The Arrival of the Waiter/Theologian

    I think I'm kind of a niche player. I guess me and some of my friends. Matt is also a waiter/theologian. Garrett is also a waiter/theologian. Jay has been a waiter/theologian. Come to think of it, I guess I'm really not treading on new ground here. And when you come right down to it, aren't we all theologians?

    I don't mean that we should all spend the rest of our lives reading the works of John Calvin, John Wesley or Oprah. I think at least two out of three of those would be a helpful exercise (I'll leave it to your imagination to wonder who I mean). I think these theologians have some very helpful things to say and we could all use some good thinking by good thinkers from time to time. My point is that you don't have to read

 'theological' books to be a theologian. You don't even have to know what the term means to be a theologian!

     If I'm being honest, I'll tell you I have mixed feelings about what I have come to understand. On one hand I think it's freeing and exciting to think about the fact that all of our thoughts have to do with God, which means that we are constantly doing theology. On the other hand, I am a bit frightened by the fact that it is so easy to push God to the margins of our minds. We do that constantly.

     Whether you realized it or not when you started to read this post, you are constantly 'doing theology'. You are deciding whether or not to trust God. Is what he said about loving my neighbor really true? Is what he said about loving my enemy really true? Does he really intend

to lead me through this day or should I just do what I feel is right, without consulting him? All of these little decisions belie our ideas that theology is something for somebody else.

     So I am a waiter/theologian. I can't do either one in isolation. We were made to be whole people. We were made physical and spiritual. You may be a wife/theologian, a husband/theologian, a salesman/theologian, a sportswriter/theologian, or a public-relations/theologian. My point is that all of us are theologians whether we realize it or not. 

     So whether we are good theologians or bad theologians, we are theologians. Let's be good theologians and listen to God.