Why Theology Shouldn't Be, and Can't Be, Boring

Carl Trueman posted this blog entry on why we must fire boring teachers and preachers (taken from his recent sermon on 1 Timothy 1).

Now, I'm a Sunday School teacher.  Something like this can be threatening to someone like me.  Yet it is important that I not run away from the threat.

I fear that I often vacillate between the two extremes- being interesting without saying much, and saying a lot, dryly.  The first I'll call the Obama effect.  He is a very interesting speaker, but when you listen to the words, he doesn't say much.  (But then, most politicians don't...that's not necessarily a personal problem for the President.)  The second I'll call the Pinhead position.  Most pinheads (dry academic types) really do know their stuff, but they make everyone with whom they come in contact very uninterested in their stuff by the way they present it.

There's a third way- I'll call it the Reagan method (sorry, no clever alliteration there...suggestions welcome).  Ronald Reagan could say a great deal of meaningful things in a most concise and efficient manner, and do it in an engaging and fascinating manner.  He wasn't called, The Great Communicator for no reason. That's how I need to do what I do on Sunday mornings, and if Trueman is right, that's how our pastors should be doing what they do.

But let's not get Descartes before the horse*.  I'm not suggestion that I (or your pastor) come up with a false method of engaging the respective audience for the purpose of being interesting.  And that's not Trueman's point either.  The point is, doctrine (what the scripture is telling us about God) should be engaging and interesting by its very nature.  Here's how Trueman puts it in his blog-

"...making providence...as dull as ditch water is false teaching as sure as open theism is."

I've been trying to establish the principle for a couple months in our SS class this summer.  We've taken a short break from our expositional book study to look at some theology.  Specifically, we are looking at the attributes of God, both communicable and incommunicable, trying to get a better understanding of God's nature and character.  I keep telling my folks that this is a worthwhile endeavor, and is God-honoring.  I think most of them agree, but a few have dropped off the map the last couple weeks.  I don't know if it is due to last-moment-summer-vacation-before-school-starts, or the sometimes dryness of the topic.  You see, I'm not John Piper, and I can stumble over this material and not communicate the passion I have for it if I'm not careful.  That's unfortunate, because this can tend to make the material less engaging to the average SS student.

I continue to pray that all of us would find the character and nature of God a thing that fascinates us.  Because if it bores us, we need a serious (as it were) check-up from the neck-up.

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* For those of you who didn't take a philosophy class, his name is pronounced, "Day-cart".  My mixed metaphor comes from this old joke-

One day a man wandered in to his veterinarian's office and asked about having his horse put down.  

"Why," asked the vet.  

"Well, he won't pull my milk cart any more."  

"How's that?", asked the vet.  

"He's an unusual horse," the milkman explained.  "He loves to read philosophy.  Instead of dangling a carrot from a stick to make him go, I'd just tie a book by Thales or Hume or Sartre on the stick and he'd follow wherever I lead.  But now, he wont' move."  

"Let's take a look," said the vet. Upon examining the setup, the vet said, "I think I've found the problem."

"What is it?" asked the milkman.

"You've got Descartes before the horse," explained the vet.

[rimshot]

Creating a Custom Reading List on Logos 4

Here's my first attempt at a training video.  Low-budget, no production experience, and all that.  It's an attempt to explain how to create a custom reading list in Logos 4.



This is more of an experiment than a finished product...I need a lot of work before I start putting these out for public consumption. But the way of things seems to be toward multimedia instruction, so I'd might as well get good at it now rather than be behind the curve.

The software I used to create this was free. It is called Jing, and can be found at techsmith.com.

The Spiritual Gift of Teaching

I have heard on numerous occasions that we should only have a "childlike faith" and that any deep study of scripture is either unnecessary or downright dangerous (in the form of divisiveness or elitism). Aside from the fact that childlike faith has little to do with the study of God's word, I strongly disagree with such sentiments, for many reasons, but primarily on these grounds: (1) we are commanded to be prepared to give an answer to those who question the reason for our faith, and we can't give answers if we don't have some facts and scripture to support them; and (2) God bothered to give out a spiritual gift that He calls "teaching" (1 Cor. 12:28).

Now, why would God bother with a spiritual gift of teaching if such a gift wasn't necessary for the building up of the body of Christ (the church)? If understanding scripture was easy, why would we need teachers? Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that scripture cannot be understood. On the contrary, the perspicuity of scripture is one of the primary reasons I believe we can know and understand anything about an infinite God at all. But as John Grudem points out in a recent journal article, "Scripture affirms tht it is able to be understood but (1) not all at once, (2) not without effort, (3) not without ordinary means, (4) not without the reader's willingness to obey it, (5) not without the help of the Holy Spirit, (6) not without human misunderstanding, and (7) never completely."

My focus here is on the second point- not without effort. 2 Peter 3:15-16 says that some things in scripture are hard to understand (but does not say that anything in scripture is impossible to understand). The gift of teaching is a gift God gives the church (yes, the church) to help build it up in the likeness of Christ (individuals get the gift, but it is to be used for the benefit of the church, not the individual; and I'd say especially not for financial gain of the individual).

I have benefited greatly from the teaching of a number of fine Christian men over my life and I've seen the effects of good, gifted teaching on the Church as a whole. I'm especially greatful to some teachers I've never met, like R. C. Sproul, John Piper, John MacArthur, Tim Challies, and many others. I'll probably never meet most of them, though I'd like to. Their clear exposition of the truths of God and His word have had an enormous impact on my life. I'd like to be able to thank them some time, personally.

Hebrews 5 says that we should all be growing up in Christ, such that we can all be teachers at some point in our walk with God. I know God gives some in the church less emphasis and excitement about learning the details of the faith, and rightly so. Some are equipped for other tasks in the body. But no one is excused from the responsibility to mature in their faith and in turn be able to explain the basics of the Christian faith to others.