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American culture is entertainment-oriented and anti-intellectual. Such is not without its effects on American Christianity. Many Christians say they don’t want to be bothered with theological or doctrinal matters and just want to know the Lord personally. But can we really know God apart from knowing about Him?
In his struggle against religious liberalism in the 1920s, J. Gresham Machen opposed such nonsense. Summarizing the liberal sentiment, Machen wrote: “It is unnecessary, we are told, to have a ‘conception’ of God; theology, or the knowledge of God, it is said, is the death of religion; we should not seek to know God, but should merely feel His presence.” The Princeton apologist simply could not bring himself to agree with this approach: “It ought to be observed that if religion consists merely in feeling the presence of God, it is devoid of any moral quality whatsoever. . . Certainly it does make the greatest possible difference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is the very basis of religion.” In other words, if feeling and experience are the essence of religion, perhaps I could justify murder, theft, or even dabbling with the occult simply because “it feels right.” The founder of Christianity, however, had a different approach: “ ‘If you hold to My teaching, you are really My disciples’ ” (John 8:31, NIV).
We confess not only Christ’s death, but that His death was an atonement for sin. True faith, therefore, rests on the foundation of certain doctrinal claims: “I believe that Jesus died for my sins” and the like. However, it is common today to hear Christians say for example: “I don’t get into that theology stuff. I let my pastor handle all that because he went to seminary.” Unfortunately, this is not true faith. True Christian faith rests in the finished work of Christ. The person who makes this kind of statement is actually trusting in his or her pastor’s faith. If you trust in your pastor’s faith, what happens if your pastor runs off with the church secretary? What will keep you from joining a cult or a non-Christian religion?
The command to love God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength is a serious charge, and it suggests that our whole bodies are to be involved in the worship of God; yes, even our minds. Unfortunately, contemporary American culture does not encourage us to use our minds. In the church, this attitude often masquerades as spiritual superiority. “Why split hairs over theological subtleties, isn’t the real important thing that we love and serve Jesus?” Whenever I hear questions like these, I usually respond with a few questions of my own: “Who is Jesus?” “Is He just a nice guy, a great teacher, or is He God in human flesh?” “What was significant about His death?” “Did it merely show us how much He loved us or did it satisfy God’s wrath toward us?” “What does it mean to serve Him?” “Do we serve Him by taking drugs and having mystical experiences, by throwing young virgins into volcanoes, or by attempting to love our neighbors as ourselves?” You see, if theology is really irrelevant, it makes no difference whatsoever who Christ is or even how we are saved. But classically, Christians have argued that Christ is worth honoring and serving because of who He is and what He has accomplished. And that is why theology is so important!
Theology attempts to give an account of how God has revealed Himself to His people in history. This is why theology is ultimately the most practical thing a Christian can be involved with, for what could be more practical than to know who God is, what He is like, what the basic message of the Bible is, and so forth? Ignoring God’s own self revelation, and focusing on what Christ can do for us now (in terms of experiences, changed lives, or others benefits) is to lose the essence of Christianity that is centered on the historic gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection. It was Machen who said: “If the saving work of Christ were confined to what He does now for every Christian, there would be no such thing as a Christian gospel—an account of an event which put a new face on life. What we should have left would be simply mysticism, and mysticism is quite different from Christianity.”
Paul prayed for the young and developing churches: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better” (Eph. 1:17, NIV). While Christians today do express interest in knowing God, they usually do so apart from any deep reflection about Him. Yet Paul here clearly teaches that growth in wisdom, knowledge, and depth of insight about God will help us to know Him better.
Because we think that theology is irrelevant, we have been “conformed” to the world’s way of thinking rather than being “transformed” by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2). Only if we resist the emphasis on personal experience and the anti-intellectualism of our day, and begin to mine the rich resources of our Christian faith and heritage, will we “no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14, NIV).
Reprinted with permission from Reformation Ink.