“For, to begin with, the pious mind does not dream up for itself any god it pleases, but contemplates the one and only true God. And it does not attach to him whatever it pleases, but is content to hold him to be as he manifests himself; furthermore, the mind always exercises the utmost diligence and care not to wander astray, or rashly and boldly go beyond his will.”
-John Calvin
It seems to me that this quote highlights one of the great dangers we face as Christians. It is far too easy for us as individuals and as churches to abandon the God revealed in Scripture for one we have cast in an image we find more desirable. Whether we make Him into the pro-American god, the pro-homosexual god, or the all-about-me prosperity god, we always jump ship with the mysterious, offensive, all-consuming God we find in the pages of the bible for a diety more comfortable to us. And I don’t mean this to be simply an accusation of “those people over there”. I am just as human and prone to this error as anyone.
The harder question which confronts us, however, is what we ought to do about this. It seems to me that the first step we must take is to seek to constantly have our theology anchored in, tested by, and confined to the bounds of Scripture. We must seek to start our thinking within the bible itself. Rather than coming to the bible with a set of presuppositions and questions firmly in hand, we ought to seek to understand what questions the bible is asking and what things it presupposes. What’s more, as we think about things with the bible as our starting point, we must always be using it to critique our process of thought and conclusions as well. We must ask whether out thinking is creating a holy reverence for God and a life in keeping with His commands, and if not, we ought to go back and recheck out thinking. And, perhaps most importantly, we must confine our theology to the bounds of Scripture.
This is the hardest for me, but the longer I seek to be a Christian the more convinced I am of it. Those of us who are more intellectually inclined easily go off on flights of fancy. We want to ask questions and find answers in theology which the bible never attempts to give. ‘What is the essence of God?’ ‘Why did the angels fall?’ ‘Would Jesus be a capitalist or socialist?’ The problem with trying to answer these questions is that the Bible doesn’t. Instead people build long, intricate series of logical proofs and reasonings in order to give an answer. The problem is that our reasoning is at best subjective and at worst still corrupted by our fallen natures. The further we get from what Scripture says, the more prone we are to erring and the more likely we are simply to find the answers which we want to be there. Instead, we must endeavor to ground our thinking in the Bible, keep it there, and let it be corrected by the perfect Word of God.