Learning About God

When we study God's Word and think through what living a Christian life means, it's important to think about who God is and how he relates to people. Often it's easy to take a passage of Scripture and only think about what that means for what we should do. That's fine to do at some point, but it's important to be sure we take time to think about what it means about God and how he relates to us.

If we never study or think about God's power and strength, and how he uses it to help us, it might be much harder to cast our anxieties and burdens on Christ (Psalm 55:22 and 1 Peter 5:7, ESV). Knowing about God's power helps us to be able to respond to God's call.

If we never study God's mercy and gentleness to his people, including us, then we might find it hard to be merciful and gentle to others and ourselves out of love.

If we never study God's pure holiness and goodness, we might not realize how extremely blessed we are to even get a chance to talk to him.

Some people worry that a lot of theology isn't practical, but how we view God and how he relates to us definitely affects the way we live. We should also of course see what the Bible has to say about humans too.

While learning the attributes of God is of great importance, it's more important to see God as he interacts in history—how the Christian God is a personal God. Read more on this in Danny's article "God Known through Actions."

Danny also wrote about how theology speaks to all areas of life in "Theology as a Meta-Discipline."

4 Reasons to Slow Down in a Busy World

It feels like there are endless possibilities we can do each day: Friends to talk to, places to go, things to read, work to be done, and games to play. The Internet alone has what feels like an endless number of webpages with a variety of content: videos, images, drawings, and words.

The result of this causes many people to spend seconds here and there and not really truly focus much on anything. You may have had a conversation with someone that when it started you sort of knew the person was already thinking about the next thing they wanted to do and any moment would break away to it. In order to do it all, that person felt like that was needed.

There are a number of reasons to try to slow down in this world—to pick a small amount of things to do in what seems like a sea of possibilities. Before I get into the reasons, I want to mention a possible cause that might help: Pride is sneaky, and it may take the form of thinking that we can do everything. A big problem in thinking we can, or even should, do everything is that we feel awful because we end up not being able to. The reason is we can't humanly do everything, but pride tries not to show us that.

Here are the reasons to slow down. Slowing down will help the following happen:

1. Relationships. The example I mentioned above shows the issue with going too fast or being too busy doing everything. There's no way to truly get to know and have deep relationships with people if we are always running to the next thing without taking as much time as is needed or it takes to finish a full, good conversation. Of course, along with relationships with people, this principle applies to our relationship with God too.

2. Enjoyment in God's creation/gifts to us. When we have time to focus on things, we see the beauty and beautiful complexity of things. Like simply taking a walk through a forest preserve.

3. Thinking and reflecting. With so much information everywhere, if we never take time to think and reflect on it, we'll never be able to truly process it all and think through what we think about it. We need to be careful and think through how what we do and what we've read all relates to our faith and what matters. Otherwise we might be running around doing things that aren't really worthwhile.

4. Creativity. When we allow more space and time in our schedule we might come up with interesting ideas and things to create and do that we wouldn't have otherwise.

A consistent view of culture

It seems that each Christian needs to seek out a consistent view of culture. One specific element that comes to mind is fiction and TV.

There is it seems often a sense in which many Christians prohibit and exclude cultural elements and include at random.

For example C.S. Lewis and Tolkien are included and all other books with any form of magic are excluded.

I am likely not being exactly fair but this is often the case. You see certain things get a pass and possibly deservedly so but there needs to be an underlying reason.

We should be more thoughtful in our inclusion and exclusion. I guess all of this seems to be sort of academic but it is one thing which has always frustrated me with conservative Christianity is that often things are held thoughtlessly with no reason.

It is as if such leader thinks this so it must be. To me it makes the witness of the church weaker if we have all of these random rules which we cannot explain and the rules seem arbitrary.

I suppose maybe the need for trust is present because we cannot sample all things and probably should not, but you see there is this great randomness that exists in the church.

You will even in the church see often a confusion between generally good ideas expounded by church leaders and the teaching of scripture. We often cannot tell the difference between advice which is generally good and what is absolute in scripture.

I guess for the good of the church its members need to think more and to developed some ideas and thing for themselves.

Gresham Machen once said "the truth shines in the light." And he wrote with great excitement one semester that the youth in the seminary were thinking for themselves.

More often lack of thought is the enemy of the church than thought. Really mindlessness is the real danger to the church.

You see the bible tells us there are many false leaders and many people wishing to lead us astray and advises us to be shrewd and innocent.

You see thinking is not the enemy of the church that people think. Really it is thoughtlessness which causes the masses to follow false teachers. If they really picked up the scriptures and did thinking with the help of the Holy Spirit they would see the truth of what is said.

Good Christian Advice

Sometimes we need advice on certain issues and we want to turn to other mature Christians for advice. But there are so many Christians we could ask and who should we turn to?

It is a hard question with no easy answer. The problem many times is that most people only like easy answers and never get to the root of the issue.

So the first thing is that often turning to people who give easy answers that can typically be summed in one or two sentences is often a bad idea. If the issue is really so difficult that we need to seek advice a quick vague principle is unlikely to help.

Sometimes we need to look past the reputation of people to figure out who is good to get advice from. Since most people are uninterested in any advice that is not a quick fix many of the people who give the best advice are considered to be unwise.

It is ironic but you see it in the life of Jesus and many figures in the bible. The wise are viewed as unwise because the easy answers are not well received.

Often when I have had difficulties I have been recommended to this or that person in the church who knows. You often hear a lot of answers which are good but really cookie cutter and not worth the effort of asking.

But if you ask a lot of people who think they will give you complex answers, sometimes these answers are equally unhelpful but they at least provoke thought but sometimes these complex answers contain the solutions.

The character of an advice giver is often important. You often find in interaction with people that some people remember the details of your life and others don't.

Often people who remember things about you can give better advice to you than people who know who you are but can't remember things about you.

You see that memory is greatly improved by interest. People who care remember more about the people they care about overall than people who don't care. We remember more about what we find significant.

So the people who really care are often the ones to go to. And these people might not be the ones we bump into the most. A lot of people who care can be somewhat busy or sometimes on a slightly different schedule.

Some people we bump into the most and enjoy their company can not care as much as people we bump into infrequently.

With all that being said sometimes the best advice comes from unusual places. It isn't always the most respected people who give the best advice.

Sometimes their advice is simply too safe. If you are too biblical you may offend someone since many people are offended by what the bible has to say.

Many people who attend church find parts of the bible offensive! That is why many pastors skirt and don't preach on certain issues.

And maybe the issue at times is that the most respected people tend to be so "safe" in their faith that they can be of no use at times.

Thinking

Christianity is a religion which requires thinking.  Wisdom is a call throughout the bible.

One of the great issues in the church today is a refusal to think.  Religion is often a formula.  Once the formula is created properly you simply live according to the formula.

The reality of life is that living as a faithful follower of Jesus in this world requires thought.  The thought does not need to be highly original or apart from the writing and wise council of other thinking Christians.

But thought is required.  We need to always realize that the answers are at times difficult and beware of easy solutions and quick fixes to the problems of the day.