{"id":620,"date":"2013-10-18T00:46:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-18T00:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=620"},"modified":"2014-08-13T22:01:14","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T22:01:14","slug":"practical-applicable-theology-a-short-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/practical-applicable-theology-a-short-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical, Applicable, Theology – a short overview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again the topic before us is theology.\u00a0 As we discussed last week everyone is a theologian to some degree, for everyone has some type of thoughts regarding God.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether it be the Christian God, or a lesser God, (yes, I am bias) or no God at all, just by entering into the discussion regarding any of these thoughts we enter into the field of theology \u2013 God thought.\u00a0\u00a0 This week\u2019s book, \u00a0Theology A Very Short Introduction <\/em>by Dr. David Ford gives a great overview of this field of God Thought, i.e., theology.\u00a0\u00a0 No matter what your situation might be in regards to your community, family, or learning institution you will have to deal with questions of theology.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Just today one of my former youth and current Facebook friends sat by her mother\u2019s hospital bed as her mother said goodbye to this world.\u00a0 The daughter\u2019s post was not that of a mournful dread or anguishing heart,\u00a0 but rather her words ebbed and flowed with a sense of peace which echoed of a faith and a belief that her mother was now at rest with her beloved Savior and God.\u00a0\u00a0 Dr. Ford would refer to the passing of this woman\u2019s mother as one of the \u201coverwhelmings,\u201d (albeit a more personal and less defining to society at large), that we humans experience throughout our lifetime.[2]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Because of this daughter\u2019s theology, she has developed, or gained, wisdom that now shapes her life, her thoughts, and even her reactions to the overwhelming sorrow of losing her mother.\u00a0\u00a0 And this, this very fortitude that grounds an individual, nation, even a people, is theology and the application thereof.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cThe scandal of Christian theology to many\u201d according to Ford, \u201cis that it does not conceive of humanity as alien to God or in essential tension with God. On the contrary, because of its belief in God freely choosing to become human in Jesus Christ, it not only refuses to see a necessary tension but even finds a glorious union of divinity and humanity.\u201d[4]<\/a> And so, this daughter, in union with her God through Jesus her Lord, found, no, knows, the peace that supersedes her grief of her mother, (who also was in union with God), passing on to the next life.\u00a0 This response of peace and contentment in letting go is, as Ford puts it, one of the five basic forms of worship, praise.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Praise to the God who knows and shares our grief and yet also provides our hope in the life to come.<\/p>\n

When death comes \u00a0knocking at anyone\u2019s door other fields of study and the knowledge that they bring are of little consequence and assistance.\u00a0 At such moments in our lives we care very little about the appropriation budget, or how many milligrams are in a pound, or who wrote the 1859 classic with the famous first lines: \u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u201d\u00a0 Honestly, no other field of study comes to mind except that of theology.\u00a0 What is one to make of life and its seemingly brevity?\u00a0 What comes after you breathe your last breath? These are the questions that theology attempts to answer or at least give meaning to and provide some sense to all the \u201coverwhelmings\u201d that we experience.\u00a0 Unfortunately, \u00a0there are many other fields and philosophies that desire to erode the meaningful application of theology.<\/p>\n

I appreciate the way that Dr. Ford handled the whole postmodern thought process that has attempted to eroded many of the integrators that would seek to make any sense of life.\u00a0 Theology and good theologians, as Dr. Ford states, \u201chave combined intellectual sophistication with the ability to relate their thought to ordinary living.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 In so doing, Christian theology continues to hold together the metanarrative of God\u2019s love found in and through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.\u00a0 It is precisely this metanarrative that encourages me to continue my theological discoveries of God and his ways.<\/p>\n

Deep and true theology is what is helping my former youth through her loss and it is what will continue to bring forth the praise and thanksgiving that is part of worship to my Lord and Savior Jesus!<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> David F. Ford, Theology: A Very Short Introduction<\/em> (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 5<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]<\/a> Ibid., p. 7-10.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]<\/a> Ibid., p. 10.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]<\/a> Ibid., p. 60.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]<\/a> Ibid., p. 51.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6]<\/a> Ibid., p. 14.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again the topic before us is theology.\u00a0 As we discussed last week everyone is a theologian to some degree, for everyone has some type of thoughts regarding God.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether it be the Christian God, or a lesser God, (yes, I am bias) or no God at all, just by entering into the discussion regarding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"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":[2,197],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-ford","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1955,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/1955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}