A Theology Should Be Like

Religion Is Not About Accepting Twenty Impossible Propositions Before Breakfast, But About Doing Things That Change You. It Is A Moral Aesthetic, An Ethical Alchemy. If You Behave In A Certain Way, You Will Be Transformed. The Myths And Laws Of Religion Are Not True Because They They Conform To Some Metaphysical, Scientific Or Historical Reality But Because They Are Life Enhancing. They Tell You How Human Nature Functions, But You Will Not Discover Their Truth Unless You Apply These Myths And Doctrines To Your Own Life And Put Them Into Practice.

If Your Understanding Of The Divine Made You Kinder, More Empathetic, And Impelled You To Express Sympathy In Concrete Acts Of Loving-kindness, This Was Good Theology. But If Your Notion Of God Made You Unkind, Belligerent, Cruel, Of Self-righteous, Or If It Led You To Kill In God's Name, It Was Bad Theology.

And Sometimes It's The Very Otherness Of A Stranger, Someone Who Doesn't Belong To Our Ethnic Or Ideological Or Religious Group, An Otherness That Can Repel Us Initially, But Which Can Jerk Us Out Of Our Habitual Selfishness, And Give Us Intonations Of That Sacred Otherness, Which Is God.

There Is A Danger In Monotheism, And It's Called Idolatry. And We Know The Prophets Of Israel Were Very, Very Concerned About Idolatry, The Worship Of A Human Expression Of The Divine.

When You Feel Compassion, You Dethrone Yourself From The Centre Of The World.