Theology, Deconstruction, and Learning Who God Is
In which I share my homework, Part 1
When I share what I’m learning in school, I typically lean to the side of spiritual (one’s personal experience with the divine) rather than theological (an intellectual, academic understanding of the tenets of faith). That’s because my degree program is Christian Spirituality with an emphasis on Spiritual Direction. It’s not seminary or an MDiv program. Myself and many of my classmates tend to walk on the far side of the “woo-woo” line.
But that’s not to say that my coursework isn’t academically rigorous or that theology doesn’t play a tremendous role in the way we experience God. Anyone who grew up around bad theology can tell you, it does. (As I’m learning, bad theology is in the water of nearly every Christian denomination in America, including Catholicism. Most of us have run up against it in a major way.)
Theology is a difficult topic for many of us. It’s the foundation for entire belief systems. Even Jesus dying on the cross, that key act that separates Christianity from the other Abrahamic religions, comes with a lot of loaded theology that bears looking into. (Raise your hand if you were ever made to feel guilty because Jesus died for your sins.)1
Theology has hard edges, where spirituality is more pillowy and forgiving. It feels for all the world like if you get your theology wrong, you’re going to hell. On top of that, exegetical research isn’t something most people have the time, training, knowledge, or access to do. What do we do instead? We take our faith leaders’ word for it that their theology is correct. We assume that our individual priest, pastor, teacher, parent, or small group leader has it right, that they are correctly interpreting not only the Bible but also church documents and doctrine.
I’m viewing theology differently these days. Its hard edges are something to be bumped up against, tested, examined, and in some cases, taken apart and built back anew. Good theology can stand up to scrutiny. Having questions and exploring answers other than the ones you’ve always heard is not a sentence to eternal damnation.
Quite the opposite; looking closer at my underlying theological beliefs and biblical interpretation has been the best thing about my degree program. No one here is telling me what or how to think about God, but they are giving me the tools I need to figure out what I believe for myself.
I’m sharing some lightly edited excerpts from the research paper I wrote for my first semester of grad school, not because I think that I have all the right answers, but because I want other people to see that the Bible is often so much more than what we see on the surface or hear in a weekend sermon.
With that, here’s the introduction to my research paper on anxiety and the Sermon on the Mount. I’ll share the remainder of the paper in the coming weeks.
Do Not Worry: Little Faith Versus Active Faith in Matthew 6:25–33
The Sermon on the Mount spans three chapters of the Gospel of Matthew (5–7). However, its teachings are often reduced to one-sentence soundbites that are stripped of context to fit into a preacher’s Sunday sermon or a Christian influencer’s social media feed. One of these soundbites says, “don’t worry!” It is taken from the exhortation in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear” (Mt 6:25).2
Applying this section of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount to modern life without historical and textual context can turn the command of Jesus not to worry into a condemnation of those suffering from clinical anxiety and a dismissal of those who are living in poverty. The implication that has been spoken from many pulpits is that if you are poor or anxious, you are lacking in faith.
As someone who lives with clinical anxiety and has experienced months where the grocery money ran short, I understand all too well how these words of Jesus can sound admonishing rather than comforting. On the other hand, a fuller examination of Matthew 6:25–34 reveals a more accurate meaning behind these words.
The “don’t worry” passage from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is intended as a comfort to those who live in poverty, a condemnation of greed and idolatry, and a call to live an active faith. It is not a judgment of those who suffer from anxiety or live in poverty. This can be seen in the context of the original audience, the language Matthew chooses, and the structure of the passage. That is what I intend to show in the pages that follow.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on theology. What has your relationship been with theology, spirituality, and diving deep into the Bible? Have you felt you have the option to do your own exegesis, or does that level of research feel out of reach to you?
The different theologies around Jesus’s death are called “atonement theories.” They are utterly fascinating, and I plan to do some personal research and explore this topic more here in the coming months. Major h/t to Amber at One Tired Mother, who was the first person who said the words “penal substitutionary atonement” to me years ago in a Vox message, which kickstarted a lot of deep thinking for me.
All quotes are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) unless otherwise noted.
I’ve only read the intro to this post (in the thick of mothering over here), but I love all this so much. I just met with one of our priests last week for a casual conversation over the meaning of Jesus’ death😄 And thank you for the shout out! I miss our Voxer conversations!