Challenges

I heard once from a fellow seminarian that sometimes we need to preach on Biblical texts or subjects that make us uncomfortable and that challenge us. There's no use in avoiding them because well, they're going to come up every three years on the lectionary (unless you're like me and doing sermon series preaching) so you can only run away from them for so long. I find myself in that position for this coming week. I'm not preaching but instead teaching which adds an interesting twist.

The course I'm teaching is Pop Culture and Theology. It's a fun class although a small one right now (numbers in classes have been down across the board). This coming week we'll be exploring the topics of predestination and providence in movies and looking specifically at I, Robot and Minority Report (two great films in case you haven't seen them).

Now predestination and providence are two topics where I haven't exactly nailed down my theology. I can tell you what I don't believe (double predestination and the "clock" theory where God just set all the mechanisms in the universe in place and then simply said "go" and has let it run its course). However, telling you exactly what I believe, that's a whole other ballgame. I know I'm somewhere in between the two but pinpointing my exact location, that's another thing. I've always been happy to live in the tension between the two aforementioned theories. However, I know other people are not exactly happy to let me live blissfully somewhere in the middle of those two. My friends and my congregation often want concrete answers and I'm not sure I can give them any.

So I find myself looking forward to teaching a class on this in a week and putting some interesting ideas in front of them as portrayed on film. And in a few months, I'll also find myself preaching on the same topic and the question of "what is God's will for my life?" Is any of this going to be easy? Probably not. However, I do like to think it's good for me. It'll help me to articulate what I do believe. And in both settings, whether teaching or preaching, I know I can trust God to give me the words that I need. And maybe part of this is me humbly being able to say that I don't know the right and definitive answer and probably never will. Or maybe I just need to tell people I don't know and I'm fine with that. Or maybe I need to take a stand with what I believe, whatever that is...