“Your theology is wrong”—but says who? Really, when someone says “I disagree with your theology,” what they’re saying is, “I disagree with your interpretation of theology based on my interpretation of theology.” So where did that interpretation come from?

Trace back your theology & it’s always from a person. With a tiny brain like yours & mine. Augustine or Calvin or Nietzsche or Osteen. Some church leader a thousand years ago, or some book written last year, or some preacher guessing at the Bible the best he or she knows how.

I’m not entirely sure how to discover which interpretation is the right one. Each of us have so much self-interest that we can use the Bible (and anything else) to justify any position we want, even under the guise of “the common good” or “your benefit.”

But if my opinion is always matching up with my theological interpretation, then it’s possible I’m just making God into my own image and forcing my idea of God to conform to what I want. Then I’m just colluding with myself as my own accomplice into the crimes I want to commit.

Then I wouldn’t be in dialogue with God or Scripture, but rather manipulating a robot-idol designed to do my bidding & to turn off at my convenience. If the Bible is ancient timeless truth, I expect it would sometimes press against what I hold to be personally & culturally true.

We are all chronologically landlocked by harmful ideas that must be challenged and changed. I believe that if the Bible (& anything else) is read correctly, it would usurp the destructive & affirm the constructive. Still, I assume any interpretation must be checked & confronted.

No, I don’t think Scripture is some amorphous putty that can be twisted any which way. It‘s made some things pretty clear. Jesus said plainly: I must love people. There’s no equivocation or wavering there. How it happens might differ, but that it happens at all must not.