The curious case of theological schools and their scholars

 

One of the most important awareness that we need to have is that God had numerous workers and children in the past, now, and in the future. In this process, we are a small drop of water in the huge ocean, known as the kingdom of God. Yes God guides us, helps us, corrects us, protects us, and even speaks to us, but God’s kingdom does not revolve around us, it revolves around Jesus Christ.

 

Lacking such awareness is one of the most serious mistakes of many people anointed by God. For most, not necessary for all as many are the devil’s own, it is doubtless that they have encounters with God, depend on the guidance of God, and many do listen to the voice of God. How do we know? We listen to what they learn from that encounter and what grows out of it. The problem is they want to define the kingdom of God based on that encounter and they think the will of God is to affirm that encounter. Yet it is written our knowledge and prophecy are partial as God is working little here and little there, while a large part of the truth will be revealed with the Second Advent of the lord. That is why the kingdom of God is working to affirm Jesus not us and our understanding. God speaks small here, and small there. Some revelations happen here and others happen there. Yet, they all add to one truth of God if they are about the same issue and the same time. That is why not only our understanding is partial but also what is revealed to all of us is also partial. The truth is Jesus, not us.    

 

Besides, some revelations are for some time and others are for another time. Moses’s encounter with God is real and his law is from heaven, the final goal of God, however, is not to affirm the law, but Jesus. The law is the shadow of the real thing; when the real thing is around, therefore, the shadow is void. God did anoint David and his children to be rulers of the people of God, but the final goal of God is not to create a dynasty of sinful kings, who rule forever; no it is to take the eternal kingship to himself by being born as air of David. Heaven does not revolve around David, it revolves around Jesus. This viewpoint is what is lacking in this age of charismatic moment and other protestant theology.    

 

God was working with Luther but Luther was never perfect, theological speaking, and God was working with Calvin but he was far from perfect either. Countless workers of God did receive countless encounters of God but none of them were perfect, and even some ended up being outright ugly, like King Solomon. All are necessary stepping-stones in our process of knowing God. They all are useful and we do learn a lot from them, but none of them are Jesus, to mean perfect.

 

God is a complex being, and we are just stupid beings. We are really stupid beings, dear, if we know us. You see marvelous innovation and when you really know it, it is not a big deal and not that complex after all. But when you think about how many people developed it, in step-by-step fashion, over generations by adding dots here and dots there, you will see we are not that smart at all. We are not smart enough, but as we work by standing on the shoulders of each other with dedication, we can achieve a lot. Our achievement is not the result of our brilliant mind, our mind is not that brilliant at all, it is the result of our cooperative way to stand on each other’s shoulders.

 

See how children live. They do develop consciousness over time to manage themselves but you can see you cannot trust them that much and you need to watch over them most of the time. Why? Because they see the toy but they don’t see the danger in the way; they may see the near danger, but not the less obvious danger. They do not think deeply and don’t live carefully considering all variables. Now see you, how do you think and how do you live? You just think what you can think not what you must think, and live as far as you can manage it. You are too bounded as a person, therefore. You are neither worthless nor helpless, yet far from Jesus.

 

Now imagine the intelligence of God. Before he creates everything, he knows how everything works. He knows, how everything works and adds up to the final detail. God does not try and error to learn, he is the source of all wisdom and knowledge. In this specific time, God knows what an atom is doing and where a single quark is moving in every nanosecond and less. God knows all possible futures of our free will and where they end up and he diligently manages them to make sure his will is done in both heaven and earth. God is not only all-knowing and boundless in terms of intelligence, but also almighty God as nothing is impossible to him. He creates things instantly, as he can destroy them instantly, with his words only. This is our God if a man can try to explain him at all.  

 

That is why even Angels in Heaven do not know it all, even the high-ranking Angels in Heaven do not know it all, and even Jesus, sometimes, does not know it all. Now think about you and how insignificant you are in the kingdom of God, how can you imagine that the kingdom of heaven will revolve around you? The Kingdom of Heaven does not revolve around any worker/child of God, except Jesus. That is why our theology, by building over the foundation of prophets and disciples, where Jesus Christ being the foundational rock and the cornerstone upon which everything is built, needs to be united into one image of Jesus by being connected by Jesus. Our theology using Luther, Calvin, Peter, Paul, John, and soon have to create the image of Jesus built on the foundation of Jesus, bounded by the cornerstones which are Jesus, and connected, to each other, by Jesus.

 

The Bible is a puzzle box because some is given here and other is given there and the meaning is not always literal. That is why we need spiritual guidance to understand it, and since there are other spirits and our ignorance at work, the final image created by our theology should be Jesus as the perfect reflection of the Heavenly Father’s glory and as the revealed logos (word) of God or wisdom of God. The perfect life of a child of God is life lived by Jesus. The perfect word of God over spoken is the word of God from the mouth of Jesus. Read John, it seems contradictory everywhere, because John is not Jesus. What John tries to say is understood by the glass of Jesus and the flow of ideas from the rest of the Bible, which itself has to be seen from the glass of Jesus. Jesus is the master key which opens the hidden treasure in the bible.

 

In this process, what Paul means is defined by Jesus, yet what Jesus means is not defined by Paul. This may not be your hermeneutics but this is Jesus-logy ready to upgrade you to the future work. Jesus is the truth, not Paul. The Bible is not connected, to each other, to affirm Paul, Luther, Calvin, White, or any of the theological scholars; it is connected, to each other, by Jesus to affirm Jesus. Besides, Jesus is not another prophet, which has to be added with others, but God himself. When Jesus says give everything to the poor and follow me, it means give everything to the poor and follow Jesus. There is no need for interpretation here. Those who are the best of heaven live by that law, not to do human bureaucracy on human organization, but to be the new Paul, new Peter, new John, and the new Jesus. Paul cannot reinterpret Jesus, he is not worthy of that. Yet Paul educated us on how foolish people like us can be saved by grace and that is as lower grade faithful. Our treasure is not completely in heaven, yet we are ok, by grace. It is really an amazing grace that gives countless chances to us, the retched fools of this earth, so we can spiritually grow over time.

 

You say Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and you are an example of wealthy servants of God. Dear, but Jesus did not say Abraham is the highest of those born of women, it was John the Baptist, the poor prophet without proper clothes and meals. Because you give everything and you follow God, however, it does not mean you are superior to Abraham because you may end up doubting your mission like no other than John the Baptist or teaching human foolishness and devil’s lie as a way of heaven in a Monastery to lack real faith on Jesus. Yet, the fact that you give everything for God and you fix your treasure in heaven is a huge plus in the Book of Life, and that is if you have real faith of the born-again faithful. Jesus’s statement above, therefore, is perfectly truthful, yet Jesus is also right when he says what is impossible to man is possible to God. We the fools, who love some treasure on this earth, could be also saved by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus. So let us stop selling us, the foolish ones, and let us sell Jesus, the perfection.

 

Our protestant theology is connected by Paul to affirm Paul side by side with “your–other-spiritual fathers” from this earth. The fact, however, is that you cannot say Jesus meant this by citing Paul. Who is Paul, after all, to reinterpret Jesus? The fact is that Paul has to be connected to himself and others by Jesus to affirm Jesus, as Jesus is the Truth, with a capital T, not Paul. Some of us are Calvinists, some of us are Lutheran, some of us follow Ms. White in our advent, some of us follow anyone with a miracle, and some of us follow the money, and the foundation of Jesus is clouded and fuzzy in many and nowhere to be seen in some.

 

When Jesus said love your enemy, it means love your enemy. There is no other interpretation. A perfect child of God will love his enemy. When we were standing on two sides of the Tigray-Ethiopian war, supporting opposite sides, Jesus was right and we were wrong. There is no other interpretation, except God tolerated us so we can grow spiritually toward loving our enemies. When Jesus says turn the other cheek, it means turn the other cheek. There is no other interpretation. If you go Wild West on your enemy, God is waiting for your spiritual growth to be like him, and he is not affirming you at all. Jesus is the truth, not a lie that we are.

 

Our theology is often built to affirm us, not Jesus. We may not live by the standard of Jesus, after all, we are not completely stamped with the image of Jesus in our spirit and our flesh is not completely defeated, but we have to know where the perfect God is and we need to learn to move toward it. In this path from sin to Jesus, our theology is often somewhere in the middle affirming our achievement as the most glorious achievement of God, what an ignorance. We are not the perfect being, which is God, we are becoming the perfect being by process of spiritual growth process. Let us affirm God, therefore, and his name is Jesus Christ. In this process, to anoint yourself, as a theological school or as a protestant sect, as storage of heavenly knowledge and as lament test of what is heavenly and to do that not to affirm perfection of Jesus and his ways but to affirm your bias and preference for earthly money, power, and respect is shameful.

 

Theological schools are reservoirs of human theology, which is partially from God and some part of it is not from God. God is not many but one, if there are many theologies and one truth, all theology is not from God. To a smaller or a larger extent, there are weeds of the devil mixed out there in each of them. The bible says the angels of God will weed it at last, it does not say the purest form will be persevered until the end. Luther made the first move in the weeding process but there is more to come, until nothing but Jesus stands firm out there.

 

There is the word of God, revelation of God, and knowledge of God stored in theological schools, but all is not right. If all was right, the fruit would be perfect. See the world and the state of the faith to see what is wrong with our theology. The problem is not only that we do not know all, but also we have ambition of power, money, and respect. Besides, sadly, we are becoming a reservoir of conspiracy theories and human stupidity too. I can say it nicely but here is the rude truth, the way I like to serve it. Many theologians’ understanding of this world is simply stupid; it is not wrong but just stupid. The faithful can conquer the world by faith but they sold the faith to buy the world for power, money, and respect, and now the world is in their head. Since they cannot influence the world as they wish, nowadays, and since the Middle Ages and the early years of enlightenment that they dream of seeing again is the illusion of their stupidity, they just hide in the closet of their ignorance to contemplate conspiracy theory and human stupidity as knowledge.

 

I do respect and wish to learn what God planted on you. I am sure God has countless workers and children in the past, in the present, and in the future. I always love it when somebody explains the Bible better that makes me learn the bible better. Those are the days I enjoy brothers and sisters, which is when they know what I do not know because they are upgrading me. When I learn from the brother and sister, my understanding moves to the next level and I know better standing on brothers’ and sisters’ shoulders. That is why I wish to drink from what God has been planting on different people, for the last more than 2000 years, through you. I want Jesus coming from all sources because God works little here and little there and I want it all. I am thirsty for my lord and I will run everywhere where I can find him. Do you have some Jesus, therefore, dear?

 

But I am not interested in your ignorance. I am not from Mars or Venus, I am from Earth and I am too earthly to know foolishness from wisdom. I don’t need your political, social, cultural, historical, and other forms of ignorance. Keep it for yourself and let us see its fruit. I have my own political views, I have my own social ideas, I have my own cultural preferences, I can read history from historians, and I have my own ignorance to carry on, but I leave that behind and I speak Jesus and nothing but Jesus. What I know is dirt and nothing but human ideas, so what I want is God, the perfection. Do you have God to share with me, therefore? Yet you want to lecture me about economics and poverty, politics and institutions, and metaphysics and science. If I want to learn about the earth, I go to University and the school of life with one eye closed and one eye opened, not to theological school. If I want spiritual knowledge, I learn from God and his children. Do you have some Jesus, therefore, dear? Besides, if you claim to know about the darker spirits, are you sure you know them at all? Talk about Jesus, please.