The curse of Folk Theology

I almost entitled this post "Surviving the Church", but that wouldn't have been entirely accurate. I also thought about entitling it "Christianity for Grown-ups", but that's a title I want to save for another time.

Over the past 6 years, and especially over the past year, I've felt more and more strongly about getting people to actually think about their Christian lives. To actually think through what they believe and why. To be honest with themselves about how silly sounding some of our sayings as Christians are. To be more thoughtful and reflective about things like Love, and Forgiveness, and Grace. When things get confusing or tough I want people to not throw up their hands and say "The Bible says it, so it must be true", and instead say "What exactly is the Bible saying here? Somehow, this has to make sense."

So, over the past year I've been trying things in my church to get people started. To put it mildly, it hasn't gone too well. And, quite frankly, I feel pretty beat up about it.

The problem is something I (and others) call Folk Theology. Folk theology is the kind of theology practiced by people who think that 'real' theology is anti-spiritual, that theology muddies the clear water of Christian truth, that it is a purely philosophical pusuit that has nothing to do with reality. Folk theology is what happens when people reject loving God with their minds, and instead blindly believe because they think that's what faith is. Folk theology is what happens when people love their stories about Christianity more than they love God.

Here's an example. Last week, I was talking to a group of Christians about some stuff, and as part of this conversation, I gave an example of something that Christians frequently believe, but that isn't in the Bible. They didn't believe me, so we looked at scripture, and I walked them through the issue. At the end, of of them said, "Yeah, yeah, but my old way of thinking about it COULD be true, right? Well, there you go."

This is the curse of Folk Theology. Instead of having scripture form how we should think about a certain thing, those who practice Folk Theology let how they think about things form scripture. And when that happens, people can find justification for everything. They can find justification for slavery, for domestic abuse, for the lower status of women, for hate and anger under the guise of "justice". If people chose their own stories and THEN go to Christian scripture, they can find anything they want. The Bible COULD be saying anything. (But it isn't.)

The curse of Folk Theology goes deeper, though. It's one thing to be caught in the curse of Folk Theology and not know it. That's the fault of the teachers, pastors, and leaders within the church. It's quite another thing to have the error of your Folk Theology pointed out to you, and to choose it anyway. When that happens, people are choosing to believe whatever they want. They're not choosing to follow the story of God's activity through human history, they're instead choosing a story of their own and calling it Christianity. And when they cling to these so-called "Christian" stories, even though they're wrong, they're showing that they love their stories about Christianity more than they love God's story about humanity.

Whatever happened to the scriptural encouragement to love God with all of your mind?
Whatever happened to the proverb, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another"?
Whatever happend to "Come, let us reason together"?
Whatever happened to the Christian intuition that we should do everything for the glory of God?
Where are the people who pant for God the same way the deer pants for water?

My fear, week after week, is that there is no one like this in our churches anymore - that they've all drown under the sea of Folk Theology.