Saturday, July 17, 2010

Loving Studying God More than Loving God

A few days ago I posted a video that explored what it means to love loving God more than to love God for who he is. Today I ran across an article, by Carl Trueman, that warns against a similar phenomenon--loving knowing and studying God more than loving him. 
The greatest temptation of a theology student is to assume that what they are studying is the most important thing in the world. Now, I need to be uncharacteristically nuanced at this point: there is a sense, a very deep and true sense, in which theology is the most important thing in the world. It is, after all, reflection upon what God has chosen to reveal to his creatures; and it thus involves the very meaning of existence. In this sense, there is nothing more important than doing theology.
But this is not the whole story. One of the great problems with the study of theology is how quickly it can become the study of theology, rather than the study of theology, that becomes the point. We are all no doubt familiar with the secular mindset which repudiates any notion of certainty in thought; and one of the reasons for this, I suspect, is that intellectual inquiry is rather like trying to get a date with the attractive girl across the road with whom you have secretly fallen in love: the thrill comes more from the chase and the sense of anticipation than it does from actually finding the answer or eliciting agreement to go to the movies.
Read the rest here.

1 comment:

  1. John's message was to very timely. It's time that Reformed people worship in both spirit and in truth and to set aside every idol that impedes a humble faith in Jesus Christ.

    Brad

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