Can I Ask That? – Part Two – How Can We Know What God is Like?
https://youtu.be/ikMcwrS3Cv4?si=cpk4gvHZoRYDWExX
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%201%3A1-3&version=NLT
Head/Mind – Helpful Information
An old story is told of four blind men who stumble upon an elephant. Each man begins to grope around in order to understand what they have found. One examines the tail, another the trunk, another an ear, and the fourth a leg. They each reach their own conclusion about what they have found and begin to describe their impressions to each other.
The one who examined the tail says that the animal in front of them is a like a leathery snake. The one who examined a leg says that it is more like a tree trunk. The one who examined the tail says that it is more like a rope. And the final man, who examined the ear, says that it is more like a great leaf. This story is meant to teach us that every experience of and opinion about God is equal and based mostly on ignorance and personal experience. What are we to make of this story? Well, let’s start with what it get’s right.
1. There is a great, transcendent reality that every human culture has encountered. And, because every human culture has encountered that reality, we would be arrogant to say that is only the figment of the imagination of every great culture the world has ever produced. All of the world’s great civilizations have experienced and sought to describe the transcendent reality we call God.
2. Our knowledge of God is limited. It always we be because we are finite. God is great beyond our words to describe that greatness and his glory cannot be contained by all the worlds and the vastness of all the universe. That fact alone should cause our knees to bow and our tongues to sing in adoration. Unfortunately, there are two things the story gets wrong.
1. The men in the story are not just limited in their understanding. They are also wrong. They are equally wrong. The elephant is not a snake, or a leaf, or a rope, or a tree. And, they are wrong because they are blind. What happens to this story if a fifth person comes along who can see? What happens next?
2. The person telling the story knows that it is an elephant. In other words, the person who is using this story to criticize the world’s great religions seems to believe that they know better than all of the world’s greatest sages and prophets.
But, the story is right to point out that many people speak with great confidence, when saying things about God that contradict what others say with equal confidence, leading us to think that we all might just be guessing, as we grope in the dark.
Heart – The Personal Connection
Long ago, God created humankind with a specific purpose in mind. God invited the human race to be vice-regents over the world, helping God direct the world towards the deeply good potential God had in mind for it. Instead, the human race chose to set evil and sin free within the world, bringing chaos and death to every corner of God’s good world. This choice also profoundly broke human nature. Yet, God was patient and looked for a human partner to put his plan back on track.
God found that partner in Abraham and Sarah. He chose their family to be the means by which God would bless the world and bring about his plan of salvation. Abraham and Sarah’s people, the Hebrew people, the Jews, were not chosen because God loved them more than others. In fact, Deuteronomy 7:6-10 says that God did not choose Israel because they were strong or mighty. In fact, God chose Israel when they were small and weak, a people without a land.
But why did he choose them at all? One is because they were willing to walk with the Lord and be his people. God would have only a willing partner. Second, because he had start somewhere. God may be infinite, but we are not. If God were going to do something in a finite world, he had to start somewhere, with someone, at some particular point in time.
But choosing Israel was just the beginning of the plan. Ultimately, the plan culminated in sending God’s own Son. And, his Son, Jesus, is God’s full disclosure. And, for as long as eternity endures, we will always have more of Jesus to discover. But, there is nothing more for God to disclose.
Hebrews one says that “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” We do not deny that some of the ways in which God made himself known was through other cultures, other civilizations, and the other great world religions. But, Hebrews continues, “But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
Everything there is to be know about God, everything that can be known about God, has been disclosed in Jesus. But receiving Jesus is like being given complete access to all the world’s libraries. Gaining access is just the beginning of the journey. God has translated himself. He has made himself fully available, withholding nothing. That it will take all of eternity to full explore and discover, there can be no doubt, but God has held nothing back. When Christians are asked How can we know what God is like?, our only answer is to point to Jesus.
Hands – The Practical Application
The ancient church and the great Protestant Reformers had a practice called learning Christ. It meant a lot of things, but I’ll do best to describe it. Learning Christ means to be a Jesus focused people. It means to be infatuated with Jesus. It means to be hyper-focused on him and to be obsessed with him. Critics may mock and say that it is like having Jesus as a boyfriend, but this doesn’t capture it. Jesus is too big, too real, to all encompassing to be our boyfriend. It would be easier to have sun and the moon as boyfriends. Why? Because all of the world’s great art cannot capture his beauty. All of the wonders of science, and the exquisite joys of mathematics cannot exhaust his wisdom. The loftiest ideas of philosophy and the heights of theology cannot plumb the depths of his mysteries. Our most playful moments and delightful dances cannot skim the joys found in him. The deepest friendships and the most erotic romance cannot compare with the depths of his love. All the splendors of world travel, and the varieties of the world’s best dishes, cannot match the delights found in him.
Those who learn Jesus return to the Gospels again and again, and they read the rest of the Bible through the lens of Jesus. They delight most in he songs that are about him and they gravitate to art that features him, such as the television series, The Chosen. Those who learn Jesus seek to saturate their minds with his words. They seek to pattern their way of life after him. They meditate on his Law/Torah day and night.
And yet, by doing so, they become less present in the world where they live. They become more real, more alive, more present. They discover by loving him more that they do not have less love for others. They have more. By becoming more obsessed with Jesus, they do not become less interested in life, they become like curious children, like investigative journalists, like dutiful researchers, methodical scientists, and muse-inspired artists who become interested in everything. They do not become so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good. They become so heavenly minded as to leave all the world around them permanently altered.