Knowledge influencing faith

Happy New Year 2012

I pray that this year will be one of much learning in the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ our Lord, and that God will use each of you in the work of His Kingdom!

I will try my best to share my random insights and some aspects of my walk through this blog.

I was surprised while I was reading one of the recent chapters of Full Metal Panic (FMP) manga that the name of "Guatemala" showed up. Yeah, I was born and raised in that country, but not a lot of people really know about this country, so it was very amusing and funny when I read it:

Unfortunately, the mention of Guatemala has a negative connotation here since it talks about "guerrillas" that were in the civil war during the last century.

Talking about FMP, it is one of my top-tier favorite series. It has a combo of the many things I enjoyed: solid and interesting characters, action, comedy, romance, unique story, character development. One aspect of the unique story is that there are some people called the "whispered" which by some weird reason gets highly advanced scientific information whispered into them, and these people are very smart and have the knowledge that can contribute to the advance of technology. In many ways, this can help in a positive way to make advancement in the medical field. At the same time, this causes military technology to advance as well in creating better weapons. So the knowledge this "whispered" have can impact society both in a positive and negative way.

So in a Christmas party, I had a very good conversation with a brother about how theological knowledge can affect your faith. The conversation started by talking about sermons at church, and how some sermons are more like a theological lecture, while others are more application-based, etc. We are both similar as in we have an engineering degree, we enjoy learning facts, and we like to dig in deeper in many topics of theology and church (eg. Calvinism vs Arminianism, Soteriology, Discipleship, Church History, Mission of Church). I told him that I like sermons that have much theological content, and then he asked me how does this knowledge help in building up my faith.

We talked about the dangers of knowing more theology. One of them is pride. Like the Pharisees, it is easy to feel prideful when you know more than the average member of your fellowship, when you can answer much of the questions that people have, when you can "show off" in deep discussions. And this a struggle I have, that when I learned more theology I start seeing myself better than others. Another struggle I have is that I have less of the "child-like" faith in God. So I tend to scrutinize everything with the framework of knowledge I have (which is not bad thing to do), but I rely too much on it and don't really trust wholeheartedly that God can work despite the imperfection of men.

So how does more theological knowledge can help in growing my faith? I really enjoy reading Paul's letters, and they are usually structured with: greetings and thanksgivings, exposition of some deep theological truths, and practical behavior that comes from believing these truths.

I think that applications of Christian living comes from being convicted of the Christian theological truths. For example, the command "love your neighbors" is something that many other religions would agree on, and it is like a moral standard for much people. So how is the Christian faith different then? As Christian, I know that I am sinful and that innumerable times I failed to love my neighbors. And that it is only because Christ lives in me, that I can love my neighbors unconditionally and imitate the way Christ loves us.

I believe that the theological truths should convict me about how much more glorious our God is, and how a wretched sinful man I am. For example, every Christian believer knows that Christ died for our sins, and this truth convicts me that I am sinful, and I need the grace of God. But understanding more about the word "propitiation" (which is the action of turning aside the wrath of God and appease Him so that we can find ourselves in a favorable position in God's eyes) convicts me even more of how much gracious and glorious our God is, and how much more sinful I am.

And we concluded that the theological truths should encourage and challenge us to worship Christ more, so that our lifestyle will reflect the implications of these truths. So I do encourage the pursuit of learning the Christian theological truths, but don't let that pursuit be what you worship, but the knowledge gained should point us towards the worship of God.

"Now, The­ol­ogy is like the map. Merely learn­ing and think­ing about the Chris­t­ian doc­trines, if you stop there, is less real and less excit­ing than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doc­trines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the expe­ri­ence of hun­dreds of peo­ple who really were in touch with God-experiences com­pared with which any thrills or pious feel­ings you and I are likely to get on our own are very ele­men­tary and very con­fused. And sec­ondly, if you want to get any fur­ther, you must use the map. You see, what hap­pened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was cer­tainly excit­ing, but noth­ing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is noth­ing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion-all about feel­ing God in nature, and so on-is so attrac­tive. It is all thrills and no work; like watch­ing the waves from the beach. But you will not get to New­found­land by study­ing the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eter­nal life by sim­ply feel­ing the pres­ence of God in flow­ers or music. Nei­ther will you get any­where by look­ing at maps with­out going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea with­out a map." -  23rd chap­ter of Mere Chris­tian­ity by C.S. Lewis