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When I was growing up I hated school, especially math. I wasn’t a very good student. I had trouble paying attention and didn’t care about the subject matter. There was one very simple reason, I didn’t see why anything I learned actually mattered. While I did take interest in some of the sciences and history, things that were abstract or disconnected from real life seemed like a waste of time. It’s not that my mind isn’t capable of the abstract, it mostly lives there now, but without the teachers giving a solid reason for something I just didn’t care. This means that I mostly got bad grades in school. It was much to my mother’s surprise when I started college and in my first year made straight A’s. In college I understood that it mattered, and while that didn’t mean everything was easy from then on, I knew I had to try and that it was worth the effort to get through.
So I want to write to pastors, teachers, and theologically minded Christians. What we often do with theology is act like my elementary school math teachers. We sincerely want people to get the information. We try to convey it to them as best we can. We even get frustrated if they aren’t putting forth the effort for what we know they are capable of understanding. The problem isn’t always in the education, however, the problem is they don’t know why they should care. The “I just want to love Jesus” crowd may not always eschew theology because of a rebellion in their hearts, they may just not see how anything we say really matters. If the connection between theology, the study of God, and loving God hasn’t been connected clearly for our hearers, then the problem may lie with us as much as it does with them. In short, we’ve failed in application.
There is a reason that many latch on to the “5 tips to a better you” or “3 ways to improve your relationship” sermons, and that’s because they clearly lay out for people what it is they are to do. Such sermons are often poor application and little theology, so imagine what the application with sound theology could do. Recent controversy around the nature of the Trinity has been bemoaned by many as a sign of the decline of theological knowledge among Christians in general. The reason that may be true however, is because no one has probably ever told them why they should care. Answering, “Well they should care so they have the right theology!” is the same as my math teacher answering, “Well you should care so you can the right answer to the equation!” The collective response to both is, “So what?”
The reason we so often fail in application is due to the grim truth that we may not honestly know how to apply what we teach. It’s easy to say people should just care about right theology because they should, but it’s in the application of theology that they see why theology really matters. Application is hard, and when we have to struggle figure out how a specific theology applies it makes us face the reality that we probably don’t know the theology we are teaching well enough. This is not a call to abandon hardcore theology, far from it, it is a call that, brothers, we can do better. We can act at times as if application is something left only to the “Christian Living” section of the bookstore filled with seeker sensitive pastor’s diet plans and women’s devotionals about sipping lattes with Jesus. The apostle Paul, however, didn’t just write letters that were theological treatises, he applied that theology with specific examples to the readers of his epistles.
This does not mean we create application in flippant ways, it means that we need to struggle with application just as much as we do with theological research and biblical exegesis. If we don’t appropriately apply the theology that we say is so important to get right, then we have really failed at our task of teaching and only done half our job. We need to re-invigorate specific, accurate, and varied application into the life of theology. We need to do this not only for our people, but also for ourselves. The Trinity matters, we need to dig deeper as to why it really matters. The eternal relationship of the Father and the Son matters, we need to dig deeper as to why it really matters. The impassibility of God matters, we need to dig deeper as to why it really matters. The nature of the Pactum Salutis matters, we need to dig deeper as to why it really matters.
The best math class I ever took, in fact one of the few that I ever got an A in, was one that taught me how to calculate home loans, compound interest rates, investment strategies, credit score calculation and economic theories. It had all of the same numbers as other courses, still dealt with percentages, fractions, algebra, equations etc, but I did well in it because I understood why it mattered. If we want our people to really care about theology, we have to show them why it’s vitally important for them to care. If we who spend our hours studying theology admit we have a hard time with application, then those we teach aren’t going to just magically figure it out on their own. Proper theology is a matter of eternal life and death and is infinitely more important than mathematics could ever be, but we can’t assume that people know why it’s important, it’s our job to show them. Good doctrine shows us that theology is life, and good application shows us that life is theology.
