Talk...

I struggled a lot with what to blog about tonight. A friend of mine pointed out that I've been lagging a bit, and I agreed so I felt that tonight would be a good night to post.

It's been on my heart (I thoroughly dislike that phrase, but it's appropriate I think) lately that too much of what people do is talk about God and God's people. I sit in my class on Job (amazing class by the way) and we talk about suffering in the world, both abstractly and in concrete stories. And yet I fear that that is where we stop, I hear very intelligent people come up with very smart ideas and they write them down and people in other parts of the world and people in our own part of the world die and suffer.

A friend of mine has told me that in order to be a good pastor you must first be a theologian, otherwise "what you talk and preach about is bullshit." (His words, not mine) I think that before that though, you need to love people and act on it. We aren't called to sit around and talk about ideas, we are called to put an end to suffering for all of God's children.

Right now women in Bolivia are prostituting themselves because they think it's the only way to survive. Children in Cambodia are selling their virginity at the age of 12 for $150. People of all ages are being systematically exterminated in Darfur. Thousands of people are dying in Africa of AIDs. Hundreds of teens in the US are committing suicide because they think no one cares about them. A handful of students at Northwest Christian College are getting dangerously drunk because they think it's the cool thing to do.

In classrooms people are arguing about whether Jesus said "I am the Light of the world" or "You are the Light of the world." Students can't decide if they like systematic or process theology. They are stressing out about how what order the events fall in the Old Testament so that they can pass the test that's coming up.

I find myself getting caught up in the chatter, in the discussions. I'm not saying that it's all bad, without discussion in community we can come up with really funky ideas. Still, I find myself torn between a call to engage my mind and grow intellectually, and to go out and try to increase the quality of life for God's children. What do we do?