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My motivations for taking this class were less than pure. It was the possibility of gaining someintellectual insights, learning the lingo, and being able to win theological arguments that drew me intothis class. This twisted sense of power, however, gave way to a genuine form of humility that I had not previously known existed within the teachings of Martin Luther.During discussion of our first unit the thought was put out into cyber space that maybeSystematic Theology is exploring what we put our hope in. This idea is followed up in our next unit atwe read from Forde’s book “Where God Meets Man.” Forde uses the analogy of a ladder on which weclimb up towards God as the primary analogy for what we should avoid. Instead of putting our hope inourselves to reach God through our own knowledge or works, we realize that God came down to us andwe can never reverse this process. Our moderator used the story of the temptation in the garden of theknowledge of good and evil. Anytime we seek to “know” we are in a sense striving to be like God. For some reason I had never played that thought out before until this class and it challenged many of ways Ilive out my ministry. So when issues like Universalism, or the Historical Jesus, or Interpretation of Scripture come up we must understand two things; what Luther call’s the hiddeness of God, and that onmany of these issues the scriptures are completely silent. When we seek knowledge we becomedependant on ourselves for our survival and not God, we don’t need God if WE know where people gowhen they die, or who Jesus actually was, or what scripture really says. Because in all these things weend up creating some legalistic structure or program for living life the best way possible, and after thatwe don’t need God. This idea will come up later when our group looks at Morality versus Mortality.But as our moderator stated from the beginning it comes down to what we put our hope in. If WE aretrying to “know” then our hope and faith are in ourselves and not God.The third unit of study launched us into discussions about the Holy Trinity and the cross as the
 
 basis for the Trinity. This unit was probably the most challenging for me because of the way I wasstretched. In ministry and teaching about God with youth there is always a desire to come up with better ways to make God make sense to everyone. The moderator challenged one of the statements Ihad made in my latest post about a suffering God. I wrote that “I cannot believe in a God that doesn’tsuffer,” and have used that statement in conversations with young people who don’t believe in God.But again I was humbled in the thought that came out during our chat which was that my statement wascentered on me, not the cross. There are forms of thinking about God and statements that I make all thetime that are selfish, this topic was showing me that the cross puts to death my “I.” Instead of  proclaiming to questioning youth what it is that I can or cannot believe absolutely, I should be proclaiming what God has done and is doing. This is where our conversation on the LutheranConfessions came in and helped me appreciate for the first time the humility of a teaching centered onthe cross and its proclamation. Our moderator helped us understand that there is no, “LutheranTheology,” only theologian who confess in the same manner of Luther and his followers, this insightwas extremely helpful.In our fourth unit Dr. Bouman lectured on how we traditionally think about the Holy Trinity andin our chat we focused more on theology of glory verses a theology of the cross. This unit was probablythe second most important discussion for my faith formation. In this unit I was reminded of a quote Ihad heard once, “God calls us to pick up our cross, not pull up our lawn chairs.” Our moderator reminded us that a theology of glory is a spectator theology, one that is formed by people who just look at the cross and try to figure out what it means. We talked about the meaninglessness of Jesus death,and how we attempt to find meaning in it which leads us down that tempting road to “know” againwhat it is that God is up to. The class was asked if we had ever experienced a non-senseless death
 
 before. The idea is driven home that God has created us human and that means we die, any attempts toget more meaning out of it, or justify our lives through work, are just running away from our createdness, or creatureliness. We get hints that God has freed us from worrying about death that wemight live for each other instead of for ourselves. The unit finished with a quote from Luther, “Living,no rather dying makes a theologian, not learning, wisdom or thinking.”Our fifth and sixth units focused on questions concerning the church. Many of us in the class posted things about the institutional church, things we can see instead of things like hearing God’sWord, and forgiveness of sins through the eating and drinking of God’s body and blood. We played outthe idea that when church becomes little element of daily living that we can control and organize, thatis when Jesus might be saying, “Get behind me Satan.” When church becomes something that gives us power to control and fulfill our own needs instead of freeing us for kingdom building. What we dowhen we gather as a community of faith is have a meal. A meal that grants us forgiveness and freedom,this idea made me wonder why we don’t celebrate communion each week. Our moderator challengedthe class to think about how Luther saw communion. The group was stretched to resist the temptationto look for visible ‘marks’ of the church other than communion and the reading of the Word. We can’teven believe in Jesus Christ, says Luther, without the power of the Holy Spirit bringing us into belief inGod. The church is a work of that same Holy Spirit and resists our attempts at control.We were challenged to look at how the lectures we watched, the book we read, and what Luther  proclaimed might not be saying the same thing all the time. This is an area of personal growth for meand something that still needs a lot of work. Being immersed in three sources and knowing who sayswhat and how that is different from the views of other theologians is difficult for me. This is important because the rest of that weeks discussions followed the new Hymnal coming out and how it approaches
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03 / 20 / 2011<span class="translation_missing">en_US, this_document_made_it_onto_the</span>Rising List!
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