Knowing about God and Knowing God

One of the risks of living in an academic environment is that you begin to view the entire world academically. Relationships, for example, can get a little bit complicated when you start analyzing behaviors and patterns in terms of psychological theories and start spouting off academic gibberish when all your girlfriend really wants is a hug.

A Christian’s relationship to God can fall prey to the same sort of over analyzing. Now before you get the wrong idea, I am NOT saying that we should not think critically about what we believe. The hard honest questions need to be asked of our faith lest it be an immature and unrealistic wishful thinking. What I AM saying is that we can forget about the personal aspect of our Faith, not because you or I am a person, but because God is a person.

When we address God in an academic setting we are really just talking about him, not to him. When we ask questions we are really asking about him and not asking him personally. This often yields interesting, amazing, maybe even fruitful knowledge about God and how he works, but we tend to forget that God is a person, a person who introduces himself.

I will never forget my Theology of God and Creation class when the professor asked us to try and describe God. As a theology major I was eager to accept the challenge and rifled through my mental notes to find every descriptor of God I knew was Biblical. God is good, he is loving, he is all powerful, he is omnipresent, he is the creator, sustainer, redeemer, on and on it went. As we shared our descriptors the prof said, “Yes, you’re right. But that’s not how the Bible speaks of Him,” and he directed us to the Psalms in particular.

What we found were descriptions like ‘God is the God who saved me, who sees me, who cares for my soul, who gives me victory, and prepares a table for me.’ These people described God by what he was doing in their midst, like he was a real person and not just an abstract concept. Our language as academics values the abstract but the Biblical authors knew God as imminent, involved, almost tangible. Even the subtle difference between God as Eternal (a philosophical word that is not in Scripture) and God as Everlasting (a biblical word that is much more earthy) is telling of this reality.

What we tend to forget is that God is already at work and that there is a dynamic conversation between us and God that is already going on that we are invited to participate in. What do I mean by dynamic conversation? I mean that God has already reached out to us in the person of Jesus and has given us the ability to commune with him, to live life in his power and in his will, and this opportunity is always present with us through the Holy Spirit interacting with our souls. We tap into this conversation by, believe it or not, speaking to God as though he were here right now (which he is of course) and sincerely asking him to make you a part of what he is doing. This is commonly called prayer.

In communing with God he will speak into your heart a great many things. What do I mean when I say ‘speak into your heart’? I mean that you will inherently know when God has spoken to you. For the scientifically fixated reader out there I mean that God will manipulate the atomic and subatomic matrix of your brain to communicate to you ideas, emotions, and concepts for no other reason than he loves you and made a promise long ago that whoever seeks him will find him and will not be put to shame. It’s a novel concept, you talk to God and he talks back.

But because I am writing this to address academics, we know that it’s also deeper than that. To become part of the dynamic conversation between God and all of creation it’s not just about you or you and God, it involves everything. Now obviously ‘everything’ is too big to fit into any human mind, so God doesn’t just dump the entire conversation into your head. What I mean when I say that it includes everything is that it involves what God is doing, not just in you or in your particular spheres but in everything around you. You are, in a sense, plugging yourself into the will of God and allowing it to shape how you think and act. What is the will of God you ask? It is the redemption of all creation in all spheres, it is love in the perfect sense, but not just as an abstract concept, but as a dynamic, living, and (from our perspective) messy interplay between God’s actions and the world around us. God actually has ‘projects’ (if I can use such a word) that are taking place around us that we can participate in, often without even realizing it, and by ‘plugging ourselves into God’s will and power’ we become his agents. This is for what is commonly called ‘The Kingdom of God.’

Why has God allowed this to happen and by what means has he allowed this to happen? Because the blood of Jesus is both our righteousness before God as well as our channel to God for he is our eternal sacrifice and our eternal mediator. Participating with God, through God, and in God in this manner falls under what is commonly referred to as ‘Faith.’

Let us never forget that God has acted first, that the conversation is alive, dynamic, current, and the most applicable thing to whatever question we may be asking or problem we may be facing. Let us never forget that the Word of God is self-communicating and makes himself knowable to the one who seeks after him. What do I mean when I say the Word of God? I mean that God speaks. God speaks throughout all time. This speech is uninterrupted, consistent, and timeless. The Reformers of the Church, as well as the ancient Church Fathers identified three modes of the Word of God. There is the written word. Yes, God literally speaks to you today about today when you read The Bible even though it was written thousands of years ago. There is the spoken word of God, when God speaks through the mouth of a pastor or prophet. Yes, God is literally speaking to you today about today when a pastor gives a sermon because he has plugged himself into this dynamic conversation and God speaks through him into your heart. Finally, there is the Word of God spoken by Christ, the physical manifestation of God as the human being Jesus of Nazareth. Because Jesus is the mediator between God and man all forms of the Word of God are spoken by Jesus. It is actually not the Bible that speaks to you, but Jesus through the Bible. It is not actually the pastor who speaks the Word of God, but Jesus through the words and message of the pastor, into your heart. It is not actually the stars, the sunrise, or anything in nature that speaks to you about God, any speech of God is spoken by Jesus.

Let us never forget that God speaks, that God reveals himself, that God is active, and that we are called to participate in his speech, revelation, and activity. Our focus as academics needs to be on Christ, not about Christ. Let us know God, not just know about him.