If your theology causes you to think you’ve got it all wrapped up and well-understood, it’s bad theology.  Theology should produce wonder.  Not that theology should be hard to understand, abstract, unclear, or embrace a false humility that claims we can’t possibly know anything.  Theology is as clear and easy to understand as sheep, water, bread, fig trees, and vineyards.

And it produces wonder.

The fact that we don’t think these things are filled with wonder demonstrates just how far we have gotten off the path of the truth. G.K. Chesterton wrote,

Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales — because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. (Orthodoxy, Chapter IV)

True, when we grow old we are to “put away childish things,” but sinners have a tendency to mis-understand what is childish and what is not.  Paradoxically, we fallen people are described well in Rich Mullin’s song, “Growing Young” – “We are children no more, we have sinned and grown old.”

Or, as Chesterton wrote,

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

We grow old, lose our wonder, and become theologians who have it all figured out.

This is one of the many concepts that draws me to the importance of rootedness in place; and, conversely, rootedness in place teaches me these concepts.  Fighting weeds while trying to restore a backyard that’s suffered 15 years of neglect puts me in a place and makes me have to do one of two things: get bitter that I don’t have more time for sitting in front of a computer debating theology with people dumber than me, or find the wonder in creation, consider the tragedy of the fall, and find even greater wonder in redemption.

Most people are bored with the monotony of one place, and we’ve become very transient people.  I’ve written about this before.  I think that boredom is a weakness which plagues us, and I’m fighting hard against it.  I wrote recently at The Rabbit Room,

Lately, I’ve been trying to gather the strength to “do it again” as many times as Sophia requests it, and I’ve been trying to summon the wisdom to find joy in the repetition.

It is much more often foolishness, not wisdom, that makes people want to move away from family and community for ideas of finding a “better life.”  We’re bored with the monotony.  We’re thinking we’re better than this place.  We’re weak. We’ve sinned and grown old.

Theology and place – they’re interconnected and full of wonder.