Tonight at FOCUS, we talked about the dangerous waters that await all Christians in understanding the nature and work of God. We put our lesson to a test, and showed that by learning from the missteps and lessons of others making their way through the maze we can learn the right path from one end to the other. The study of theology is vast, even in the Christian faith. Go outside the Church’s own study and you multiply ten-fold the possibilities.

It is important to remember, that no matter how personal our relation is with Christ, it is never in a bubble. We are never separated from each other since we are all members of the Church, the body of believers that make up Christ’s faithful. This is so important because despite our emotions, convictions, and gut feelings, we need always to look to the Bible, the traditions of the orthodox faith, and the Spirit’s revelation to discern the right path of belief. It is to our despair if we go this way alone, thinking that we can spurn the tradition and millenia of history that has preceded us. Remember – this faith is not so individual after all. We are not all blank slates, needing to figure it all out through our own trial and error. We have a rich history of saints and scoundrels who have gone before us that help direct us into orthodoxy (orthodoxy means right belief).

In particular, we highlighted two authors who are great extra-biblical sources for this journey, CS Lewis and John Bunyan. Now, we are not meant to put them on the same level as the Biblical authors. Nor are we intended ot elevate these men to some status that takes them out of their space and time as humans following after God. Remember, both were laymen, not preachers or priests. They were just convicted and devoted followers of Christ.

If you want to get into Lewis, the place I recommend you start is Mere Christianity. I don’t suggest you stop there though. Surprised by Joy, God in the Dock, The Four Loves, and countless other titles will keep you intrigued and thoughtful. Use your Google prowess to learn anything and everything you want to learn about him. Here, here, and here are good places to star though.

Secondly, we highlighted our Saint of the Week, John Bunyan. This guy had a sparse and unromantic life. Strange that he wrote a book that is surpassed in its publishing volume by the Bible, and yet we know so little about him. Even sadder is that very few are actually reading his great masterpiece, The Pilgrim’s Progress. (BTW, CS Lewis wrote a great book called The Pilgrim’s Regress which would be worth reading after Bunyan.) If you want to learn more about Bunyan, check this out. Also, you can read The Pilgrim’s Progress online free here and here. Download it as a PDF and read at your leisure. It’s not a simple read, but I believe that even a teenager in GA will be wowed by how appropriately he identified the nature of our Christian walk.

We’ll continue down this maze as we continue meeting, but know this, theology is not the playground of Academics and Clergy, it is the place where all Christians feed their soul for as long as we live in this mortal shell.

G&P2U,
JB