On Theology

I was reading Jason Boyett's entry in Rachel Held Evans' Rally to Restore Unity series when I came across this passage:

But I can share with them my simple theology:

This world is broken, full of sin and sickness and pain and trouble and evil. That all that bad stuff keeps us from having a relationship with God, a relationship He desires.

I suppose that belief in The Fall and the Garden of Eden are not absolutely necessary to be a Christian but they fill a hole without which it would be impossible. In order to maintain all the feel-good bits of being Christian, one has to deal with a world that is not cooperating in colaborating your beliefs. Your assumptions about what God has to be like in order for you to believe in him run up against the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short lives we all live. So you just make stuff up. You invent Theology. Subjected to the outsider test, the idea that God created a perfect world that humans damaged, either by eating an apple or by excercising free will - it doesn't matter which - appears laughable and narcessitic.

Henceforth let Theology be defined as follows:

(1) Those improbable scenarios invented to justify believing in a God who could not possibly exist given the world in which we live

(2) That which "we cook up to justify whatever circus we are trying next." (Bill Kinnon)