For the Bible tells me so

Only a month before, we had new carpet laid in the house. Already it had been stained and needed repair. We called the floor man who had installed it and he agreed to come and replace the small portion of stained carpet. As I watched him work, I commented, “Before I called you, I started to try to do this myself.”

“Yeah...well,” he responded, “it would have looked like you did it yourself. I tell you what, you stay away from doing floors and I’ll stay away from doing theology.”

Theology is what preachers do and speak. The term is derived from two Greek terms: Theo, which means “God,” and logos, which means “word.”

And theology is the work and word, not only of the minister, but of every Christian. Those who are not the ordained ministers of a church are called the laity. Theology should be the interest of every Christian because every Christian, young and old, should beable and prepared to speak a word about God.

Israel’s first recorded prophet, Amos, once said of himself, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ ” The first disciples commissioned by Jesus to share the good news were not professional ministers, they were fishermen by trade. The apostle Paul was a tent maker. And Jesus, Son of God though he was, worked as a carpenter.

I can tell you what your first theology lesson is likely to have been. It goes like this:

“Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

“Little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong.

“Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.

“Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”

Without doubt, the hymn that has influenced children for Christ more than any other is this simply stated one, written in 1860 by Anna Bartlett Warner. Miss Warner wrote this text in collaboration with her sister, Susan, as part of one of the best-selling novels of that day, Say and Seal. Today, few remember the plot of that novel but the simple poem sung therein still remains a favorite of children around the world. It reflects a Bible verse from Romans: “What shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

Karl Barth, perhaps the greatest theologian of the 20th century, once wrote a work known as Church Dogmatics. It is contained 12 volumes and spans 17,000 pages. Professor Barth was at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago during his lecture tour of the U.S. in 1962. After his lecture, during a question-and-answer time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his theology in a sentence. Barth allegedly said “Yes, I can. ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ ”

We believe in Jesus’ love for us because the Bible tells us so. And what is this Bible? The Bible is the reflection of the experience of nations, communities and individuals who have heard God, seen God, felt God and have proved the reality of that experience and relationship through benevolence, charity, sacrifice, redemption, restoration, gaining strength from weakness and finding peace through courage. It is the word of the laity.

One of my highest joys would be to overhear this theology shared with another “life-hungry” soul by someone other than a minister. By…oh, I don’t know…a man who installs carpet.