oh-oh, here she comes

Tomorrow morning I board a plane and head the vast expanse of treeless habitat known as West Texas for part two of my youth ministry class. I am very excited about heated discussions about the theological roots of youth ministry, and a time of fellowship with some fellow women in ministry.

On Saturday, I will cruise on down to A-town to see the likes of Graham (and my many other wonderful grad-school friends).

As many of you know, I am what some might call slightly nerdy. Proving this point is the fact that I am very excited about sitting in on a three-hour Systematic Theology class taught by Fred Aquino. Sadly, this will quite possibly be the highlight of my trip to Texas. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed the headaches that always follow a Fred class, the intelligent discussion, the glazed over looks of confusion (mostly on my face), and the desperate need for a very large cup of coffee (or Christmas-in-a-cup) about half-way through.

I love my job and I would not trade it for the world. However, I really miss the time for reading and the afternoons spent at Starbucks writing papers or translating Greek. I hope that I am always a life-long learner, and that I always enjoy the prospect of challenge both educationally and theologically as much as I do right now.

The wonderful thing about Fred classes (and most grad classes, really) is that he never lets you live in a state of complacency. He makes you ask the hard questions, and he demands answers. He forces interaction with the topics that Christians find unnerving and want to avoid. Theodicy is scary, but we have to talk about it. Pluralism is what we live in and we cannot always hide behind John 14:6.

There is something about a class with Fred that encourages boldness, and I hope that the boldness he fosters in me is something that I can pass on to my peers and to the teens. I pray that I will always have this thirst for knowledge and this passion for truth (or at least epistemic virtue). We should not go quietly into the night; instead, we should be passionate about faith. That passionate faith will provide joy in the darkest situations, even when we cannot answer the hard questions like theodicy. The thing that will squelch both passion and joy is an unwillingness to ask the questions at all.

(Special shout out to Leann, whose post on theme song inpired this blog title. In a perfect world, Maneater by Hall & Oates would be my theme song, but in reality Hit Me With Your Best Shot by Pat Benatar is probably my theme song.)