Answers to the hard questions of life can subdue our death instinct.

A systematic study of what the Bible says about a particular topic is theology proper.

It’s a pursuit every Christian must vigorously and regularly engage…

Because it’s the means by which we answer the hard questions of life.

Questions like who am I? Why are we here? What is God? What happens when I die? Do I have a soul?

Questions no one is immune from. And questions science ultimately can’t answer.

NIH Director Francis Collins put it this way:

Belief in God was for me anyway, a much more defensible, plausible position. Not something I could prove but something that made great sense and also provided a powerful answer to some of the biggest questions we all ask of our selves and that science can’t really help us with. Like why am I here? And what does life mean anyway?

Without thoughtful, coherent answers to our big questions, life makes no sense at all.

It would be nice if we could simply stop asking those questions. But that’s impossible. We are forever curious. We constantly ask these questions.

We are natural-born theologians.

To look for the answers outside of Christ, however, leads to confusion. All other disciplines lead to dead ends. Isolation. Incoherence.

As  at the Evangel blog, “A secularist worldview is hopelessly fractured…. There can be no meaningful interpretive key for knowledge because there is only disintegration and brokenness among the various stakeholders.”

Theology, on the other hand, offers us a relentlessly unified, comprehensive answer to the hard questions: .

Listen: If our questions go unanswered, everything remains in the air. Everything becomes unanchored.

Without theology, despair looms. Without theology, suicide knocks at our door.

Heavy prices to pay for not believing in God.

Thus theology leads to relevance. In fact, while regarded as a rather stuffy, arid discipline, it’s the cornerstone on which a Christian must build AND maintain his life.

There is no choice. We must use our minds in this pursuit. Let me know what you think.