, or setting up partisan divisions. Theology is helping a shellshocked widow clean up after a suicide. Theology is about crying with a teenage boy who’s body is shaking with crystal meth. Theology drives you to rock orphans in India, singing “Jesus Loves Me” while you pray they learn what that means. Theology is hugging an animist African’s neck while you tell him Jesus can protect him from the spirits he fears…or hugging a self-righteous Southern Baptist American’s neck while you tell him he doesn’t fear those demonic spirits nearly enough.
He then goes on to explain what this means for his classroom:
That’s why we’ll start this semester off throwing the textbooks on the floor, pulling our chairs out, and getting on our knees to pray for the people in our future, those whose names we don’t know, that this semester would be profitable for them.
Satan doesn’t mind hearing us debate supralapsarianism or the days of creation or the noetic effects of the Fall (and we’ll do all of that). But what he trembles at is what we’ll start out doing today–calling out to the Lord Jesus: “Have mercy on us, sinners.”
