Useful Tools

I have this awesome foot for my sewing machine. It takes a raw edge and creates a beautiful narrow hem all in one fell swoop.

For someone who hates hems in general, but especially narrow hems, this is quite the phenomenal addition to my sewing arsenal. Without this handy little foot, my narrow hems are haphazard. They are uneven, and neither the hem nor the seam is ever straight. With this little tool, though, I can make beautiful, straight and even hems every time.

I still have to be careful, though. If I fold the hem over too far as it feeds through the foot, the excess raw edge shows under the seam. If I don't keep enough of a fold feeding through, just the raw edge is stitched without a fold at all. The foot truly does do most of the work for me, but I still have to use it properly.

Please do not take this analogy too far, but I see theology in a similar light. We have preconceptions as we read and apply Scripture. Some of those preconceptions can leave us in a messy state of being, similar to my haphazard hems. So, we apply theology. As we come to Scripture basing our perspective on the coherent ideas and principles of sound theology, we find our spiritual growth to be much more solid.

The danger, however, is that we occasionally approach the tool wrongly. Just as I sometimes feed the material through the sewing machine foot incorrectly, we feed our study through the tool of theology poorly. We might put more focus on the tool itself than on the growth that it should be engendering. We possibly try to cram our preconceptions through the tool of theology, forcing them together in a convoluted manner rather than allowing theology to work as it should. Other times we rely too much on the tool of theology, expecting it to do all of the work for us. We expect a theological principle to answer all of our questions about Scripture, making the mysterious plain and revealing all of the unknown. We forget that there will always be things we cannot know this side of heaven, no matter how good our theology and Scriptural understanding may be.

Whether it be with sewing machines or spiritual growth, tools are just tools. They are useful. Often they are essential for a truly well-completed project. We still must be careful how we use them, though. We have to feed our resources into them properly, and we have to do our part to allow them to work well.

We cannot be afraid to use tools, but we also must be careful to use them well. When we do, the handiwork that results can be absolutely phenomenal.