The Death of Theology?

Is theology dead?

In one sense, maybe.  What passes for "theology" today is really considered self-help "spirituality".  In my opinion, it is garbage.  Self-help?  Only in America can such absurdity be peddled into something in the publishing industry and worth several shelves at Barnes & Noble.  The most interesting section, perhaps, are self-help books on sexuality!  What?!  You need a book to tell you the best way to have sex?  What about - beware of upcoming earth-shattering idea - your spouse?  Or the two of you find out on your own?  I can't imagine it being harder than rocket science... but then again, as someone with no sexual experience, maybe I'm wrong and that there are complicated topological derivations coupled with parametric series that require intersectional Monge cones that comprise the sexual experience.  

I admit, in my childish days, I thought "theology" was The Prayer of Jabez, or Oswald Sanders's Spiritual Leadership.  Oh, and drank the Cool-Aid, hook, line, and sinker.  And I suppose there is a place for those books.  But that is the problem - when that passes for "advanced theology", we have a problem.  I know pastors who swear by Sanders, by Wilkinson, but dear God, not Alister McGrath's Christian Theology!  Yes for Francis Chan's Forgotten God, Crazy Love, but - hell naw! - Stanley Hauerwas's The Peaceable Kingdom (which is actually quite readable) and Community of Character?  I've always found the fascination with Chan a bit odd, and I believe he finds it odd too.  What Chan did was have the guts to read real theology and reflect on it.  What most Christians don't have the guts is read real theology, but prefer to imbibe chewed-on theology.  It's like saying, "I don't want to eat the Chicken Shawarma Plate from D'Yar Mediterranean Cafe on Northside.  Henry, you chew it first, and then give what's in your mouth to me."  

Ew. No. 

Actually it's much worse.  Theology, at best, is a first-order reflection of God and the things of God.  None of us have seen God empirically, although we have experienced God subjectively.  Theology is a sustained, disciplined, and reasoned articulation of that experience.  That's what differentiates from garbage.  I mean... self-help.  Theology brings us to our knees because in the process of reflection, God reveals the unfathomability of Godself to us.  We become like St. Thomas Aquinas, dulled in the brilliance of God's awesomeness, humbled by the humility of God's immanence, that we can only look at the things of this world and go, "Everything... it is all straw..."

But no, this is not the sort of rhetoric that modern people like.  We like oomph, we like brawn.  We like the chiseled, oiled, and dripping with the sexual-cum-violent lusciousness of the movie 300.  (I'm always surprised by the sort of people who love that movie...)  To help the needy in the political sphere - how liberal!  To bomb the snot out of our enemies - how patriotic!  The rhetoric of our world is immediate gratification.  No time for reflection, no time for pause.  I even suspect whether we are that contemplative in our devotional lives.  If not, it is more honest not to do devotions than to simply drink more of the Coca-Cola of self-helpness.  If we approach God with the expectation that God speak to us, we are looking for self-help.  God speaks on God's terms.  We only wait, even if God elects not to speak.  The mere waiting on God is already rewarding.  

The "theology" that we like is second order reflections!  To read Francis Chan well is to be inspired to read real theology and to see how God has spoken the SAME truths (surprised?) through the generations.  And even better - I wonder if we read Francis Chan as a cathartic device?  Francis Chan's great witness is his living out of his faith.  He trusts in the Church and lives on the support of the Church.  What a testimony!  But are we doing the same?  Or are we not doing it, content to enjoy Crazy Love as a neat theological idea, consuming it like the movie 300, and not doing anything about our lives?  "As long as someone is living faithfully," we say, "God bless them!"

To be sure, I don't think so.  I personally have a hard time calling myself Christian for that reason.  To be Christian is to give up all the things of the world for God.  I love God, but I also love the World.  I am not "hard core" enough to drop all my life to follow Jesus.  I really am not.  And no, I'm not going to get super-creative and start misinterpreting Scripture just to fit my own lifestyle, because an honest reading of the text should convict us.  It leads us to a place where we must choose God or watch at a distance.  To say, "I choose God" is rhetorically easy, but actually hard.  I will be honest and say I will watch at a distance.

Theology did not die.  Theology will not die.  We will die, and by God's grace, not as hollow people.