Good morning…
He said, “You know, theology is just like ice cream. We all have our favorite kind.” To demonstrate, he polled us for our favorite ice cream flavor. I said, “If there are fresh strawberries around, my favorite is vanilla.” She said, “Neapolitan.” He said, “Cookies and cream.” She said, “Coffee ice cream.” My friend said, “My favorite flavor is the freedom to pick my flavor.”
There are a lot of great theologians out there. St. Ignatius. St. Augustine. Martin Luther. John Calvin. Brothers Charles and John Wesley. Karl Barth. C.S. Lewis. The list goes on and on like the long list of flavors on the ice cream shop sign. My favorite theology is the freedom to choose a favorite flavor.
God’s Spirit sparks in our hearts our own personal beliefs: “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord, Jeremiah 31:33b-34a (NLT).
The key to both enjoying different types of ice cream and discussing differing flavors of theology is to look one another in the eye, to listen, really listen to each other, and to trust God to instruct us each personally so that we, the least to the greatest, might know the LORD deeply and intimately,
Sue
