Plug-N-Play

Yesterday morning, as I was reviewing my message, I was thinking about theology. To be honest, it wasn't one that lended itself well to "hit 'em where they live" preaching. It was a message from Haggai 2:20-23 on ultimate victory of God and the future establishment of his kingdom.

I was reminded that theology is not always plug-n-play. Some of us will remember the days of computers where you bought a video card, or a serial port, or game port to add into the expansion slots on your computer. In those days, you had to set jumper settings, and fiddle with the switches, and keep experimenting until you found something that worked. And you had to do it all in DOS. Today we have plug-n-play. You just put it in and it works.

Theology for living is more like the former than the latter. Week after week, the preaching and teaching might not be plug-n-play, but overtime you are building a theology for life.

That means that the messages about the ultimate victory of God at some unknown date in the future are just as important as the messages about loving your spouse in the present. And while this message might not have taught people how to be a kinder, gentler neighbor, it should teach them how to live for the next world in which all of the enemies of God die.

Let's not make theology too easy with easy preaching that speaks only to the present. Let's call people to assemble a livable theology through week after week of solid doctrinal exposition of the Word.