If it’s harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven, it’s harder for an elephant to thread that needle than for a person who has right theology to not get arrogant. How many people do you know who have read one John Calvin book and thrown it down in a spiral while doing a touchdown dance as though they’d accomplished something themselves?
Five years after releasing my third book, Searching for God Knows What
The two main components I added to the book are a new introduction in which I argue that right theology has no redemptive power at all, that redemptive power only comes through a relationship with Jesus. I explain why right theology has become a false idol, and when it’s used as a pacifier to make us feel right rather than redeemed, it breeds arrogance and is bait for an offensive, controlling personality. Many Christian leaders belittle other pastors and thinkers in the name of right theology. This is distracting, and by distracting I mean it’s a song and dance that distracts people from seeing Christ.
The second addition to the book is a personality theory I wrote and printed in the final chapter. I call it The Genesis Theory and it explains, I believe, how our personalities have developed based on the depiction of the fall of man in Genesis 2 and 3. I’m hoping to qualify this theory through trial at a Christian University. The seed of this theory is in this reprint.
Anyway, here is a bit of the new introduction. It’s only a bit of it, but it will give you an idea of what the book is about. Hope you like the additions. Thanks so much.
From the introduction of Searching for God Knows What
….and through a dark night of the soul, I came to realize salvation happens through a mysterious, indefinable, relational interaction with Jesus in which we become one with him. I realized Christian conversion worked more like falling in love than understanding a series of concepts or ideas. This is not to say there are no true ideas, it is only to say there is something else, something beyond. There are true ideas involved in marriage and sex, but marriage and sex also involve something else, and that something else is mysterious.
If we have a controlling personality, in which we like to check things off of lists, this is going to be extremely hard for us to understand and embrace. God give us no control, really, over this “system” of relationship. Introducing somebody to Jesus is not about presenting ideas, then, as much as it is introducing a person to a Deity who lives and interacts. Evangelism, then, looks like setting somebody up on a blind date: God does the work, we just tell them about him and where they can find him.
You might be getting upset by this. You might think I am saying truth should be thrown out, that theology doesn’t matter. But this is not what I’m saying at all. What I’m intending to illustrate is our drive to define God with a mathematical theology has become a false God rather than an arrow that points to the real God. Theology can become an idol, but it is more useful as guardrails on a road to the true God. Theology is very important, but it is not God, and knowing facts about God is not the same as knowing God. Let me give you an extreme example of how very bad we have gotten about this in the west.
About the time (and I share this in the book, so forgive the repetition) I was thinking through these things, I was teaching a class in Canada, and my students were freshman college students, all of whom had grown up in the church. The class was called “The Gospel and Culture.” I started the class with an experiment, I told the class I was going to share the gospel of Jesus, but I was going to leave something out. I wanted them to figure out what I’d left out. I talked first about sin, about how we are fallen creatures. I told some stories and used some illustrations. I talked about repentance, and again told some stories, then I talked about God’s forgiveness, and I talked about heaven. I went on for some time. And when I finally stopped and asked the class to tell me what I’d left out, after twenty or more minutes of discussion, not one student realized I’d left out Jesus. Not one. And I believe I could repeat that same experiment in Christian classrooms across North America.
What I came to understand, then, is Christian conversion is relational. It is not theological or intellectual any more than marriage is theological or intellectual. In other words, a child could become a Christian if they had a mysterious encounter with Jesus, and a simple thinker could become a Christian if they had a mysterious encounter with Christ, and even a person who was a Muslim or a Buddhist could become a Christian if they had a mysterious relational encounter with Christ. This is the only answer at which I could arrive that matched the reality in which we live, the complexity of scripture, and the mysterious invitation offered to us by Jesus.
I hear the masses saying, “But no! A person cannot believe in multiple Gods and be a Christian.” Let me counter with some questions:
Can a person have bad theology and be a Christian?
Has your theology ever been corrected, and were you really a Christian before?
Is your theology all worked out now so you have no more reason to study, and if not, are you a Christian?
If you believe a person’s theology has to be right to be qualified for Christian conversion, then you are saying a person comes to know God, in part, because he has right ideas, and I respectfully disagree. Do I think right theology is important? Absolutely, but I do not believe it has any agency to convert anymore than directions to the doctor’s office has the power to heal.
I have a friend who countered, adamantly, that unless a person understood and agreed with the theological idea of total depravity, he could not be a Christian. I asked my friend when it was that he understood the idea himself, and he answered his sophomore year in seminary. I asked him, then, when he had become a Christian, and he told me when he was in the third grade. His reasoning was obviously insane, and I don’t think he is alone. I believe that God wants us to engage with and be transformed by His Word. So does that mean someone from another faith who encounters Jesus might have their ideology corrected? Maybe. What I’m saying, though, is that God doesn’t exclude someone from his saving grace because they don’t have the correct theological checklist. And for those of us who judge and condemn them, why would we stand in opposition when the God we love and serve is himself so adamant about being in relationship with them just as He is with us?
Would you do me a favor as you read this book? Would you be willing to grow and expand your understanding of God and how He works? If your understanding of Christianity is relatively conservative, it may surprise you that our theology is remarkably similar. It’s just that I am going to continue to pull power and beauty away from facts about God and give them to God himself. To the degree your right theology is your false God, this is going to disturb you. You are going to revolt, inside, because the thing you have been placing your security in (namely your ability to come up with and defend right ideas) is going to be threatened. But make no mistake, I am not attacking right theology, I am simply making theology a window rather than a wall.
On this journey, you may travel through the same dark night of the soul through which I have come. But on the other side, I assure you, is Christ, and you will love him for what He has done. You will stand bloodied from the battle, kneeling before Him, knowing He is all the hope you had, and hopefully, in a delightful moment of freedom, realize He is always the only hope you need.
If you’d like to read the entire book, you can find it at your local bookstore, Barnes and Noble, Borders or Amazon.
Mr. Miller,
My name is Bryan and I am student studying theology at Wheaton College. I believe that God can use theology to transform our personal relationships with Him, otherwise I would not study it. I have seen in my own life how my walk with Christ has been deepened and intensified through the study of theology.
I have also seen, however, how theology can lead to arrogance–how people with more education can use their knowledge to belittle people and stifle God’s transforming work in their lives. This is a tragic reality. I myself have been guilty of this.
But it seems to me you have created a strawman. I understand, more than most people, how theology can be a weapon. You are certainly right that theology has no redemptive power in its own right. However, I have seen God use theology as powerful tool for redemption, both as a negative corrective and as a positive edification. Is theology the problem? Or is it the human tendency toward pride? Too often those who have been entrusted to teach the church use theology to exercise power. But is this the fault of theology? Be careful not to make a strawman out of theology; no doubt anything can be used by the powerful to oppress others (even spirituality, a fact that the many monastic scandals in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church can attest to). Don’t blame theology, blame the theologian–the theologian who is but a sinful human redeemed by the grace of God.
I look forward to discussing this with you when you visit Wheaton later this year.
I like what Donald Miller had to say. I am in the process of writing how “Theology has become the Christian’s Idol.” I have been a believer a long time and realize that we have become enamored with gathering information, even “Theological,” information, and many of us, not all, think that is equivalent to having an in-depth relationship with an indwelling Lord. I can testify it is not even close. For I have also studied volumes of Informatics, which is basically processing data, (information), for storage and retrieval. This sounds like a good definition of BS. Bible Study. You see for a long time I have gathered information, theological, doctrinal, and transferred this information from my Bible or a textbook to a notebook for later retrieval. Studying Theological constructs are intriguing for sure. As I move near the end of my life I realize it is only Jesus Himself that my dependency and trust must be in. My faith cannot rest on something on a printed page, even a Biblical page of our Bibles. My faith must rest in the living Lord Jesus. I fear we have used our Bibles, and the time spent studying them, along with other “Christian,” studies, and it is these that has replaced experiencing our living indwelling Lord. There is so much more to say, but I just had to comment my dear brother in Christ. Please reply, I would love to hear from you, for I can tell you are a thinker.
[...] truth tells us that, in fact, we see it all pretty dimly for now? For more on this issue, I love this post from Donald [...]
Dear Mr. Miller, I could not agree with you more on the relational emphasis you wrote about in this blog. I am a little confused by your use of the word “theology.” Could it be that there might be a distinction between the word “theology” and the word “doctrine”? The reason I ask is because, as essential as a personal relationship with Jesus is, one can be vulnerable to any manner of personal and private musings, ponderings and introspections about “who” Jesus is if doctrine (or is it theology) is either a “window” or a “wall” rather than a “foundation.” Thank you for all that you do, may God richly bless you.
[...] truth tells us that, in fact, we see it all pretty dimly for now? For more on this issue, I love this post from Donald [...]