My initial encounter with the heavy theological questions of Christianity came early in a college theology program. I was given the task of exploring the relationship between salvation and sanctification and clarifying their connection to the true self. I found a whiteboard and markers and as was my habit after years of working in information technology, began to sketch the problem on the board.
One box for salvation, then sanctification gets one, finally this strange concept called the true self in a third box. Question – is there such a thing as the false self, and does it need its own box? Ahead of me lie three areas of exploration. First, the basics of my two theological terms. Then, some sense of what the true self is. And finally, I need the lines connecting the boxes – the relationships among all these big ideas. Now is when the digging begins.
I had returned to the church a few years earlier after a decades-long absence so a great deal of what I might have learned earlier was gone. I ran to the bookcase where I had a few books that might help, then to the internet, and after that the local library. Finally, hours spent at Barnes & Noble, digging through a book too costly to buy, glancing over my shoulder, nervous that I’d get caught scribbling in my notebook.
And so I made progress. I fleshed out my understanding of salvation, the act by which God saves us sinners. But sanctification seemed more complicated. It’s not a thing or a single event; instead it’s a process that begins at the moment of conversion and continues through the rest of life. Today, many Christians use the word transformation to describe this process of continuous growth.
But after two weeks of searching through several books on theology, scouring half a dozen websites, and annotating and rearranging my boxes and lines on the whiteboard, I was stumped. I had made progress, but something was wrong – something was missing. It was all so …. well, abstract – so remote from life. Diagrams on a whiteboard by their nature have nothing of life in them. There is nothing concrete; they are not anchored to the real world. I would have to find a new way to think about these great theological ideas.
There’s something big and grand about words like salvation and sanctification and their cousins redemption, grace, incarnation, and so on. They stand like mountains above a valley floor, marching along the horizon, drawing – even commanding – our attention. Like the mountains ringing the valley in which I live, mountains on which I gaze every day, my eyes are often drawn upward to the highest peaks..
No one lives on any of these high peaks, although occasionally hardy and venturesome souls visit for a few hours before heading back down to the valley. Still, many people explore the lower slopes – they take a family drive on roads winding through dark green forests, they hike a favorite trail with a friend, they cut firewood, they throw up a tent and camp, they hunt in the fall. Others find their livelihood in the hills- they haul logs down to the mill in the valley, they fight fires in the summer, they thin out and salvage trees burnt by fire or thrown to the ground by windstorms.
But even when we’re in the valley below, we often feel our eyes drawn upward to the heights. In early morning, on the way to work, we glance at the mountain hulking to the east as it slowly emerges in the morning light. And as the sky dims at day’s end, we wonder what lies beyond the long ridge, darkening now, that borders the valley to the west.
There’s no escaping these mountains. They form the physical landscape in which we live. And it’s in this landscape that the stories of our lives unfold, day by day, and year by year.
So too with the spiritual landscape that we inhabit, where the great themes of theology stand on the horizon. Few of us will climb to the summits but many are drawn into the foothills and beyond by careful study, prayer and reflection. Even those of us who live mostly in the valley, with only an occasional foray into the foothills, cannot escape the presence of these grand ideas.
The high-sounding words of theology only come to life when they are embodied in everyday lives, lived out as most people struggle day to day. The history of these struggles to find faith, to hold fast to hope, is found throughout what theologian and church historian Jerry Sittser calls Big Story Little Story; the big revealed in the grand narrative of the Bible, the little found in each of the hundreds of stories found in the long arc from Genesis to Revelation. Although the Bible is ancient, little stories continue to unfold in the lives of believers today as we reach for the best in ourselves, struggle with our many lapses, wrestle with our fears and anxieties, and offer our prayers for help and comfort in times of pain and grief. All of this as we struggle forward, seeking to live a better life tomorrow than we did today, hoping for the eternal life that has been promised.
This is how we come to understand the big themes of our faith. Not in the airy domain of abstraction, but in the concrete thoughts, words, and deeds that make up our daily lives.
In other words, in our stories.
