I love being a Dad…. it’s so much better than I thought it would be. Both my kids breath-in every last ounce of life and it’s so good to watch them as they grow up.
I’ll often ask them difficult questions and mostly they say something like, ‘oh Dad I don’t know!’ But on the odd occasion one of them will give an answer with such amazing confidence that you think they actually know the right answer. The funny thing is they have no idea, but they’ll have a guess and try to look like they know.
Here’s the thought…
I’m regularly surprised when I talk to people about God. So often they will have some made up, sort of patch work view of who He is, His intentions and expectations of us. Like one of my kids, they will confidently choose their thinking based it seems on little more than a guess.
I call this guessology!
This is often the modern approach to thinking and understanding spirituality. Essentially you take the parts of various philosophies and religions and you make up your own version, guessing when you don’t have it figured out. The problem with this is that it’s not based on anything except ones best guess, and whilst you don’t have to have it all figured out to commence your pursuit of God, the best place to begin is not with the God that you want to find but with the God who wants to find us.
If you are always guessing about God and forming your beliefs from that stance then imagine if what you guess about God is wrong!
At some stage or another we all think about God. As Christians we especially think about Him, BUT we need to make sure our thinking or study of God (our theology) is right and that we pursue truth.
Here’s a great video by Joshua Harris that illustrates why our theology matters….
If we get our understanding of God wrong then everything about us is wrong and this is the danger in exchanging theology for what what amounts to a game … the game of guessology.
great post rich! and great find with that vid!
i’m just realising again how important right thinking about god is for everything to do with the christian life – particularly prayer [reading yancy's 'prayer' so it's the theme of the moment]. how are you supposed to relate to god if you don’t really even know what he’s like because almost everything you think about him is based on someone else’s revelation and what they’ve told you rather than your own?
2 great books that i’m re-reading again to help get my thinking “right” are packer’s ‘knowing god’ and phillips’ [?] your god is too small. so good!
It seems to me that it comes back to reading of the primary place God has chosen to reveal Himself, that being the Bible. Prayerfully and thoughtfully reading it AND diligently seeking to understand it. Having said that we can learn from other peoples experience, we just have to choose wisely who those people are that we’re basing our beliefs on.
Hey thanks for the book mentions – good times!
I actually don’t think it’s all that bad as long as your committed to getting to know God. If you read through the old testament you realize that God slowly reveals Himself, providing name after name to each generation.
It’s like when you meet someone new. You guess what they’re like from the first few convos you have with them. Howeve, as you get to know them more and more you discover the full extent of their complex personality and character.
We all start somewhere with God. Some start their journey with Him as their Saviour, some with the fear of Him and some with His love. But hopefully as they develop their relaltionship with God, they learn how much depth there is to Him.