Theology Thursday: Make Good Deposits

Maybe some of you remember the time in 2009 when the pilot Chelsey Sullenberger landed a damaged plane in the Hudson River. Captain “Sully” was a highly intelligent and accomplished pilot who had flown fighter jets in the USAF and became a specialist on airline safely. After the landing that saved scores of lives, Captain Sully said, “For 42 years, I've been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education, and training. On January 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.”

We don’t do anything in the moment; we are always making withdrawals from a lifetime of deposits. Everyday we are transforming our minds with the information we take in, and we are training our wills, either to do what we want to do or to submit to God.

In our ACE classes, we’ve been discussing different worldviews. At bottom, every worldview begins with a knowledge of God, or a theology. The materialist, the existentialist, and the atheist all have a theology.

When we look back at the ways the popular theologies made inroads in the church (and what will future generations say about us?), we have to see a vacuum in the church’s theology where the world’s theology came in. One generation stops teaching the theology to their children, and pretty soon, it is completely forgotten. Who even reads the “Statement of Faith” on a church’s website anymore?

Though it may not apply directly to your life this very minute, a robust theology will ground your life more than any psychological advice. Before we can hope to articulate a biblical view of practical living, family, education, sociology, law, etc., we must know our theology and be able to follow its implications for our world. We can never be practical until we are theological.

Our theology rests on the Scriptures, which is why the Word gets priority in all of BBC’s worship and ministries. We also embrace the works of the Reformation, where many of our doctrines were clarified. Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is a foundational work. The work is daunting, but a good abridged version is available, and you can see it here:

The Institutes of Christian Religion by John Calvin, edited by Tony Lane and Hilary Osborne

If you’re new to Calvin, you may wish to begin with a book we studied together last summer during quarantine: A Guide to Christian Living by John Calvin.

All of our thinking starts with our theology, and in keeping with our emphasis on old books, you’ll find this work of theology written in 1559 to be clear, warm, and inspiring. Start making good deposits by reading the Scriptures and good works of theology.