Theology--a bit of a four letter word

Let's say for just a moment that I believe God wants nothing more in this life than for me to get rich--how would that affect what I do? Might it affect how I'd live my life? Maybe I'd see nothing at all wrong with lying for instance to further my cause (getting rich), or maybe too I wouldn't see too much wrong from taking what I want from a store (it helps my cause!), or further maybe I'd see nothing wrong with cheating on my taxes, or setting up dummy companies to launder money I'd made illegally--or robbing a bank--no problem! Then again, if someone stands in my way of getting rich, well, murder isn't really a problem either--after all, it's all about me getting rich--in fact, if I do any of these things to get rich, it's all in "god's will."

It's pretty obvious to most of us that this kind of thinking is problematic. So, wouldn't it also follow that if our thinking about God is wrong, in a smaller way, we might do some wrong things in response to that (like our guy above that's a real crook because his thinking is wrong.)?

I think so--and I think we can see some of this in the world now. In fact, I've seen it in my own life where I've believed wrongly about God, gotten depressed because of that, and really had my life thrown for a loop all because of a wrong idea about God. Fortunately for me, God continues to be faithful (that's one of his attributes) and so He continued to work with me, showing me who He was, until I finally got it and things in my life got much better.

I don't know about all LDS folks, but for me when I was LDS, theology was a big, and somewhat ugly word. It was a word that implied evil, scheeming men trying to define a God in whatever image they chose to define him in. It had the implications of learned scholars, so learned that they messed everything up--choosing deliberately to distort the image of God to fit what they wanted God to be.

Since becoming a Christian though, I've come to see that theology is, simply put, the study of God--discovering who He is, and what He's taught. And, I've also come to see that it's important.
Believe it or not, the LDS church has a theology--a belief system about who God is, and what He's done or is doing. They believe for instance that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three seperate beings who work together and become one in purpose. They believe there is a heirarchy of God's--God the Father being the top God in this case and that the others answer to Him. They believe as well that God the Father progressed to become God--that once upon a time, a long, long time ago God was a man just like we are now, and that through help from His God, and doing all the right things He becamse a God--the God He is now.

Too, LDS folks believe a whole lot of other things about God, but these beliefs will do for now.

And, of course Christians have a theology too. We have specific beliefs about who God is as well. We base these beliefs on what the Bible teaches about God. For instance, we believe God is eternal (Ps. 90:2). We take that to mean that He's always been God, and will always be God. We believe that God is all powerful (the word almighty means all-powerful, Ps. 68:14, 91:1, 115:3 and more). We believe that God knows everything (Ps. 147:5 and more). And, we believe that God is one (Duet 6:4, Isaiah 46:9, Isaiah 47:10 and more), and also that God is three. We call that a trinity, meaning that God is one, and is also three. And, like the LDS there's a whole bunch of other things we believe are true about God.

The implications among my friends though all too often is that our theology doesn't matter--as long as we love each other and treat other people good, that's all that's important (they say). But, I don't believe that to be true. I think our theology does matter. Like in the example above it's very true that our theology--what we believe about God, and to a lesser degree about ourselves, affects very, very much what we do with and for God. . . I'd like to explore this a bit more later. See you soon!