FamilyLife Today®

Kelly Kapic: When we say theology matters in this practical, we're not saying you actually need to be perfect. The good theology is you show your kids, "I need to ask for forgiveness," to say, "I don't know."

You let the kids see you begging God for things, you wrestling with God for things. That's actually good theology. Theology is not about giving all the right answers, because we don't always have them.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: Do you know what my favorite seminary class was?

Ann Wilson: Communication?

Dave Wilson: Yeah, sort of what we do now. I should have done better in that class. I should have paid more attention.

Ann Wilson: I loved that class.

Dave Wilson: You did? My favorite probably was Old Testament survey with Walter Kaiser. He was good. What was yours?

Ann Wilson: Theology. I had J.P. Moreland, who many people might recognize that name now. He was a young prof at the time, working on his PhD at USC. We were an hour away in San Bernardino, but he taught theology in a way that expanded my mind.

I remember thinking I do not even know how to think about God until taking this class. How you view and understand the attributes of who God is—this is really critical.

Ann Wilson: Let me ask you this: before you went to seminary, would you have considered yourself a theologian?

Dave Wilson: No, those were the brainiacs.

Ann Wilson: Me neither. I would still say I went to seminary and still say I'm not. But we're going to talk about something today.

Dave Wilson: Nice transition, well done. You guys have been doing this for a while? Kelly Kapic is sitting there. That's the voice you're hearing. You are a theologian. You teach at a school.

Kelly Kapic: I make a living at it. If that's what you mean.

Dave Wilson: And that's what I would have thought a theologian is. It's someone that spent their life studying and now is teaching others. But we have a little book you wrote, and when I say little, I mean little. It's about the size of my hand. *A Little Book for New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology*. It's been out for a while.

So the question Ann asked me—would I consider myself a theologian—you would say what?

Kelly Kapic: Yes, you guys are theologians. At risk of sounding cheesy, what we'll see as we talk about it is we really are all theologians. The question isn't "Are you a theologian?" It's "Are you a good one?" And that's worth exploring.

The word and the idea sound very intimidating. But theology is just *Theos* from God, and *ology* is related to people know the word *Logos*, word. At its very basic level, theology is a word about God. Those could even be unspoken words.

That's why we're all theologians. When we're going through difficulty, if we're going through infertility, whether we speak them or not, we're having thoughts about God. When we're having aches in this world and struggling, when we're having hopes and delights, there's a lot of theology that's going on.

Part of it is just recognizing we are theologians, so how do we make sure the God we're responding to and worshiping is the true and living God and not a figment of our imagination?

Ann Wilson: Kelly, why did you want to write this book?

Kelly Kapic: Because I get to do this for a living. I love what I do. I teach college students at Covenant College. I love when they walk in and think, "I can't believe I have to take a stupid class like this." And then within weeks, I just watch their eyes light up, and they start to see this is life, this is meaning and purpose.

It's fascinating to me. I was having a conversation with someone recently. At Yale right now, at Harvard right now, Notre Dame, there is a class on happiness or on human flourishing. As Christians, we're like, "Purpose and meaning is right central to what we're doing."

Ann Wilson: Is there something that you do at the beginning of class? Because you're thinking to yourself as a professor, "They're just going to be thinking, 'I have to get through this class.'" What hooks them?

Kelly Kapic: One thing I often do on the very first day of class is I bring literally about three feet high worth of a stack of thick theology books. They're like 600 pages each. Obviously, they've never read them. Put them on a table, have the titles facing them, and I say, "I know you've never read them. You don't know anything. It's like systematic theology or reformed dogmatics." All these intimidated titles.

I say, "Tell me about these books. Why won't you read them?" And they say all these nice things like, "Well, it might be a little complicated." But eventually, they'll say, "Because it's boring." That's what they really think. So I'm like, "Well, why is that a problem? Because if God is actually boring, there it is." This is the living God.

Part of it is you will work really hard in your physics class and you're willing to stretch your brain for that and you think it's important or for history or whatever, but to think carefully about God, we're like, "Oh, that's inappropriate." And that shows some problems for us.

You don't have to have a high IQ to be a worshiper of God. But God is also not intimidated by our questions, by our wrestling, by carefully working through things. Part of it is just theology matters because worship does. And we've got to make sure we're worshiping the God who is.

Dave Wilson: Okay, go there. Because you just brought up another word that's connected obviously to theology, but we are worshipers. I mean, not only are we all theologians, we're all worshipers. Whether you're a Christian or not. I say that and you go, "Yeah, yeah." You're the prof, so help us understand, connect those two dots.

Kelly Kapic: It affects us all in different kinds of ways. Here's a way into it. I teach a whole semester for upper-division students called Christology. It's all in the person and work of Jesus. Part of what we do at the beginning of the course for a couple of weeks is do Jesus and history, and it ends with me going over Jesus in movies of the last 100 years.

Which is really a good idea because it shows visually what we've been talking about. And that is, if you watch Jesus in movies the last 100 years, you can clearly see how we're projecting Jesus exactly how we want him. So he is this very white, pale, stoic figure early on. You have Jesus Christ Superstar, all of a sudden he's this 70s figure.

So you can actually, it's pretty powerful. It's an example of students often come in and maybe their youth minister made Jesus seem like he's just wearing Levis or whatever. It's not all bad, but we all make Jesus in our image. We do that with God. So we want to think through ways in which we're being affected culturally.

But it also could be very commonly, maybe you think of God the Father as just angry and full of wrath all the time. One of the tests is, is prayer something that you're comfortable doing? Because if you're just in the presence of someone who's angry but is willing to put up with you because his son loves you, that's an example where it's like, "Well, Jesus loves me and he's died for me and so that convinced the Father to love me."

But the Father's still mad. He's really ticked. He's just like, "Well, I love my son, so as long as my son likes you, I'm going to put up with you." Most people wouldn't put it that way, but that is surprisingly common. That is their theology, which is deeply affecting your ability to pray, your ability to love your kids, your spouse, how you think about life.

Do you constantly live under guilt and shame? So what does God think about you? To answer that question, you've got to talk about what this God is actually like.

Ann Wilson: Wouldn't that be a great dinner discussion with kids at the table? Like, "What do you think God thinks about you?" Especially with teenagers who maybe haven't always made the best decisions. What would you have said growing up, Dave?

Dave Wilson: Well, when you were saying that, Kelly, I was thinking, "He's absent. He doesn't care." And it was somewhat of a projection of my father who walked out of our family when I was a little boy. But I know as a preacher, I'd often make grand statements from the Word of God about God.

These are attributes of God: He's present, He's holy, He's righteous. I remember a guy came up to me 35 years ago—and I'm glad he did because he said, "Yeah, I hear you say God's there and He sees me, but does He care?" I didn't get to that part of His heart that's revealed in Christ.

Every second of that man's life, and my life, and your life, I'm making decisions based on, "Okay, He's up there. Does He see me? Does He care? Is He involved? Is He a loving, tender Father or is He just a mean cosmic killjoy?" That's theology. And what Ann just said, boy, how important it is for us as parents, we're passing down what we believe about God at the dinner table or wherever.

Ann Wilson: So Kelly, let's say we're at the dinner table and one of our kids says, "I feel like He's absent, I feel like He's disappointed in me." And as parents, maybe we're feeling the same way. So what do you say to people that are struggling with wrong theologies about who God is based on Scripture?

Kelly Kapic: For me, one of the pastoral approaches I would have is to ask more questions rather than to make statements. I think one of the things we get confused about with theology—and as pastors and theologians, we fall into this all the time—we think, "As long as you say the thing, then we're good."

And it's kind of like dealing with someone who's dealing with gossip and you say, "You know what, I don't know if you know this, but God doesn't actually want you to just dwell on that." And they're like, "Oh, that's all I needed. I just needed the information. God doesn't want you to slander someone behind their back. Oh, now that I know that."

Ann Wilson: So you're not saying at the dinner table, "Well, that's not who God is. This is who God is."

Kelly Kapic: Well, it's just one of those examples of we have to realize sometimes you have to make the verses believable to the people you're talking to. What do you mean? It's not just quoting the verse; it's trying to help them imagine. So when we as parents, as imperfectly as we do, try and love the kids in the midst of their mess—not acting as if the mess has no consequences, but loving them in this radical kind of way—that starts to make it more believable that that's true about God.

But I do find that's where the questions come in, like I really like how you framed it, like, "Tell me, what do you think God thinks about you right now?" Then you can speak into what's actually going on in the heart rather than presuming we know. Because sometimes the kid, maybe it's not that God is absent, maybe it's that God is just overly concerned, like God is this nitpicky God or something like that.

So you really have to ask in order to know what we even need to deal with. But then theologically for me, the big thing is always going back to Jesus. The way you prove that God actually does care is constantly going back to the very coming of the eternal Son of God becoming one with us, really in flesh, really entering in and suffering and dying.

That is God's great display of His for-ness of us, for His love for us. That He is near, He is present. And now He's poured out His Spirit on us. But getting back to Jesus constantly sounds cliché, but it's really key.

Dave Wilson: Would that be your answer to how to build a good theology as opposed to—because there's bad theology. There's right and wrong theology. Is that how we get to build a theology proper, a good, solid, biblical, correct theology?

Kelly Kapic: Yeah, from a Christian perspective, the fancy word is Trinitarian. Because the God we worship, we say, "Okay, we worship God." But the God of the Bible is actually the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

Interestingly enough, that God we worship who is Father, Son, and Spirit, biblically that worship is directed toward Christ. So the way you know the Father is to look to the Son. And the Spirit's often described as the Spirit of Christ. So that's not minimizing the Father or the Spirit by looking to the Son. That's actually how and who this God is, how He's revealed Himself, who He is.

It is good and right to constantly get our gaze on Christ. And if it's not on Christ, then we tend to have that first sign of a problem.

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Ann Wilson: You're working with kids all the time in college that are experiencing and seeing the injustice and suffering in the world. And I feel like this generation, and all generations, but these Gen Zs have really felt the pain and the angst of the world oftentimes. How theologically are you dealing with that? I'm guessing that comes up in the classroom.

Kelly Kapic: It does. And it's an example of where it can go to extremes, but the Bible has always cared about injustice, about suffering, about poverty. So it does relate to theology. Sometimes I'll ask students, like, "Explain to me what it means to know God. But you have to—I'm a new Christian and it has to be a Bible verse."

And they'll say all these good things, like, "Well, it's about a relationship." And I say, "No, no. I just want the Bible." And they say all these things and I'm like, "Well, there is actually a verse that says, 'This is what it means to know me,' says the Lord." They're like, "What?" And it's in Jeremiah, and it's about Josiah, and it's: "He cared about the poor and he saw that injustice was dealt with."

And it's the same kind of thing in James, where James says, "Well, this is true religion." We're like, "Well, what's true religion? To care for the orphan, the widow in distress, keep yourself unstained from the world." So wait a minute, what does it mean to know God? And we make it all this philosophical thing.

Well, there is something about knowing God that's tied to caring for those who are hurting. It's Isaiah 1, where God is upset because Israel thinks they know God, but by neglecting the orphan, the widow, the hurting, the marginalized, they've distorted their understanding of who God is and themselves.

All of that is a long way of saying our actions shape our theology. And the Bible's pretty clear: when we neglect injustice and we turn a blind eye to poverty and pain, it hurts our theology because it starts to make us misunderstand God. We start to think, "That's those people." It's kind of like that question: "Those people are excluded but we are a bit better," and that's why God—we would never say it, but that's what gets exposed.

Ann Wilson: And I'm always convicted when those verses come into play. And you're also saying to these kids all those questions you're asking, God deeply cares about those things, deeply. And maybe He's wanting to use us.

Kelly Kapic: And you'll learn about God by being involved in those things. That's part of the point. That seems to be when James is saying, "Here's true religion because faith without works is dead." Because if you just say you have faith and do no works, the question is what are you having faith in? Who is this?

And I'm a Protestant, I believe in justification by faith alone, but the Bible warns about distorting that faith. Interestingly enough, it's not because you're doing these things to earn God's favor, but in a response to God's favor. And if we're not involved in some meaningful way, then it can be a sign that we've misunderstood His favor.

Ann Wilson: Okay, I have one other question. Don't you like having a professor in the studio? We're living in a day where absolutes, moral absolutes—a lot of people would say, "Well, that's your truth." And I'm guessing students especially, we've done it for generations, but are you getting any pushback? "Well, that's your truth. Theology's your truth," the way you're viewing theology, I should say.

But they're saying, "That's not my truth. I have a whole different view of God, of being moral." That's happening more and more where they're saying there are no moral absolutes or there are no absolutes and Scripture—there are no absolutes. Are there absolutes?

Kelly Kapic: So it's a very tricky question. It's trickier than people want to admit.

Ann Wilson: And our kids, don't you think our kids are asking these questions?

Kelly Kapic: Oh, they are asking. And this is—I would encourage parents, rather than panicking, which is all of our first instinct.

Ann Wilson: Oh man, I was good at panicking.

Kelly Kapic: It is actually ask what they're asking. Doesn't mean they're right, but you're trying to understand. Because God is absolute, His Word is trustworthy, authoritative, etc., binding. But we have lots of evidence in the history of the church in ways we've taken the Bible in inappropriate ways. And by being naive or ignorant of that fact, it hurts us.

Sometimes people are legitimately asking questions because the church has confused some kind of cultural thing with an absolute. So for example, kind of the history of missions, missiology is a great field of this where it really exposed this. We have letters of a missionary in Japan and it was the middle of the 19th century and he talked about what God is doing.

He said, "But so far from godly because the men are still wearing skirts and they're sitting on the floor despite our—" It's so offensive. But you realize it's so clear to us you've confused a cultural thing with godliness. The hard part for us is to figure out how are we doing it? What are ways? And yet what are the things that are not?

So we just have to think through that carefully. What does that mean? Because we can't play fast and loose with Scripture, but we've just got to make sure it's Scripture that's saying it, not something else.

Dave Wilson: That's why we need to be theologians. Good theologians. You *are* theologians.

Ann Wilson: That’s right. Good theologians.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, and I would almost end here, and you tell me your perspective. We need to be practical theologians. In other words, especially as we're thinking marriage and family, as we sit at a dinner table or wherever, family room, have a conversation with our teenager, college-age kid, and we don't live it?

"God is this," and we don't live it. "God cares, God provides," and we are freaking out every day and they're watching us. "God cares about the poor, cares for justice," and we just don't see it lived out in our home. It's theology, if it isn't lived, doesn't seem like it's even true or real. Is that true?

Kelly Kapic: Yeah, you know it's true. But it's interesting to remind myself and others, when we say theology matters in this practical, we're not saying you actually need to be perfect. The good theology is you show your kids, "I need to ask for forgiveness," to say, "I don't know."

Whether it's about theology or something else, you let the kids see you begging God for things, you wrestling with God for things. That's actually good theology. Theology is not about giving all the right answers, because we don't always have them.

And it's to apologize when we have done something to them wrong, or maybe we realize as life goes on, "I've misrepresented God to you. Here's a way that I presented Him that wasn't faithful." That helps your children. You don't have to be perfect; you have to be honest with God and them. That's what you have to do.

Dave Wilson: That's being a real theologian.

Ann Wilson: It's interesting, our four-year-old grandson woke his dad up the other day, and Cody reads his Bible in the morning and Bryce sees him doing that. And he said the other day, woke up and Bryce is standing right by his head and it's super early like 5:30. But Bryce has his Bible in his hand and he's like, "Are we getting up to spend time in the Bible this morning?"

And Cody's like, "Yeah, maybe not this early," but they did. They got up. And I thought, "Man, that's the start of it too, isn't it? Is when our kids see that we're in the Bible, we're trusting it, we need it, we're not perfect, but that's theology of knowing who God is in a healthy way."

Kelly Kapic: It makes me think, so I would often at bedtime take the kids upstairs, read them a Bible story, pray for them. And then I'm like, "Yay, I get to go watch ESPN. The day is finally done." But as you know, when they're little, that's often when they want to talk because they don't want to go to bed, which is great and terrible.

I'll never forget one night, my son and daughter for a long time when they were young were in the same room. And I was leaving and I hear my son, "Hey Papa, I have a question." And I'm like, "Not tonight." I was already turned to the door and I was leaving. But I could tell something in his voice and I turned around and he said, "I don't know if I love God."

And I thought, "Okay, here we go." I'm coming back, forget ESPN. And he said, "I know I love you and Mama, but I don't even know what it means to love God, and I don't know what it means for God to love me."

Ann Wilson: Wow.

Kelly Kapic: And so all of a sudden, I'm like, "That's such an amazing theological question." And we all think we know what the answer is, but you don't know what the answer is until you have to work and explain it to a little kid. And there is something very beautiful about that where he could say that and not have panic. And start to talk about what does God's love look like and how he can experience it.

We're all like, "What'd you say?" Well, it was interesting. I had to think and I said, "You know when you're playing with Ruby, our dog, or you and I are wrestling on the couch and we're giggling, or you're doing this with Mama, the love you're experiencing is an extension of God's love. That's not something different. That is a taste of God's love, and it's even bigger and greater than that. That cold orange you're eating on the hot summer day, that is a taste of God's love." Because in all of that, then all of a sudden it's training him to see God present throughout the world and to lift his gaze and start to see God's love.

Dave Wilson: What a great day with Kelly Kapic. And again, his book is called *A Little Book for New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology*.

Ann Wilson: We all need that. It’s good. So you can just get that book by going to the show notes, clicking the link at familylifetoday.com.

Dave Wilson: We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife helped them when they needed it the most. And that's what being a FamilyLife partner is all about: helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you've found right here.

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Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported ministry of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.