Melinda brings up an often missed point:
Knowing someone involves personal acquaintance and relationship, but also knowing facts and detail about the person. In fact, relationship suffers if we don’t understand facts about someone and especially if we misunderstand things about someone. I fear that the current emphasis of Christianity is on relationship to the detriment of knowing facts about Jesus. Theology is thought to be dry and even a hindrance to relationship. But theology is meant to give us more knowledge about God so we know Him better, understand Him better, and love Him better. I think in human relationships we can see that if we don’t want to learn about someone we can’t really be that interested in relationship with them. In the same way, if we are interested in relationship with God, it seems to follow that we want to learn all we can about Him. Theology gives us that knowledge and the study of theology can be an expression of love for God, not dry, pointless nit-picking.
In all our relationship talk today, we tend to forget that…
