Theology Under the Covers

A few weeks ago Tim and I were making small talk when I asked him:

“if you could meet any contemporary Christian author or artist who would it be?”

Tim wants to meet ReliantK. He wants to get know the artist who has written some of his favorite songs about our faith so he can assure the world that this crossover artist is not a poser. After discussing cross-over artists and my angst about about how some people in the Christian music industry have been sliming Jennifer Knapp for the next twenty-minutes, Tim posed the question back to me, "So who would you meet Sarah?"

My answer was slightly more comical; mostly because I felt the need to preface it with this disclaimer: "I really want to meet many of my favorite authors, but I am afraid that meeting them will be disappointing. I want to discuss what they write about, to pick their brains, to understand more through discussion, but I am afraid they will just consider me a little know nothing."

At this self-deprecating confession Tim [who is used to my little tirades] laughed and asked, “Who is it that you, my beautiful wife, are so insecure about meeting?”

“Gordon Fee,” was my answer, “I want to meet so many people… Brennan Manning, N.T. Wright, Ravi Zacharias, Derek Morphew…. But most of all I would like to meet Gordon Fee. I want to talk with him about what the New Testament teaches about the work of the Holy Spirit. I want to understand more… but he is a genius and I’m afraid he would think my questions are moronic.”

Tim bust out laughing at this, “Sarah, you are a moron. I’m pretty sure any of the theologians or apologists you mentioned would be honored to talk with a lovely woman who is learning from the insight God has given them.”

I continue to ramble my explanation to Tim, “As I have gleaned Gordon Fees articles and commentaries during my studies, I have fallen in love with the passion for the Holy Spirit which he expresses. My spirit resonates with the expressions of his, so I do feel like I know him. I hope your right about my dear theologians Tim. I hate to think of Gordon Fee, or any of my literary teachers, as too self-important to talk with the little people [girls like me who only wish they were smart enough to write biblical commentaries.]”

At this we both started laughing again. It’s official- I am a theology-nerd. But for real:

Revelation is the reason I love these dear scholars. For the truths these men have explained help me to unpack truth in my own life. Dorothy Sayers, another one of my favorite authors, describes the way this occurs in her anthology The Whimsical Christian,

"This recognition of the truth we get in the artist’s work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing recognition we give a writer by nodding our heads and observing, “Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.”I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying,

something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves within our grasp.

It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet how shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it."

Yes… truth worms its way into my heart exactly like that, and I get goosebumps every time it happens. I am a closet theologian. I started reading the Bible under the covers while the rest of the house slept when I was a little girl, and I have been doing it ever since.

I am addicted to knowing more, but not smart enough to write commentaries of my own… [at least not yet.] So for now I am learning from reading with ravenous appetite, and enjoying it thoroughly.

For any closet theologians who happen to be reading this entry I have included a few of the latest nuggets of truth I have been chewing on:

" It is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man--there had never been such another. A prophet and a teacher who never nagged at them, who never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as 'The women, God help us!' or 'The ladies, God bless them!'; who took their questions and arguments seriously, who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no ax to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious.

"There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about woman's nature.

"But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day."

Dorothy Sayers, Are Women Human?

“Prayer…is not simply our cry of desperation or our “grocery list” of request that we bring before our heavenly Abba; prayer is an activity inspired by God himself, through the Holy Spirit. It is God siding with his people and, by his own empowering presence, the Spirit of God himself, bringing forth prayer that is in keeping with his will and his ways.”

Gordon Fee, “The Spirit and Prayer”- God’s Empowering Presence