For example, I know a number of things about my wife, Dawn, but these things do not encompass the reality of knowing her as a person. Knowing about Dawn is lesser form of knowledge of her. Knowing about someone usually comes from hearing about them and seeing them doing things. If I stop there with my knowledge of a person, then I might say I know about them or that I am acquainted with them, but I would not say I know them.
Knowing about God comes through hearing about him and seeing what he does and has done. This comes through the creation as Paul asserts in Romans 1: "Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made." This also comes through the church, the people who have known Jesus, who knows God. Jesus prays especially or these in John 17: "I pray also for those who will believe in me through [the disciples'] message." Also Peter writes Finally, God has arranged that a record be kept of what he has said and done among people. Although, it was written be people, he oversaw its creation from beginning to end as 2 Peter says: "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." What applies to these prophets applies to the Bible as a whole.
Obviously, there are many ways in which people first become acquainted with God. What is special about these particular means is that they come from Jesus. Other people have other ideas about how a person might start to know God, but these are the things that Jesus and his most intimate followers have developed in order to make God known in this life: the creation, the church, and the Bible.
As I write about these things, I am filled with gratitude for how carefully God has laid out the table of friendship between himself and each person. A person who is willing to come and eat of these things will find that he cannot not only know about God, but actually come to know God personally. In order to sit at the table of friendship with God, I see that I have some baggage to lay aside.
Why? Why must I change myself in order to start knowing God? One reason comes back to the way I come to know God. I come to know him as a person, not merely a subject. With this understanding, I realize that I cannot come to know any person merely as a subject. Cutting up and dissecting a person (whether figuratively or in fact) will not bring me to know them because knowing them takes a personal investment. Without any investment, personally knowing them is impossible. The investment is trust at some level.
So with Dawn, although observing her and hearing about her may reveal many things about her, I will not know her without investing myself in being with her and listening to her. Amazing things happen to my perceptions about Dawn, even after 19 years of marriage, when I spend time listening to her and just being around her. The things I observe and hear about her take on new meaning in light of the deeper knowledge of intimacy. The things I know about Dawn are conditioned by how much I know her. Without trust at some level, Dawn will not allow me to know her and I will remain on the outside of her life looking in. Without trust, I am a mere observer or maybe an acquaintance of Dawn. So it is with God.
This is what Jesus meant as he started his earthly ministry to bring the Father to humanity and humanity to the Father. He said, "Repent!" Repenting is not so much about being sorry as it is about changing one's mind. It is a decision to invest and trust instead of ignore and mistrust. For those willing to investigate and lay aside distrust of God and his purposes, Jesus says, "the kingdom of heaven is available." Knowing God and his purposes is accessible, but as with any knowledge, it has conditions. The condition for most knowledge is "repentance," that is, turning aside the idea that whatever is there is unknowable and investigating the matter firsthand.
Now Jesus gave me the means of knowing him, but he does not demand that I use the means. This is what makes him trustworthy as a teacher and a friend. He is willing to let me go and look for other ways to know God. He would be the first to encourage any ideas that were better than his own. Jesus knows that in order to obtain knowledge a person must seek it. Knowledge of God or anything else does not just happen or enter me passively like osmosis. To know something, I must seek it. To know a person I must seek them and ask them. So Jesus does not, really cannot, make us know God, because of the nature of knowledge, even on a personal level.
It doesn't take much experience with other people to realize that a person must be sought to be known. I cannot know Dawn unless I want to know Dawn. She can talk and strive to be with me all she wants to. If I don't seek her, she will remain unknown (and possibly be annoying) if she tries to make me know her. Jesus lays the table for knowing God, but cannot make me eat.
I run into three barriers when I try to explain knowing God, even in myself: "Do I want to know God?", "Can I know God?", and "Does God want to know me?" The first is the desire to know God. Do I want a loving God to be personally involved with me on a daily basis? Do I really want to know God? Obviously, if I don't desire to know him, I won't really know him. I will probably make up a lot of things about him from what I hear and see, but it will all be guesswork, just as it would be for any other person I don't care to know. Usually the real barrier here is that I want to do what I want to do without any interference, especially from God.
"Can I know God?" Another barrier is the doubt that I really can know God at all. Can I know someone that I cannot see or hear directly with my senses? This doubt presses on me not so much because I cannot conceive of knowing a purely spiritual being, but because how I have been brought up to think that only the things I can see, hear, and measure are worth paying attention to. Reality is what is seen and senses, not what is unseen or outside the senses, according to the general wisdom. As I move forward though, I realize that this doubt comes from social pressure, not from any reason or well-thought-out idea.
"Does God want to know me?" A third barrier is the suspicion that God may not really care to know me. Can someone all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good be interested in me? Can intimacy exist between myself and such a being? Not surprisingly, this suspicion comes most of all when I don't really want to be known. What I mean is that it is hard to be known, really known. It's scary. I look at myself from past to present and really doubt at times that I am worth knowing. The proof of this is in how many things I hide about myself and how I present something that is not really who I am to other people, God included. This bias is fed by enemies who tell me that I am not worth knowing and that God has abandoned me, if he was ever really there at all. However, I think it is because of my own fear of being known that I suspect that God can't or won't have a personal relationship with me. If God is so great, he certainly can come to know me intimately and personally. To say he is too "great" to know me is to misunderstand greatness.
Jesus has shown a God who wants to be known and a humanity that wants to hide from him. Jesus has explained how to come to know God through changing and seeking him. He has provided the way through three basic means: the creation, the church, and the Bible. These means are regularly disregarded and degraded because of a lack of desire to know God who might interfere with personal desires, a general social bias to regard the physical realm as all of reality, and the suspicion that God doesn't really want to know people and has abandoned this existence. Jesus teaches and shows all people that those who want to know God will find him, that he is knowable, and that he wants to know each person.
These three means for knowing God are not final, but are the beginning of knowing about him. Ultimately, they all become the means by which I pray and converse with God, thereby knowing him directly. In the light of prayer, the means of knowledge that Jesus gave become more brilliant and understandable, just as in my relationship with Dawn. My personal, conversational relationship with her brings to light the reasons and meanings for the things she says and does. I will not ever be in a place where I could always predict her, but I can say what her tendencies are and come to understand her reasons through our relationship. So it is with God.
Lord, you have provided the table of friendship so I can know you in this life. I need not be content with guesses, rumors, and suspicions. I can know you and come to understand you and your ways. Save me from my own desires that take me away from you, the world that presses me to see you as unreal, and my enemies that say you don't care. You are my Shepherd and I'll not be in want. Amen.
As a last word, I love this statement from the first followers of Jesus about knowing God in 2 Peter:
We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.†
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