Theologians

Excerpt from Don't Close Your Mind - Be a Theologian by Dan Kimball at Vintage Faith

"From there we took a turn to provoke the importance of this, and shared the overall statistics of biblical illiteracy in the United States. Even among Christians who have grown up in the church. There are plenty of stats out there showing how in churches, especially among younger people there is a "crisis" (that was a word used in one article I read a part of) of not knowing basic doctrines and basic elements of the overall Bible narrative. Now, for those who immediately want to cry out how Bible knowledge is not what makes someone a disciple of Jesus, I did address that. I put on the screen the words "ORTHODOXY" and "ORTHOPRAXY" and walked through the relationship of both. I think the pendulum swings back and forth, as there has been times where the church taught Scripture and people were filled with "ORTHODOXY" (straight or right thinking/teaching/doctrine). But only having right doctrines doesn't mean that it will always produce Spirit-filled Christians. There are those who have great ORTHODOXY but it never seems to move to their heart and some become legalists and can become very mean Christians. Right beliefs (ORTHODOXY) without the Spirit changing us with those beliefs (even the devil believed there is one God - James 2:19) doesn't mean we will be a Spirit-filled Christian demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5).

But then the other extreme is having good ORTHOPRAXY (straight or right living/action/practice) but losing ORTHODOXY. We can live good lives, be kind, gentle, help the poor - but we can have that if we join the Peace Corps or even be athiest and have good practice of living. So it has to be both. The Spirit should use ORTHODOXY to produce ORTHOPRAXY. One without the other is not good. I quoted Jesus and how He said "If you love Me, you will obey my commands" and I shared how we have to know what His commands are in order to obey them.

So.... I tried to express how as a church, we must strive to be theologians as part of who we are. If we are truly missional, and involved in people's lives outside the church, if we are thinking about the issues and challenges culture brings - we then will be forced to become sharper thinkers and forced to look at tough questions. The Bible should only become more and more alive to us the more we study and read it - not less. "