The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
– 1 Timothy 1:5-7
Faith in Christ isn’t meant to be a structure that set up home in; it’s meant to be an engine that moves us forward. Too many Christians operate as if their faith is a wall that separates them from the world, and that the more mature your faith is the thicker and higher the wall that separates you from the evils of the world. While the Apostle Peter does describe those who put their faith in Jesus as living stones being built into a dwelling place for the Lord, we have taken his metaphor too far and built our theologies into thousand-room houses where the common follower of Christ spends their days wandering about trying to figure out what to believe and which room Jesus is really in.
The goal of the Christian life isn’t to set up a bulwark of theology that will keep you safe and secure – quite the contrary. Take, for example, God’s call to Abraham leave his home and wander the earth. His faith led him out of security and understanding into danger and the unknown. Jesus spends his ministry wandering around Israel, rarely stopping for longer than a few days. Paul too is constantly on the move, spending a few weeks or a couple months in a place and then moving on, trusting to the Holy Spirit that the teaching he has done there is sufficient.
We are sojourners in this earth. Our theology should reflect that. When you are living a nomadic life and not setting up a permanent home you pack lightly, bringing only the essentials. If you’re spending a week backpacking through the mountains you will eliminate every unnecessary ounce of weight. It may be time that we reconsider the bulkiness of our systematic theologies and begin to trim away the excess to discover what is essential.
Too much theological debate is akin to rearranging the furniture in a house, arguing where it fits best. Instead of claiming to all be professional interior decorators, we need to be people whose primary focus is on the essentials of the Gospel rather than getting caught up in what Paul describes to Timothy as “vain discussion” and foolish debates about words. Let’s travel light and let our message be one of simple power; Christ and him crucified. As we do so we will be freed to make a much more significant impact on the world around us than we can from behind our walls.
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