Posted by giveawayboy on April 23, 2003 at 20:04:27:
In Reply to: Re: How can you KNOW God / Jesus? posted by giveawayboy on April 23, 2003 at 10:45:39:
O.K. Rob, Now I will try to respond more thoughtfully to your great post! Thanks for sharing. I will indicate your comments and mine. Here goes:
Rob: I had a friend of mine ask me today, "How can you know God?". I talked with him further about it and I was kind of stumped. All it did was make me ask questions myself, sort of like the one I posted the other day. I returned his quesiton with the thought that Jesus calls us his friend, which would make him accessible, able to be known. I thought, then asked him what it was like to know his own friends or family. He said that was different because you can see your friends and family. True, you can see them.
Bill: True. I think it's good that you were stumped and that you asked quesitons. I think just thinking about family and friends too, was a good exercize. Still, I don't know if I really have an answer for this. I believe we can know God, but I believe it's some mysterious access he gives us. The whole Divine thing has to be mysterious. Not that there isn't ever a practical side to it. I think it must be very practical, but to just enclose it into a watertight system, well, I don't know. I think you did the right thing by being stumped and asking questions.
Rob: Man, then I thought about the incomprehensibility of God. It's like a huge paradox. God calls us to "reason together" (as friends?) with him in Isaiah. Reason together with God? How?
Bill: Exactly? How? I like what you said about paradox though. Two things that are always about paradox--God and The Cure. And incomprehensibility is a wonderful word. It reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Rob: Isn't that like an ant reasoning with the entomologist? How does the ant know the scientist?
Bill: I think a standard evangelical Christian response might be to suggest that the entomologist would suddenly become and ant and have fellowship w the ants in this way. Still, I think that is taking a previously inherited belief about Christ and reading it into the entomologist. I would come at it from a different angle. One would have to know alot about the way ants 'know' things, and what kind of 'knowledge' ants have. What is the ontological state of the ant? And what are their thoughts on entomologists? Would they have any reason to believe such a detacthed creature would be interested in them? Would they know if said entomologist had created a mock ant hill in a lab somewhere, just because he wanted to follow one ant around all day to see where he went, what he did with his time? Would they know if this same entomologist understood the various kinds of ants and other closely related insects? Who knows? What would we have to know about the entomologist? Has he studied ant communication techniques enough to know how to engage in a conversation? Would he even begin to know about whether they communicated through radio waves, or some hidden dynamic yet uncovered? Perhaps he has observed some migratory tendency or a little dance that might MEAN something to the ants. Will he reproduce this pilgrimage or start to dance a jig? One thing that seems fundamentally odd about this example is that the entomologist is absolutely fascinated (we can assume for the sake of argument) by something that he did not create. In this creation model, he does not preceed the object of his affection. The apple of his eye, is merely that, not his creation, just his beloved. I think the creator model implies that somehow the Creator's knowledge of that ant is of a whole different variety. There is something written deeper than the genes in an ant that is of the same nature as something which came before the ant. There must be a mystical signature inside the ant. Well, I think that the scientist to ant model is going somewhere, but that is more in terms of size and differences. I think the fascination of the entomologist could arise from acknowledging the wonder in a world where ants and entomologists are equally inhabitants. Such a world is stalked by such different forms of life, yet in some way he perceives that he must have some relationship to the ant, just as he might perceive he might have some relationship to digger wasp for that matter. There might even be a day when he perceives that in some very real way he is related to the herpetologist and possibly even the Taoist philosopher. All of them seem to acknowledge some pattern in the air, something deep in the fabric of being which betrays a link. I think that the perception of this mysterium tremendum ad fascinans is a key to beginning to inquire about the way God might know us. In this sense I think you are already there. Admittedly I'm verbose. Hope I'm not misreading you by the way.
Rob: Jesus died for our sins and rose again so we can commune with God again, but how does that enable us to know Him? People say that you get "saved" by hearing the Word of God. How does a blind person know how to receive sight (spiritually speaking) in order to see the salvation of God, and in turn ask for it?
Bill: Good question. I don't know if I have an answer for it.
Rob: I guess this would be like the entomologist giving the ant his "being" in order to have the ant see him for what he is, huh? I don't know. It's a terrible anology, I'm sure but it's all I could think of.
Bill: Well, you have to start somewhere. For me it would be like this MYSTERY that is not an ant or an entomologist, yet in which the antiest of ants and the most entolmological of entomologists can see w profound meaning himself, his own code unveild for the first time. Still, this MYSTERY would be a person OTHER than the ant or entomologist. I guess. Oh mish mash. I just think it's good to keep your brain cells firing the way you're doing. We cannot wrap up all these mysteries at once. Still, I love your inquisitive spirit. Keep asking these great questions. After awhile you will see that more than easy answers, it's good to cultivate a sense of wonder.
Rob: My friend and I agreed to continue the conversation at a later time, when there was more time available to mull this over and really talk about it. In the meantime I thought I would share it with you all and see if I could get some "alter-perspectives". I think I just made up a new compound word...
Bill: I like that word, 'alter-perspectives'. We have lots of new words in circulation among our friends. Words like 'nomos' and 'moonstones' and 'gateways' and even 'databases'. We often take real words and use them w broader meanings or even more specific meanings depending on the needs.
Hey, Rob, thanks for listening to my ramble. Keep thinking about all this stuff. I like talking about ants.