Why Theology Matters

The Search for Christianity Through Friends and Church Camp

Naturally, as an Aussie, the first thing I did was investigate Christianity. I had a few Christian friends, and I remember going to a church camp. It was one of the funniest camps I've ever been to in my life.

Everybody was singing. I didn't know what the words were. I didn't know what they were saying. It sounded great. They had beautiful voices, but it just seemed really strange. And everybody was telling me how much God loved me, and I was thinking,.

God loves me? My dog died!

Exploring Different Expressions of Christianity

So I kept on investigating Christianity, and I went to a whole lot of, I guess, different aspects of Christianity. So we're talking about Catholicism, we're talking about Anglican Baptists, you know, priests, pastors.

And every time I'd go there and ask questions, I'd find that they wouldn't pick up the Bible and start to say, Oh, this is the answer, my dear brother. They would just start answering me. They would just answer from their own opinions.

The Problem of Competing Interpretations

And I started to realise that there was a lot of interpretations of Christianity, and a lot of people had their own interpretations. And one priest from one church was believing one particular aspect of Christianity, whilst another was proclaiming another.

So I started to think to myself, the Bible is one text, but there seems to be so many different interpretations, and it was confusing.