Oprah's Doctor on Theology by Brady

A few weeks ago my wife tricked me into doing something I thoroughly despise: watching Oprah. It was an episode with all males in the audience and she gave over her stage for the first time to “America’s Doctor,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, who I think is a frequent guest on her show. I thought it was interesting that she would give her stage over to a doctor, which I have written about before doctors being the new priests in white robes instead of black ones. But that is not what I found fascinating in the show. Towards the middle of the program, Dr. Oz said something along the lines of, “We have the knowledge to cure almost all diseases, but it takes a transfer into daily life.” What he was implying is that if you would eat healthy, exercise daily, get enough rest consistently, not smoke, and get regular checkups, that we would live longer lives and be able to curb the onset of almost all diseases in the world today.

What he was essentially saying is that you can have all of the knowledge in the world, but unless there is a change in your life, it won’t matter a bit. Now I must admit I am a fan of people getting properly trained and educated before they become working professionals. I think it is funny that we would never go to see a doctor that did not complete their entire training process, but we will get spiritual direction and diagnoses from anyone and everyone. My vocation is especially guilty of putting undertrained and undereducated people in charge of a group of people without batting an eye. Some of these cases are ok when people are leading small groups or other areas such as these. I would compare this to your mom being able to take care of you when you are sick as a child or when you fall down and get hurt. What you would not do though is want a parent performing major surgery or even regular checkups on their kids. This is the same in ministry.

In fact, I read a book for class the other day that was debating whether you should pay a minister more nor not based on the level of degree which they have completed. The book concluded that you should not, and I was losing my mind about it. Only in ministry would an organization not pay more based on a degree when you are trained in so many essential areas during seminary. So as you can see, I am obviously a fan of edu-ma-cation.

But with that being stated, there is a tendency in our Information Age that says knowledge is the answer. The internet has revolutionized the way we see our world around us. Suddenly everyone is an expert on every subject. It is pretty annoying to sit in class with laptops when a professor mentions something in passing, a student Googles it and then corrects the professor. Education and knowledge, as useful as it can be, without values seems rather to make man a more clever devil. But hopefully the Postmodern era will prove yet again that we cannot fix the mess we’re in with more of anything produced by man.

The Modern era brought a hope that technology would eventually progress to a point where we could achieve our own return the Garden of Eden. But we all watched I-Robot and had our dreams shattered of this idea. But now it seems that the Postmodern era is putting the emphasis which was once on technology, now more on education. “If we can just educate about AIDS, then we can get rid of it.” I would say American’s are pretty educated and yet we still have thousands of people every year who are new carriers of the horrible disease.

I am all for making the world a better place and actually working to see this happen. I 100% affirm a holistic view of salvation that says the complete person must be redeemed by Christ, as opposed to handing out a 4-spiritual laws and my duty is done type of salvation. But even with that, I cannot fully buy into humans being the redeemers of this world. This teaching is popular with a lot of the popular Postmodern preachers, and yet I have a hard time seeing how it fits biblically. So I’m in a weird spot of not being happy when natural disasters kill thousands of people because it is a sign of the end times, but also not being able to square with the fact that God’s kingdom will be established on earth in this age.

In fact, I will take this even a step further. I am not certain that if every person in the world became a Christian that all of the world’s problems would be solved. The reason I say this is that I go to school with all Christians, and that place is far from heaven. I say that because I myself often do not respond to situations in a way that fits with my beliefs as a Christian. This pervading hope that screams if we can just make everyone “believe” what we believe then our mission is accomplished. But as Dr. Oz has told us, you can memorize all of the Bible verses you want or explain theology with the best of them, but if there is not a transformation happening in your life then it is all meaningless. The brutal truth is that the Gospel is incredibly simple in theory, and ridiculously hard in practice. I say that if every person gets transformed by Christ, then his kingdom will finally come to this earth.