The Quandary of Knowing God.

Not so much the quandary of knowing God, but the quandary of knowing if you can know God, and to what extent.

Just the phrase "knowing God" means different things. If someone comes up to you in the mall and says, "Do you know God?" what do you think they mean? Do you think they are wondering if you've heard of him? If you pray to him? If you are in a "personal relationship" with him (which typically translates into "going to church every Sunday" for many who ask)? Maybe it usually means: if you know and agree with the same ideas of God that the asker of the question has of God?

It seems interesting to me that the feeling of certainty one has of knowing God and of knowing his will often becomes arrogance and domination in practice. The most twisted, horrendous parts of church history seem to come from people groups claiming to know God (and his will) perfectly and their attempts to enforce it. Though most of the evils come from the "enforcing it", it seems a logical jump that if you 100% know God's will, that you would bring his will to pass so far as it is within your power. If you weren't 100% sure of his will, couldn't you easily be persuaded by a group of like-minded people of what it is and what to do with it?

It's a dangerous path. Yet, if we can't know God really, how do we live? How do we not become paralyzed in fear? How do we navigate changes? Scripture isn't sufficient for explaining our modern world. Scripture isn't a map or a Grand To-Do List. It was written is a historical context that is far removed from our own and to a people that were in a different position than we (especially White America) are in. Though I agree that the principles of faith and love are steadfast through the ages, how those principles are navigated changes. How that is navigated even within the pages of scripture changes. Within the pages of scripture, we have people who let the Gentiles become a part of the movement, a disciple who states that there is no "slave or free" in Christ, and we have unclean foods that are "made clean". Things that had previously been made to seem permanent, overturned in an instant.

In John 17:3, Jesus prays saying, "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." 

He isn't talking about heaven. Throughout the book of John, eternal life begins now. It is a way of life we enter into presently. It is not reserved for life after death, though it may include it. So eternal life, defined as "the Way of Jesus we enter into now", is defined as knowing God and knowing Jesus as an extension, revealing in a human form who God really is.

I contend that we grow into learning and knowing God. Scripture is helpful, but I contend that scripture is perhaps more helpful to understanding historical interpretations of who God is through a human lens. There is always an interpretive lens at work - even within the pages of scripture. Meaning that Jesus himself was the only true representation of him. Even the gospels don't reflect him perfectly because it was interpreted by humans who didn't know Jesus fully, though they walked with him.

Some of you are going to hate that I'm using this quote (and especially in this context), but it really connected this idea for me. In Good Will Hunting (my favorite movie), Sean - Will's therapist - comes to a stalemate with Will. Will previously tried to read into Sean's life and to make assumptions about who he was. Here's what Sean says to him:

You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what - I can't learn anything from you [that] I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you. Who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in.

What is troubling to me is that the Pharisees, Sadduccees and just the general "followers of God"  did not recognize Jesus. Would they claim to know God? I'd wager that even if they didn't say it, they believed it. Everyone had ideas about who Jesus would be. The Pharisees in particular studied the scriptures. They knew of the coming Messiah. But they interpreted him wrongly. They were wrong about him long before they realized he was God-incarnate, which was *not* part of the original prophecies. They only experienced those truths by walking with him. 

Jesus testifies of himself and says to the people, "You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." Basically echoing the idea in Good Will Hunting. My hope is that I take that step to talk about God with God, and about who he is. I hope that we would be fascinated and that we would say, "I'm in." That the word, the scriptures, might be the entrance but not the end. The end is knowing God - beyond the words, knowing the "Word" which was made flesh in Jesus.

Another thing that strikes me is that even the followers of Jesus interpreted him through their own lenses. It seems very strategic to me that Jesus selected followers who were very different from one another. A tax-collected, a Zealot, so on and so forth. Each of them had their own ideas about what it meant to follow God - especially the Zealot. How weird it must have been for him to presumably be the only Zealot among the twelve. 

We develop a better idea of who God is in a community of people where not all the members are like us. Can you imagine the difference between Simon the Zealot and Nathaniel, the "True Israelite"? I hope and pray that we would be a part of communities that are so varied in thought and perspective. That we wouldn't feel threatened. Especially knowing that God's view is always better than each one of ours. As we stumble along in those communities, bumping heads with the Zealots and the fishermen, we ought to unite more in humility and grace. Through that humility, God makes himself known - through the scriptures, through the true Word which is Jesus, through prayer, and through life among community. And not just through the Church community. Isn't it true that the disciples view of God expanded rapidly (albeit not without bumps) when the Gentiles were included in the promise of Life?

It seems to me that to move forward in faith, we must have some level of hope that we can know God intimately. To continue growing in that faith, we must have humility to grasp that "for now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now [we] know in part; then [we] shall know fully, even as [we are] fully known." 







And to trust that we may well see Jesus in the faces of those we thought of as furthest away from him. Praise be to God.

The Lies We Believe

This topic has been on my mind for a while now, but I only now feel like I can write about it because I have recently become intimately re-familiarized with some of the lies I buy into.

I started a new job three weeks ago. I was told from the beginning that there is a sharp learning curve, that it's incredibly difficult and that after the first few months I might start feeling comfortable there. It was weird, because the first week I exceeded expectations - others' expectations of me and my own of myself. I felt great and was energized at the end of each work day. The second and third week things started getting harder. I had more expectations of myself. I became more aware of my deficiencies. Doing things right was no longer enough unless I was doing everything right and efficiently.

I have a problem.

I have this false belief that I must be unfailingly competent in all that I do. It's not that there's no room for error. I have had many hobbies over the years and have made lots of mistakes and done things imperfectly. Most of my hobbies, though, are done in the private realm and only presented when I have developed a level of competency.

Art pieces are made in the quiet of my own room, without the weight of peering eyes assessing every stroke of the brush or every scratch of the pencil. Crocheting, clay figurines, wood-burnings... All presented in wholeness, their mistakes and flaws long forgotten and resolved, before they are ever seen by another pair of eyes.

Other weird hobbies like unicycling... Most people who see me unicycle now are amazed at my "skills". They never watched me struggling to develop those skills. Guitar - I play on my own because I don't want to open that world to anyone until I have developed a certain level of competency. Any who have seen me play multiple songs are people who I trust to let into my vulnerable little world.

It's difficult for me to be seen as a work in progress. When it comes down to it, I like vulnerability, but only when I choose it. I don't like vulnerability that is forced upon me by having to be exposed unfinished, unperfected, unclothed.

I have no issues with looking like I don't have it all together. My issues come from my assumptions of how people may interpret those things I don't have together. I don't assume that if people see me make a mistake, they are thinking, "Well, she's capable. She just has more to learn." I assume they think the worst. I assume that they think, "Wow, I wonder if she knows how bad she did on ______." I actively throw myself under the bus before they can confront me. I want them to know that I know I could have done better. My entire demeanor changes to this apologetic refrain, "I'm sorry for the ways I'm not perfect." My entire focus shifts to how I can prove to them that I will get better, that I can be good at what I'm doing, that they shouldn't give up on me yet.

It comes out in everything. Work, band practice, dancing (when I have gone a few times), relationships. In the end, somehow a part of me believes that I am only loveable insofar as I am useful to someone and inasmuch as I am efficient and good at something. And the degree to which I am not useful or perfect at something is the degree to which I am a burden/annoyance to another person.

I have no idea where I picked this up. They certainly weren't ideas that my parents conveyed to me in childhood. But somehow these ideas did creep in and they infiltrated my self-perception and my relationship with God and others. I feel really great about myself until I bring God or others into the picture.

I remember journaling at one point that in the years that I didn't actively pursue God I felt better about myself and about my life than I did when I was. For the most part I no longer feel that way, but I do when my lies define how I view and interact with God.

My friend hit the nail on the head when she told me that I saw God as someone who gave me tasks to do, left me alone while I went out and did them, then met back up with me afterward to assess the job I did. Maybe I clung to that idea because I rather liked to serve a God who didn't see me in the struggle. In the end I ended up with a God who had expectations that required me to act within my own power and then judged me on the basis of the end product. I ended up with a God that spoke to me only when He had things for me to do for Him, who didn't really care to know me in any other capacity, who didn't care to see my struggle and who used His Son as a divine measuring stick to show me how I didn't measure up (see my previous blog "Jesus: Mary Poppins?"). His tone was always one of exasperation with me.

In the end, I was a busy bee, who needed no personality to function - in fact who was more efficient without one. I was only useful insomuch as I was efficient and only worth interacting with insofar as I was useful. The very things that made me human were the things that stood in the way of what I saw my purpose to be.

In the past few years, I have become more aware of these subconscious beliefs that I passively inherited. I have become more aware of how to challenge them. This very blog has been a major outlet documenting the ways my mind, heart, faith, and life have been changing as I come to understand who God really is and who I really am. Though many of my conscious beliefs have changed, I still have the same inclinations and fears I have had all along that exhibit themselves from time to time. I am waiting, hoping, and moving towards a place where I trust what I believe with my life, in a way that transforms me, changing the way I interact with God and others on a fundamental level. But for now I am living in the tension of knowing what I believe but not knowing/trusting it enough to embody it yet on the automatic level.

I am forced to be a work-in-process, exposed in the unresolved state to God and to those who are close to me. And I am learning that my God and my community are a lot more full of grace for me than I would have imagined. That is the realization and the place that causes the transformation I yearn for. In the end, love has the power to change me in a way that my fears never could.