Theology is never just an idea. Every theology eventually becomes behavior. Every pattern of behavior eventually bears fruit.

“By Their Fruits: Testing Theology” has asked a simple question:
What if theology should be accountable for the lives it shapes?

Eleven articles later, I think we're finally ready for the dangerous part. We have to turn the test on ourselves. Because it would be remarkably convenient to spend an entire series arguing that theology should be judged by its fruit, introduce something I'm calling Behavioral Theology, and then quietly exempt Behavioral Theology from the test.

Nice try, Mark.

If this whole thing means anything, Behavioral Theology has to be accountable for the lives it shapes too.

By its fruits.

Way back at the beginning of this series, I suggested that Christians have spent an enormous amount of energy arguing about whether theology is right.

Is it biblical?
Is it orthodox?
Is it consistent with tradition?
Can we defend it with the right verses, the right theologians, the right creeds, the right arguments?

Those questions matter. I've never suggested otherwise. But I kept coming back to another question. What does it do? What happens when this theology gets up off the page and starts walking around in people's lives? What happens when somebody builds a church around it? Raises children with it? Constructs a marriage around it? Uses it to understand their body, their neighbor, their enemy, their sexuality, their worth, their relationship with God?

What happens when theology is acted out?

Because it always does. Eventually theology gets lived. And eventually lived theology bears fruit.

That's where this series took us.

We asked whether theology can be biblical and still be harmful.
We asked whether harm counts as evidence.
We tried to figure out what good fruit actually looks like.
We wrestled with the uncomfortable possibility that false beliefs can sometimes produce good fruit and true beliefs can produce bad fruit.
We talked about orthopraxy and praxis and acknowledged that theologians, particularly liberation theologians, have been thinking seriously about the relationship between theology and lived experience for a very long time.

Then we tried to make one particular move explicit. Behavioral Theology prioritizes the lived consequences of theology as evidence for evaluating the theology itself. Not the only evidence. Not infallible evidence. But evidence we don't get to conveniently shove to the bottom of the page when it complicates our argument.

Then things got messier.

We asked who gets to testify about the fruit. We discovered that sometimes the fruit is mixed. And we had to confront the deceptively difficult question of what we even mean when we say theology causes harm.

Which leaves us here.
Not with a perfect theological measuring stick.
Not with an equation.
Not with a shiny new system guaranteed to tell us which theology is correct.

Thank God.

Christianity has enough people selling those already.

Maybe that's the question underneath this entire series.
What are we trying to grow?

If theology is going to shape people, communities, churches, relationships, and eventually societies, what do we hope grows from it?

I keep coming back to four words:
Love.
Justice.
Mercy.
Human flourishing.

Not because those four words solve every theological problem. They don’t. And certainly not because Christians always agree about what they mean. We don’t. But if a theology consistently makes us less loving, less merciful, less concerned with justice, and less interested in whether other human beings can flourish, I think we should have some serious questions about the tree.

Especially if we've gotten very good at defending the tree.

Jesus seemed unusually interested in fruit. Not whether the tree had the right label hanging from it. Not whether it could produce a sufficiently impressive doctrinal statement.

Fruit.
“You will know them by their fruits.”

Maybe we've spent too much time staring at the label.

I want to be careful here because Christianity has a remarkable ability to turn almost anything into another purity test. Give us enough time and somebody will eventually ask:
“Do you affirm Behavioral Theology?”

Please don't.

I am not particularly interested in creating another theological camp with its own password. Behavioral Theology isn't a creed. It's a practice. It's a habit of paying attention.

We live our theology.
We watch what happens.
We listen to the people living under it, particularly the people who don't usually get to control the theological conversation.
We examine the fruit.

And then we do something that can be surprisingly difficult.
We let what we learn matter.

If the fruit is good, that's evidence.
If the fruit is harmful, that's evidence too.
If the fruit is mixed, we don't pretend otherwise.

And when the evidence challenges our theology, we allow the theology itself to come back under examination. That's it.

No secret handshake.

And now Behavioral Theology has a problem. A good problem. It has to live by its own rules.

If this approach to theology encourages people to listen more carefully to those who have been ignored, that's fruit. If it helps churches recognize harm they've previously explained away, that's fruit. If it makes us more willing to reconsider interpretations that diminish people's dignity, that's fruit. If it produces greater love, justice, mercy, and human flourishing, pay attention.

But suppose it does something else.

Suppose Behavioral Theology becomes an excuse for intellectual laziness.
Suppose we stop wrestling seriously with Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience because we've decided our preferred outcome settles everything.
Suppose “that's harmful” becomes a theological trump card we use to shut down difficult conversations.
Suppose it makes us smug.
Suppose we start treating people who disagree with us as morally inferior because, unlike those people, we have finally discovered the theology that doesn't hurt anybody.

Well… Look at the fruit.

Behavioral Theology doesn't get a free pass either. If it produces arrogance, incuriosity, cruelty, ideological purity tests, or another excuse for Christians to stop listening to one another, those consequences become evidence against the way we're practicing it.

We don't get to invent a theology about accountability and then become defensive when somebody holds it accountable.

That would be a little too on the nose.

Maybe this is where I've landed after writing this series.

I'm less interested than I once was in theology that claims to have all the answers. I'm much more interested in theology capable of learning.

Theology that can listen.
Theology that can discover something it believed was incomplete.
Theology that can encounter somebody else's life and say, “I didn't know. Tell me more.”
Theology that can repent.
Theology that can change.

None of that makes theology weak. I'd argue the opposite. A theology that cannot learn from the lives it shapes is fragile. It has to protect itself from evidence because evidence might require it to change. A theology capable of learning doesn't have to be afraid of the truth. 

Even when the truth arrives carrying wounds.

For twelve articles, we've been talking about fruit. So let's push the metaphor one last time.

A gardener doesn't stand beside a struggling tree insisting that everything must be fine because the seed packet was correct.

They pay attention.
They look at the leaves. 
They check the soil. 
They notice disease. 
They watch what grows and what doesn't.

And then they respond.

More water.
Less water.
Different soil.
Pruning.
Sometimes moving the plant entirely.
Sometimes admitting that something simply isn't going to grow where we planted it.

The gardener isn't betraying the seed by paying attention to what happens after it's planted. Paying attention is part of the care.

Maybe theology could learn something from that.

So, one last time:

What kind of people does it produce?
What kind of communities does it create?
Who benefits?
Who is harmed?
Does it bear the fruit of love, justice, mercy, and human flourishing?

And this time, don't just ask those questions about somebody else's theology.

Ask them about yours.
Ask them about mine.
Ask them about Behavioral Theology.
Ask them about this series.

A theology that consistently harms people deserves to be questioned.
A theology that consistently helps people deserves our attention.

And no theology gets to exempt itself from the test.

I started this series with a few rules I've tried to teach my own kids.

1) I don't care what you believe.
2) As long as it doesn't hurt people.
3) Bonus points if it helps people.

Obviously, the first one has always been modified by the second. What we believe matters precisely because beliefs don't stay safely tucked away inside our heads.

They behave.
They shape us.
They shape how we treat other people.
And eventually they bear fruit.

So my final challenge isn't to adopt Behavioral Theology.

It isn't to agree with me.
It isn't even to change your theology.
It's simpler than that.

Pay attention.

Pay attention to what your theology does when it becomes a life. Listen when somebody tells you what it has done to theirs. Be grateful for the good fruit. Be honest about the bad. And be willing to learn from both.

Because after twelve articles and far too many apples, I don't think I have a better test than the one we started with.

By their fruits.