Is Theology for Everyone?

Is Theology for Everyone?

Let’s think together for a few moments about theology. The mere mention of the word may conjure up thoughts of intellectual misfits who look like a cross between Albert Einstein and Woody Allen and who spend the majority of their time tucked away in libraries reading old books most people don’t even know exist and couldn’t understand even if they did. You may think that the only reason these people ever emerge from behind their books is to embarrass the rest of us with their “superior knowledge” of all things irrelevant. Well, if that’s all there is to theology I’m with you. Who needs it if it has no relevance in the real world? Why waste precious time thinking and studying something that isn’t practical?

But who says theology isn’t useful? Where did we ever get that idea? And who determined that it’s over our heads? Or that it’s boring? Or that it’s only for a select few? Where did such ideas come from? I don’t know. All I know is they are wrong; very wrong. Nothing is more pertinent than theology. And nothing is more exciting.

The word “theology” is the union of two Greek words, theos, God, and logos, word. So theology is simply words about God. One theologian formally defines theology as “the ordered consideration or study of God.”[1] Another calls it “the discovery, systematizing, and presentation of the truths about God.”[2] If you are a Christian, don’t you remember how thrilled and overjoyed you were when you first came to know the Lord? You had that experience because you gave God and the truths about him serious thought. Haven’t you had times in your walk with God when you felt overwhelmed by his love and when you wanted more than anything to know him better? Well, I’m sure you have discovered that you can’t know him better apart from thinking about him and the truths about him conveyed in the Bible. The moment you start thinking about God you are doing theology. Or haven’t you had times when you read something in the Bible or heard a sermon that unveiled something that opened up your relationship with God to a whole new level? Again, all of this flows out of theology. Apart from “the ordered consideration or study of God” you would know precious little about him, and I seriously doubt you would have the joy of experiencing a genuine relationship with him.

In light of this, what could be more worthy of our consideration than God? And what subject could be more exciting than theology? Yet another theologian defines theology as “any study that answers the question, ‘What does the whole Bible teach us today?’ about any given topic.”[3] Since people all over the world with all kinds of intellectual abilities can open a Bible, read it, and understand it (at least parts of it), or else they can understand it when it is read to them and explained to them, means theology isn’t merely for “scholars” and “intellectuals.” And since theology focuses on God and things pertaining to God, it cannot be boring because God isn’t boring. If we get bored with theology the problem resides in us, not in theology.

So is theology for everyone? Of course it is.