{"id":586,"date":"2013-10-26T15:13:23","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T15:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=586"},"modified":"2014-08-13T21:51:04","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T21:51:04","slug":"the-message-is-greater-than-the-messenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-message-is-greater-than-the-messenger\/","title":{"rendered":"The message is greater than the messenger"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I picked up Alister McGrath\u2019s Christian Theology: An Introduction<\/em>, I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of information that flooded my mind. What stood out to me the most in the midst of the 500 pages is people and tradition. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s my lack of confidence in my abilities to minister, or the sheer awe that comes over someone when they realize how small they are when surrounded by such spiritual giants, but for the first time in a long time I felt surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews talks about. Reading their short biographies and about their fight to maintain tradition reminded me of the human side of Christianity.<\/p>\n

I continued to come back to a quote I read in the beginning of the book. McGrath says, \u201cthe validity of the church\u2019s ministry and preaching did not come to depend upon the holiness of its ministers, but upon the person of Jesus Christ. The personal unworthiness of a minister did not compromise the validity of the sacraments.\u201d (P18) This was the lens through which I read through this book. It\u2019s easy to find fault, ignore, or even disqualify people and teachings based on the shortcomings of people, but if the worthiness of the person determined the validity of the teaching, then Christianity would have died off when the apostles died. We are walking contradictions most of the time, and our theology seems to change depending on our experiences and seasons of life.<\/p>\n

There is a human component to theology that we like to ignore. We believe that the Holy Spirit worked differently two thousand years ago then he does today, but that\u2019s not true. Our scriptures were put together by men with flaws\u2026 reformations were started by men with flaws\u2026 everything we believe about God came through men and women with flaws. Acknowledging the flaws of humanity should only push us into doing theology, but I\u2019m afraid that our humanity is what hinders us the most.<\/p>\n

As an immigrant, I really struggle with tradition. It is in tradition that we find stability and continuity, so when you mess with tradition you shake the foundation, but if you don\u2019t shake the foundation you\u2019re stuck with meaningless traditions. It\u2019s a vicious cycle that is at the center of immigrant life. It struck me when McGrath said, \u201ctheology was frequently understood in terms of the faithful repetition of the legacy of the past.\u201d (P78) Isn\u2019t that beautiful? To know that you\u2019re walking in the footsteps of history is again humbling, but I want to challenge that by saying that if we are only repeating the past for the sake of continuity, then we have not done theology for ourselves. Our faith has not become our own, and we have not done much thinking about God. \u201cPart of the notion of \u2018theology\u2019 is to take seriously the theological heritage of the past. We cannot be in the church without taking responsibility as much for the theology of the past as for the theology of our present day.\u201d (P3) \u00a0I think that this is the challenge to theology today, moving forward while staying connected with the past. Are we up for the challenge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I picked up Alister McGrath\u2019s Christian Theology: An Introduction, I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of information that flooded my mind. What stood out to me the most in the midst of the 500 pages is people and tradition. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s my lack of confidence in my abilities to minister, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[199],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mcgrath","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1921,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions\/1921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}