Prose

Somebody asked, "Why take so much interest in theology when you're just a children's department teacher? You're not a pastor, are you?"

First of all, in my humble opinion, I think that question is a bit of nonsense. To say that only pastors should study theology is somewhat a grave misconception. You don't have to be a pastor in order to study theology for the same reason that you don't have to be a scientist in order to study science.  Theology is simply the study of knowable things about God and His relations to His creation.

Secondly, it's very important to learn theology even if you're just a teacher in children's department. Being a Sunday school teacher for about 4 years, I already heard theological questions raised to me by my young pupils, such as, "If God created everything, who created God?" and "How come Jesus is God when we can read in the Bible that He called God His Father?", to name a few. Obviously, you need to acquire certain amount of knowledge in theology to correctly answer questions like these without causing confusion in your students' young minds.

Lastly, I take much interest in theology because I love God. If you love a person, you take time to know that person more. You want to know more about his/her life, interests, hobbies, etc. because you want to know how to relate to that person in a better way. Like what I said, theology is simply the study of the knowable things about God. And as young thinker, theology for me is a way to know more about the Person that I love the most.

And by the way, theology is not just closedly boxed in the scholarly study about God. It also includes knowing God more intimately through pious duties of prayer, meditation in the Scriptures, worship, and Christian service. Of course, you can study the knowable things about God without knowing Him personally, but for me, that is not true theology. I call that "scholastic intellectualism" and for me, that is one of the primary causes of spiritual degradation in so many Western churches.