Just a thought

about theology. There are two major lessons I've learned over the years that have truly challenged my worldview (and changed it):

1. Sunday school theology can only deal with Sunday school problems. (Yet very few people - believers and nonbelievers alike - attempt to go far beyond Sunday school theology.)
   
2. God is bigger than any of my ideas about Him. (Yet most people think their ideas about God are way more important - and certain - than God himself.)

Learning to integrate these ideas is strangely liberating. I no longer feel that I have to angrily challenge those whose dogma is slightly different than mine. I now consider it more important that one's character reflect that of Christ.

Finally, here is one of my favorite quotes:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.... Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

Source: St. Augustine (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Bible-Science/PSCF3-88Young.html)