I came from a fundamentalist background and it was all theology yet I credit that with giving me a solid foundation. However I had to spend years unlearning focusing exclusively on the gospels so that I could get a sense of who Jesus was. So that I could relate to him as a person reading the scriptures as I would a novel reading with my heart putting myself in the narrative. Theology made me hard and legalistic and fearful, studying Jesus taught me love childlike simplicity and honest faith

It’s one thing to study theology and learn about God’s revealed dealings with men. However it takes a different perspective to know Him as your God, to love Him like David and the Son of David loved Him. You cannot learn this in a classroom. It takes a different type of absorption from Scripture and theology.

[...] “I Don’t Want to Know About God, I Just want to Know Him” Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Stupid Statements in RomansStupid Statement   [...]

I think we need to consider Deuteronomy 6 again: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart (intellectual), all your soul (emotional), and with everything you’ve got.” It is… holistic.

I think the reason why people shy away from theology is because they want the freedom to define God in their own way so that he doesn’t place any demands on them.

It’s the same reason why so many Christians read Dan Brown. They want to introduce an element of doubt so that Christianity is not binding on their will. They want to take benefits from God when they have felt needs, and then put him away when they want autonomy from the moral law.

I have more to say on this, but I can’t write it all here. So I put it here:

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/does-the-bible-teach-that-faith-is-opposed-to-logic-and-evidence/

Ironically, I actually quoted C. Michael Patton in that post, and it’s one my favorites.

[...] the Mind: “I Don’t Want to Know About God, I Just Want to Know Him”… And Other Stupid Statements by C. Micheal [...]

Long-time lurker, first-time caller (I think).

Another good post. I’ve dropped a lot of blogs from my feed-reader, but yours is one I’ve kept.

When you quote the person you’ve been having discussions with, I can understand why someone might say that.

I agree that it’s important to know about God, but the process can be extremely painful. Let me borrow your relationship metaphor to perhaps get my point across.

Let’s say you approach the woman you love, to get to know her. However, while she may be talking, your inherent deafness means that you cannot communicate through the spoken word. You can’t hear her, and what you do hear, you’re not sure if you heard it correctly, or if it was the neighbour across the street yelling at her cat.

So she writes in a blog. She writes about herself, her history, how she came to where she is today. She communicates her feelings for you.

However, the blog is public and others are reading it too. On your own blog, you declare your love for her, and your understanding of the things that she’s written.

However, the people who’ve been reading her blog are also reading your blog. They disagree with you. In fact, not only do they disagree with, but they are willing to endlessly debate your understanding of your beloved’s blog.

Unfortunately, your beloved isn’t coming to your defense to tell you whether you’re right or whether you’ve misunderstood.

Indeed, in spite of the fact that you’ve actually spent time with her, you start to second guess whether, in fact, you really have a grip on your relationship. Maybe others know her better.

You describe your experiences, and the others tell you that you’re wrong, because it doesn’t seem to match what they know about her from her blog.

Better still, you realise they’re right about some things; you have actually misunderstood some things about her.

That’s not good enough though, they want you to agree with them about everything about her.

There’s also more than one group of people determined to tell you that not only is your understanding of your beloved flawed, but the other group is SO wrong, and they can prove it from your beloved’s blog posts; and if they need to wound you deeply to do so, well so be it. They’re only doing it out of love, after all.

It might almost be enough to make someone give up on the relationship altogether.

I haven’t given up, but I’m wounded and weary from the battle of trying to get my theology “right”.

Once again Michael a very interesting post and challenging responses. I would read one statement and then another swithing back and forth in agreement with the responses.

In my humble opionion is does come back to balance between knowledge and experience. However I do believe that our experiences must be hinged by our knowledge foundationally.

I have often wondered about tongues and why in certain circles it is quite common, while in my christianity” circle of belivers ” it never happens. We could ague forever whose right or wrong from a bibical viewpoint but our experiences do seem to be weighted to some degree upon our knowledge and expectations.

In conclusion I will use the “Dr” Mike title for reference. I assume that Dr. Mike is not a medical doctor though I could be wrong. But in the case of a medical doctor they not only require knowledge of medicine but have to have practical experience to boot. I would want a doctor with both working on me. But I would think the knowledge part is foundational and the experience part would shape and build ON my foundational knowledge.

PS I wish I could claim even a few extra letters of distinction but this comes from a born again believer who loves the Lord and wants to know all I can about him and his truths.

I think the position which many Christians (especially emergents) are now taking to which this post is a rebuttal has been misrepresented. It is not that knowledge of God is unimportant but that evangelicals have, in practice, made orthodoxy (right thoughts) all-important and orthopraxy (right actions) optional. Thus a church member would be berated for not studying the Bible or attending Sunday worship but whether or not they worked for justice is irrelevant. Final judgement will be a case of God checking the believers head…

We all know it’s so much easier to sit around theologising and think we’re doing God’s will whereas Jesus was much more practical calling us to put into practice what we hear and warning of disaster if we didn’t (Luke 6:46-49). In a sense we read too much Bible because we know much more about what we should do than we actually do and to compensate…we read on, other passages, passages which aren’t so hard, Pauline passages which are complex and puzzling which we can argue about and buy time away from real mission.

The point of knowing God’s will is to go out and do it and our actions are the ceiling of how good all this knowledge is for us and the world.

Dr Mike – systematically was a throwaway word since this thread discusses systematic theology (that’s some antipodean sense of humor).

Not sure if you’re pulling my leg on having never heard of “Extreme Theology” but if you truly haven’t, it is worth a drive by. All things theological and all things systematic. The mention of ‘good works’ befitting Christians or any nuances of behavioral nature tend to produce a ‘works-based-salvation’ hysteria akin to the Pharisaic ergophobia on a Sabbath. A truly remarkable display of the most creative exegetics you’ve ever seen and hermeneutical gymastics of Olympic caliber.

These days I note its curator exercises some comment moderation but a few months ago it was, let’s say, a neo-Calvinist’s petri dish with theological bacteria mutating in all shapes and forms. Cyanide was dispensed with reckless abandon and if you read the threads without a mask on you did so at your own peril, as toxicity levels peaked (especially during discussions involving Warren, Osteen and co.). Creative sarcasm of the worst kind was also in abundance. I could imagine your initial post No. 8 above would be like a hand grenade on that site.

OK I just about ran out of adjectives, but I reserve the right to be biased. CMP on the other hand is civil, has a healthy sense of humor and openly admits to wanting a spell checker for Xmas:)

Release valve now shut. It is hot and humid down here and I am bothered!