When Theology is Privilege

Too Metaphysically Minded to Be Any Earthly Good

It’s not a secret that I can be quite critical of modern theological scholarship. I have previously laid out my grievances in articles such as:

• A New Theology: 10 Failings of Theological Scholarship in the Modern World

• Theology's House of Cards: Is Bad Theology Killing Us? (Can good theology save us?)

• Who's supposed to save the world, God or Us? Why we need a radical theology to survive and thrive.

• Can Atheism save Christianity? Inside the new movement to reinvent the world's largest religion

• The Great Reconstruction: Is the metasolution for the metacrisis... inner anarchy?

• Why I Gave up "God" for Lent: Breaking Bad Faith for 40 Days to Save the World

I have an academic background in theology, which was necessary as it pertained to my previous religious life as a megachurch pastor and Bible scholar. Since leaving religion, my theological work the past 25 years has centered around aiding people in deconstructing and disentangling themselves from toxic religious dogma.

In many cases, a person who leaves religion has been so traumatized by the misteaching of the Bible or has chosen to cultivate a spirituality without belief in God or the supernatural, that the field of theology becomes irrelevant.

Not all theology or interpretations of the Bible are harmful and toxic. I have published several articles on interpreting and understanding the Bible. Perhaps most notably, Which Bible Should You Read? How religion messed up the significance of the Bible.

These days in the religious deconstruction work I do, it’s hard not to see theology as the problem. But is there any sense in which theology is a solution? And if so, to what?