 If I had the choice between love and theology, I would choose love every time. We need to stop focusing so much attention on theology and focus more on loving people. Look, I understand to a degree what they're trying to espouse when they verbalize these statements, but at the same time, there's a key error in them. Now, to be honest, I don't really blame you if you've used these phrases or you've thought about things this way. I mean, in modern Christianity, theology is painted as this dusty, musty old, you know, just head knowledge, stuff the pastor should know, but average folk, it's not super important to. And those who do focus on theology are really, generally, judgmental, critical people that you wouldn't want to spend very much time with. So obviously, theology isn't something that you'd want to spend too much time with because you don't want to become like that. I want to ask you a couple questions here. How do you know what love is? Like if you choose love over theology, how do you know what love looks like? We're told in the scripture that you can't know love unless you know God because God is love. Okay, so how do you come to know who God is and what love is? Well, you need to go to his word, his revealed revelation to us. Yes, we have the general revelation of all creation, which is amazing, which means we are without excuse, but at the same time, we have his specific revelation in scripture so we can know who he is personally. Now what is it called when we learn about God and seek his word? It's called theology, the knowledge of him, the knowledge of God, understanding him and how he works. Now, these sayings and phrases that people throw around about love and theology might seem really nice on a t-shirt, but I really don't think people understand what theology is. They kind of see it as like this, yeah, the dusty, musty old stuff that pastors think about and the folks that do focus too much on it are usually hostile, judgmental, grumpy people. And so we want to focus on loving people. Generally, the mentality is that head knowledge is nothing without Christ-like love, right? That's generally the idea, which is totally true. We read that in the scripture. If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. But people generally are painting a false dichotomy that you can either have love or you can have theology. But no, our love is informed by our theology. We can only understand what is Christ-like love by understanding who is Christ. We go to his word. We learn theology. I want to highlight a bigger problem too. We can even go further down. When people talk about theology, it often can just be related to truth, right? So truth and love, this idea of truth, there are truth people that are just so fixated on what is true and they won't compromise what they're saying. But also maybe they're not the nicest people and they can be hostile and a little bit aggressive, sometimes confrontational, even that's their tendency. But then there's love people and love people, they want to be nice. They want to be compassionate and they're nurturing. But the idea of incorporating truth or confrontation or conflict, oh no, no, no, these things, these are like oil and water here. Love people are primarily concerned with other people's emotions and their emotions directed at them. They can often fall into people pleasing. That's the tendency and cowardice can be a real struggle. Truth people are primarily concerned with other people's behaviors and beliefs and so compassion can be a struggle, humility can be a struggle. So now look at yourself. Where do you find yourself on the spectrum? Maybe these phrases that we talked about earlier that I choose love over theology that resonates with you. You're like, I just want to love people. But maybe you're appalled by that. You're like, no, we need theology, we need truth, right? And you're in that side. But I want to bring forward that these things work in harmony. Now you might find it interesting. You might much more identify with love people. People might see me online and say, oh, this is definitely a truth guy just saying it as it is, whatever else. I know some people think I'm a little too soft. That's okay. But at the same time, I much more closely relate to the love people being kind of hyper aware of other people's emotions and how they feel. But I also have a tendency towards people pleasing and wanting people to like me. So there's that temptation to water down the truth. Now over the years, God has definitely matured me in boldness and courage. I have a long way to go, but I'm a lot further than I was at the beginning. Not disregarding with emotions, like recognizing, hey, I'm an emotional person. This is part of me. But not letting those emotions dictate whether I speak the truth or not. And also seeing that speaking the truth doesn't mean that I need to be hostile or necessarily like aggressive with people, but I can bring it forward in my own style and that can be okay too. Now this is a little bit of a tangent, but I want to share this with you. If you find yourself being more on the spectrum of like a love person, you're very kind of conscious of other people's emotions, but you also struggle with people pleasing. Ultimately, when we are focused on finding our acceptance in other people or finding their approval, we're missing out on the true security that God has already provided for us, right? So we're scared of rejection. We're scared of them being offended or being angry at us. So we're going to accommodate to them completely and we don't want to say anything that's going to kind of offend them, but at the same time, we need to recognize that that's not loving them well first off, but also that we have all the acceptance and love we could ever need in God so that when we are having these hard conversations with people in our life, when we are bringing forward the truth in love and they're maybe not receiving it the best, that our security does not hinge on their acceptance of us, but rather we have already been accepted in Christ and that gives us the power and the safety to speak up, to not water down the truth and to hold to our convictions boldly. Now I can't speak too intimately into this, but if you're a truth person and you know truth and theology is essential, that's a great thing, right? It's a great thing to search the Scriptures, to be passionate about what is true, but you need to know as well without love and without compassion and curiosity coming into the conversation with people that you're actually pushing people further away because you're teaching them that it's only about believing the right things, having their theological ducks in a row as opposed to their heart orientation towards God. Look, I'm not saying you need to become soft spoken all of a sudden, but remember that your words should be an outflowing of love and not of pride or self superiority. As long as that heart motivation is in check, God will help you orient yourself in a compassionate and loving way towards them. Just a final thought for you, the beauty here is that truth and love are intimately connected because God is truth and He is love and those are outflowing of His character that He calls us to embody. He'll give us strength to do it and regardless of what your tendency is, if you're a truth person or if you're a love person, He'll help you fill in those gaps if you submit to Him and you admit, okay, hey, look, these are my weaknesses, God, you're aware of those things and on the daily, you ask Him to help you grow in those areas. Thanks so much for watching this video, friends. If you enjoyed it, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single week. A huge shout out to everyone on Patreon that supports my work of equipping people to follow Jesus daily. If that's a mission you want to get behind, I'd ask you to sign up in the link in my description. We have a Discord, we have bi-weekly video chats, and we also have exclusive videos and merch discounts. There's a lot of stuff going on there and you help me and this ministry keep going and growing. You guys know this is my full-time gig. It's how I pay my rent and so I'm so appreciative of you enabling me to do this mission. Until next time, I will see you guys later. God bless.