“For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.“ —1 Corinthians 1:25
“Faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ sets an inquiry in motion, fights the inclination to accept things as they are, and continually calls in question unexamined assumptions about God, our world, and ourselves.”
~Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding
I’m a geek, a nerd, an academic, an intellectual. Those who know me know that I’m pretty unapologetic about these aspects of my identity. I love church history and reading academic theology. I sit at the proverbial feet of a long line of thoughtful and faithful theologians, pastors, and committed Christians, trying to make sense of the Gospel and it’s relationship to the world around me.
So it hurts when I see Christianity maligned as an anti- intellectual faith. I think Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Catholic Priest and formulator of the Big Bang Theory would be surprised to learn of this.
That said, the heart of faithfulness is not in the head, in proper formulations of the Trinity and in nigh incomprehensible academic speech, but in the closeness of the human heart to a God who wants to know us.
One of my professors once said that we should strive for a “complex religion, but a simple faith.” I strive for a simple faith, focused on Jesus Christ’s birth, ministry, life, death, and resurrection. I also hope that this faith doesn’t end discussion, but rather serves as the beginning of all my questions.
Prayer: God of Wisdom beyond our understanding, may we have a simple faith in you, and a religion that recognizes the complexity of the world around us. We pray this through the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. Amen.
–Rev. Shane Montoya