I've been slackin' trying to wrap this thought process up. Almost there.

Spiritual pathways to God; Creation, Relational, Contemplative, Serving, Worship, Intellectual and Activism.

Intellectual.

This pathway as a connection with God is pretty polarized - you either love it or you hate it. Okay, maybe not hate, but you would rather spend your time doing something else. In other words this isn't your pathway. Saying such isn't a reason to not venture down it, it just means it doesn't come as easy and you have to remind yourself that knowledge is a good thing and that God calls us to wrestle with His text.

If you've ever been in a small group at church or a 'Sunday School' type situation, you can easily pick out the guy/gal whose pathway is intellect - they are so annoying. And yes, I realize I've been that guy. So I try to balance it, but I love it. I love the dialogue, I love the debate, I love investigating and concluding what I believe on 'issues' in theology.

My wife on the other hand is much happier working on loving her neighbor as herself and couldn't care less about 'issues' like predestination, eschatology and the like. And she reminds me to stay grounded and that we are called to not just be hearers or thinkers but also doers of the text.

Though I would have loved to pursue learning Greek and Hebrew in college I worked with people who just wanted to know me and why I love Jesus and who I root for on Sunday - not the root words of Biblical text. And though I have formed opinions on local/global flood theories, individual/holistic predestination theories and gap/literal creation theories - the people whose life I want to make an impact in, don't have any idea what the crap I'm talking about right now.