Theology
by Robert K. Martin
Theology.
What is it?
Where does it lead?
What difference does it make?
As a kid raised in a Southern Baptist family in a Southern Baptist home in a Southern culture (Louisiana, which could be considered “southern-kicked up a notch”, especially if you have read Rebecca Wells “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and watched Emeril), I buhleved in Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit… the whole shebang. Every time there was a revival, I got saved all over again. At night, instead of monsters hiding the closet or under my bed, I was scared to shivers of hellfire and brimstone. Those monsters didn’t stand a chance of stoking my fear up against the righteous wrath of the holy, omnipotent God who was going to throw all the unrepentant and unholy children like me into the fiery lake of everlasting damnation. At least that’s what my pastor said.
I’ve probably been saved a hundred thousand times; every night that I can remember for as long as I was self-conscious, I prayed to anyone who was listening up there. I told ‘em that I was a rotten sinner, deserving of condemnation, but that I really wanted to live a holy life and be saved. Then I’d think about what boys think about alone at night, and I’d have to get saved all over again.
When I think about what my theology was at that age, my idea of “God” was not much better than the monsters that were hiding in my closet. “God” was a bit worse, however, because he was hiding in my head. Not only that, the “God” in my head was mirrored in my church, my family, my culture. I was theologically saturated in the God-as-savior/God-as-judge theology. I didn’t consider for a moment that the “God” in my head might not be equivalent to the Creator and Redeemer of the universe. It was the Creator/Redeemer.
In 6th grade, a good friend of mine, John David, was playing baseball one day. He was a star athlete, of whom I was insanely jealous. He could water ski so well that he was being recruited by Cypress Gardens (for all you non-water skiers, Cypress Gardens was the showcase for the best of the best waterskiing in the country). He was a natural at every sport he tried. But this day, he was striking out. He said that his head was hurting badly. Then, he went blind right there in the batter’s box. Come to find out, spinal fluid was backing up in his head and pressing on his optic nerve. When he was taken to the local hospital, the only thing they knew to do was to relieve the pressure, but the way they did the operation left him permanently blind.
John David’s family was understandably devastated. According to what our pastor had been telling us, God blesses us when we are good and chastises us when we aren’t. Logically then, they had done something that made God pretty upset. For the next several years, his family set out on a quest of repentance and supplication to get him healed. This seemed like a pretty cool idea to me, so I joined them. Our search led us far beyond Southern Baptist orthodoxy. In our world, Baptists don’t like God doing hocus pocus. I’m not sure why, but Baptists don’t usually cotton to people getting instantaneously healed or breaking out in tongues. But that’s exactly what we were looking for: someone who knew the right prayers, the right dance, someone who could call down the Holy Ghost to heal my best friend.
As John David’s family and I moved away from our Baptist church and its theology, we found ourselves persona non grata in that world. My parents were afraid I was getting mixed up with the wrong crowd, but they didn’t know how to confront me because I was getting even more involved in “church”. It’s not like I was drinking and smoking and carrying on like some of my siblings. I was as near to being angelic as any high school kid could be. It was actually a little scary, looking back on it; I was a complete geek and mostly what I thought about and talked about was God.
After a few years of traveling to see Kathryn Kuhlman (faith healer, duh!) and Oral Roberts (same; of Oral Roberts University fame….and well… that 900-foot Jesus he saw) and folks like that in and around Louisiana, we despaired of ever repenting enough or finding the right formula to get John David healed. His suffering opened up a whole new world of suffering that was all around me that I hadn’t seen. And as I became conscious of the vastness and indiscriminate nature of suffering, tough, intractable questions forced themselves upon me as I moved to college (a Southern Baptist college no less).
There, in that sedate, highly-controlled environment, one of the religion professors asked me a question that rocked my world. After a rather intense class session in which he and I were engaged in friendly combat, he took me aside and said, “Robert, do you believe that God is in control of all things?” “Of course,” I responded wholeheartedly, without reservation. He continued, “If you do, then how do you put together the control that God wields in every situation and the necessity of human freedom, if we are to make a free decision for salvation?” That one question detonated in my life with the force of a nuclear explosion.
I tried to reword the question but I couldn’t shake the logic: If God is in control, then we can’t be completely free to repent and ask Jesus into our hearts. And if we can’t be free to do that, if somehow God controls even that action of ours, then how can anyone be so responsible for their actions and sinfulness that they can be condemned to eternal damnation? How can human beings be held responsible by God if we do not have free will?
I stormed out of his office, and before I slammed the door in his face, I yelled, “You are wrong!” Within a week, I was back in his office apologizing and telling him that I had become an atheist. If my idea about God was wrong, then obviously God simply didn’t exist. If I remember correctly, the professor politely smiled and slowly shook his head, probably thinking, “this too shall pass.”
For the next year or so, I was a fervent atheist on that God-fearing campus, and I was eager to convert all my friends to my newfound religious antipathy. I must say that I did have some success, and those of like mind formed something of an anti-spiritual covenant group, in which several of us held each other up in logic and will, to stand firm against the evil Christian-mongers. We were the opposite of John Wesley’s Oxford club and their disciplined life of personal and social holiness. We were devoted, but not to godliness. Our theology was now atheology; our vision and hope for life was a sarcastic humanism.
After a while, I began noticing a profound depth to existence that I couldn’t deny. I felt a connectedness in nature, a presence beyond all presence, a feeling of infinite interiority and transcendence beyond the see-touch realm. I didn’t know what to call it – I certainly did not want to call it God – but I couldn’t deny its reality. It presented itself to me; I didn’t go looking for it and didn’t want to encounter it. But it found me.
This is the story of my awakening to a realm beyond my imagining, beyond what I can see or touch, beyond what I wanted to believe. Experiencing awe-inspiring transcendence and intimate immanence, I set out to explore my experience…and others’ experiences…and how others named the mysterium tremendum. I went to seminary to find out how to talk about it; I continued on to another Master’s degree to figure out how to act faithfully in light of it. But it wasn’t until I was in a doctoral program that I found a theology that fit, that named my experience and made sense of the world around me.
Probably I’m just denser than most others; maybe my schooling took me astray. But my long and circuitous journey into a theology that fit taught me a little about how theology happens and the difference a fitting theology makes. I’ve shared a little of my journey here. It would be fascinating to hear from others about their journey on the ocean of experience, directed by winds of human reflection, drifting into realms of confusion and clarity.
In the next few of my monthly blogs, I want to explore experiences and reflections on some key ideas for Christians: spirituality, incarnation, Trinity, ecclesial/church life, etc. Untold volumes have been written on each of these topics, and I am not one to write any more. But I suspect there are many folks who are looking beyond what they already think for a theology that helps them make sense of their complicated and confusing experience, of the vast world all around, and of that still, small voice who continues to beckon us beyond all everything we know. I don’t know if what I have to share will shed any light, but perhaps together we can discover a bit more of the light that is within and beyond us all.
September 1st, 2007 at 6:33 am
spiritual guide…
Pick me up in the middle of a hectic work day. I love your writing and your thoughts — both are so sophisticated, yet at the same time casual and comfortable. Thank you for the entertainment and the inspiration to challenge myself to find more \\\…