The Psychology and Statistics of Choosing a Church
qb doesn’t have time to read a lot of blogs – really, only two – but his favorite is Richard Beck’s Experimental Theology blog. Beck is Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at Abilene Christian University. He is a Christian by faith, Universalist by soteriological conviction, liberal-leaning independent by politics, and research psychologist by trade (in addition to his teaching appiontment). He is also an uber-blogger and – now – published author of Unclean, an exploration of the psychological dynamics of purity and their implications for the church. He is a gifted writer, a statistics geek, an unapologetic technophile, and an Apple aficionado. He is also kind, thoughtful, compassionate, clever, creative, funny, and self-effacing without being overly self-conscious. If you have ever wondered, for example, what sort of latent theology underlies Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes,” you owe it to yourself to check out Dr. Beck’s blog series on it. It is serious, seriously funny stuff, and delightful to read.
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No, qb does not agree with everything Dr. Beck posts on his blog. Let’s get that out of the way. But that’s not what this post is about.
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But one of the great services Dr. Beck has done to and for qb is to raise the profile of psychological aspects of Christian belief, Christian praxis, and Bible study. For 40+ years, qb has just taken it as an article of faith that psychology has little to no bearing on Christian faith, that our faith in Christ ought to make psychology pretty much irrelevant: ”the Bible says it, we believe it (or not), and that settles it.”
Dr. Beck has thoroughly disabused qb of any such naive notions, even as it pertains to even the authorship - and, hence, our understanding of “inspiration” – of our Scriptures.
[to be continued here]
