Motivation for studying theology

You know when you meet someone new and you totally jive with them. You want to ask them a million questions because you just met your new close friend. You can't wait to spend time getting to know them and could easily spend hours talking with them. You end up with quite a large collection of facts about them, but more importantly, you feel like you kinda know who they are to some degree. Over the course of getting to know them maybe your initial assumptions were proved wrong and you're all the happier for it. You find yourself trying to adapt their best qualities into your life thereby enriching yourself through them.

I submit that studying theology could be, even should be like that.

The pursuit of theology has a very different feel than sitting with your new friend, but why? I think the motivation behind it is key. If you like a person and simply want to know more about them, you have a natural hunger for knowledge, but also, experience. You want to experience things with them, go do stuff with them. 

If the person happens to be the mayor of your city, you might be thinking of how rad it'd be to have the mayor in your pocket. You're gonna bring your A-game and do and say all the right things hoping you'll reap rewards from your diligent hard work.

Jesus showed up on Earth as a nobody, void of any of his acclaim so that people wouldn't be drawn to the shiny God-king. Instead, he was unremarkable in every way except for his relationship with his father. He wanted to make sure that no one would seek him for personal gain.

When we study theology, we do not become imbued with mystical powers, we simply get further pulled into the relationship with God. We simply get a better picture of who God is, which is awesome!