A Walk Through the Forest

Almost anyone can enjoy a walk through the forest. The sights are as diverse as they are beautiful. Towering leafy trees, providing spring buds, summer shade, autumn colours, and the stark winter contrast of white on dark dominate the scene. Various smaller plants rely on the shade and support of the larger trees. Occasional streams or ponds, rock formations, and sightings of birds and animals round out the picture. It is an extremely rare person who cannot appreciate at least some aspect of a forest.

But that's only what I see. If I were to walk in the woods with an expert in natural sciences – in botany, or geology, or wildlife biology, or a host of other disciplines – I would be shown so very much more. As we walked they would be able to stop along the way and explain to me things like the various vital functions of the trees, which plants are edible and which are not, how to tell where the various critters have dens or burrows and tips for spotting them, and a thousand other things. If you get the right person, they can make moss interesting.

As usual, I'm not really talking about a walk through the forest. I believe that everything I've said is true of forests. It's also true of scripture. Sometimes I run across people who are suspicious of theology, or scholarship, or biblical and theological academics. Don't we just need to know the gospel? Isn't it just about reaching as many as possible, as soon as possible? Can't we all just read the Bible and understand what it says? The answer to those questions is yes – mostly. Almost everyone can appreciate the Bible, see it's beauty, and understand the big story of the great Creator who turns his rebellious creation into redeemed and righteous sons and daughters. But in the same way that an expert in matters of the forest can open my eyes to a world so much deeper than I had ever seen before, so too can the academics of a theological education open our eyes to a world of scripture that some have only glimpsed.

Those of us who've spent some time and accumulated some “forest” knowledge aren't any better than anyone else. There's no special class of “forest appreciators.” We have the same need to spend the time in the forest, to see its beauty, to be restored by the peace that is there. We're walking the same path as everyone else. But we have the privilege to be able to poke our fellow hikers and say, “Hey! Lemme tell you about this thing over here. It doesn't seem very big, but the whole forest depends on it.” We have an excitement for the deep things and the details of the forest, and we want to tell others. We want everyone to appreciate the forest better, because we believe that it will help us to love better and see more fully the Lion in whose forest we wander.