Furthermore, the stone told him, it was getting just a little tired of being put down by an oyster with airs. Starfish and oyster drills, it observed, were no threat to stones to the oyster they were a matter of life and death. It pointed out that there were nonetheless some advantages to being further down the evolutionary scale. One day, however the stone surprised him by coming up with a rejoinder. Oysters may be mineral on the outside but inside, they are bona fide members of the animal kingdom. He loved to dwell at length on the differences that underlay their apparent similarity. As a matter of fact, their conversations gave the oyster a definite feeling of superiority. It was very much the same size, shape and color as he, and was good, if undemanding, company. Next to him lived a stone with whom he sometimes talked. By oyster’s standards, he had a good life: the sea water was clean, and full of plankton, and the green warmth of the light at low tide made him grow and prosper. Once upon a time, in the mud at the bottom of a tidal pool, there lived an oyster. I am reminded of a parable about theology from Robert Farrar Capon in his book, Hunting the Divine Fox. Yet we speak with such certainty and arrogance, as if we have all knowledge of God. If God truly is as infinite as we claim, then all the compiled knowledge and ideas about God are nothing more than a speck of insight compared to the infinity of God. If you cannot laugh at your own hubris when you teach theology, you should not be teaching theology.

When we teach and write about theology, we know next to nothing regarding the topic about which we speak, but we speak about it as if we know everything. Let us remember how ludicrous our carefully packaged systems of theology really are. Then let us all start laughing more, and not just laughing, but laughing at ourselves. Then, let someone stand up and tell us a joke. Let us loosen our ties and untuck our shirts.

Let us all sit down and take a deep breath. So let all the shouting, yelling, and finger pointing cease. Seriously though, we theologians often take ourselves way too seriously.īut if historical theology and church tradition teach us anything at all, it is that many of the ideas we have held to most dearly have been the same ideas that have cost the church and the world most dearly. I mean, don’t these guys look like a barrel of laughs? But I am beginning to think theology is not so much a science as it is a form of entertainment. Some like to say that theology is the queen of the sciences.

Robert capon parables