Not Knowing

How do we know what we know? Is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty? My five senses are continually sending me information about the world around me (including data about my own body), but can I trust those senses to give me accurate messages? Can I be certain that the workings of my own mind are sifting through that data in a reliable way?

Such questions don’t normally occur to us as we live our day-to-day lives. But philosophers have routinely discussed them for centuries. Epistemology is the study of the whole question of human knowledge and how it is acquired. Many thinkers have come to the conclusion that all we can be sure about beyond any doubt is that we are having sensations--sense perceptions. Others are convinced that the only real knowledge is found in the recesses of the mind--rational thought. Yet others conclude that it is a mixture of the two that determines what and how we know.

Personally, I’m convinced that the claim to “know” something beyond doubt is most usually a doubtful claim.

When God created men and women, He gave them a capacity to “know” Him and trust Him. They enjoyed fellowship with their Creator in a way that you and I only dream of. And yet, even in the Garden of Eden, doubt soon crept into the thinking of our first parents! It slithered into Paradise in the form of a devilish serpent.

The first human couple were tempted, doubted God’s goodness, and fell into sin, dragging their descendents in along with them. Ever since then, the whole question of “knowing” has been up for grabs. When Adam and Eve lost touch with their Creator, their whole basis for certainty about things was short-circuited. The world itself was no longer “very good” in the sense that God had first made it. Indeed, it was under a divine pronouncement of judgment--His curse. There was now no longer God’s unfettered benediction upon creation. Evil had entered, both in the world itself, in ourselves, and in our knowledge of it.

“You will be as gods,” the serpent had lied, “knowing good and evil.” The devil insists that there are really two sides to ultimate truth. God cannot be trusted. He’s not really as good as He is making out. He actually has a dark side. He’s holding back the good stuff for Himself, unwilling to share it with you humans. He’s a cosmic killjoy. His word can safely be questioned, doubted, even disobeyed. And “you will not surely die.”

This is why I normally meet a claim of absolute certainty with a degree of suspicion. There are a great number of false claims flying around. Ever since the Fall and the expulsion from Eden, people have had to be content to be BELIEVERS rather than KNOWERS.

What I mean is, since God the Creator-friend of Eden with whom Adam and Eve communed has become physically absent from us (until Jesus was born), any knowledge of Him has had to come to us “second-hand.” And human beings have learned to imitate the proverbial “man from Missouri” who stubbornly refuses to take anything at face value. While we continue to long for certainty and crave to be sure that we are sure, we find ourselves needing to TRUST some source or other in the HOPE of having that certainty.

“How do you KNOW that God exists?” Frankly, I cannot fully and finally answer that question to my own personal satisfaction. I have intellectual proofs and arguments that are convincing. I have had experiences and have read the Scriptures, and have even spoken to Him. But my own KNOWLEDGE of God’s reality is based on my FAITH in something, Someone, outside of myself.

It is interesting that the words “faith” and “knowledge” are used in the Bible in a somewhat interchangeable way. We are instructed to be true to the “faith of Christ” and to grow in the “knowledge of Christ.” Perhaps the growth from initial “faith” into “knowledge” is a progressive thing, becoming more and more firmly convinced through increased experience as a believer. But notice that those brought initially into Christ are referred to as BELIEVERS and not KNOWERS.

“Faith” is listed in the New Testament as one of the ninefold “fruit of the Spirit” and is in many ways superior to knowledge. If we consider the term “knowledge” to refer to something that is beyond any doubt, then we can see how faith would be a superior virtue. To go on believing something even though doubt is a possibility, must mean that that something holds a very high value to me. We experience this with our loved ones. I might doubt that my child can succeed in what he or she is attempting to do, but out of LOVE for that child, I go on BELIEVING.

I often wonder about the Lord Jesus and His mission here on planet earth to save His people from their sins. He was born into a Jewish peasant family and became a genuine human being with a body and a soul. But He was also fully God from the very beginning (John 1:1). His two distinct natures were never mixed or combined or confused with one another. So as a human being, Jesus was limited in his knowledge just as you and I are.

Never was any man more challenged to go on believing when it was possible to doubt God, than was Jesus Christ. As His death march to the Cross of Calvary drew closer and closer to His own personal “judgment day,” the Bible tells us that Jesus grew more and more agitated and emotion-laden. In his final hours with the twelve disciples, Jesus begged His heavenly Father for some other path than the horrors that awaited Him as the sacrificial lamb who’d be forsaken on that middle cross. To proceed with that assignment, Jesus had to fix His eyes firmly on “the joy set before Him.”

I just wonder if Christ “knew” with a sense of inhuman certainty that everything would turn out well--that crucifixion would be followed by resurrection? Or, like we, was he plagued with a sense of doubt even as His face felt the blows, His back felt the stripes, His shoulder bore the beam, His hands and feet felt the nails, and His voice screamed, “My God, why?”

If those words are true, if His mission really happened, and accomplished all it meant to, then all my doubts can be faced with an unflinching faith, and I can leave the ultimate KNOWING to my Heavenly Lord who knows ALL THINGS, and who reveals to me all I NEED to know.

Amen

MNA
5/22/2020

Heart on a Leash

I’m told that the pastor-theologian Jonathan Edwards was the keenest mind that America ever produced. He was one of the preachers God especially used during the 18th century to lead in the revival that came to be known as “The Great Awakening.” Edwards is also known for his thought and writing in the field of philosophy. One of his most important works in that field is his treatise on the freedom of the will.

Edwards insisted in that work that the human will (which he defined as “the mind choosing”) always makes its choice as it is directed by the person’s strongest desire at the moment. To put it in more modern lingo, the mind ALWAYS chooses by “listening to the HEART.”

You might object that you have often chosen a course of action because you were FORCED into it by your wife, your boss, your best friend, or the weather. Your heart wasn’t in it, it wasn’t at all what you DESIRED to do at the moment, but you chose it anyway.

But if you consider the exact circumstances of each choice, you will discover that Jonathan Edwards had it exactly right. When your boss told you to do something you didn’t care to do, you did it because you didn’t WANT to disappoint him or her, or simply because you WANTED to keep your job. Your conflicting desires at the moment came to a point where the strongest one won the battle. You gave in to your wife because you desired harmony with her more than your own way. You gave your wallet to the mugger because you desired your life more than your money. You cancelled the picnic on a rainy day because you didn't desire soggy sandwiches.

So, all of our mental decisions, and hence, our actual choices of action, are prompted by the desires of our hearts. The strongest desire ALWAYS WINS.

This is a challenging idea, at least in my mind. When I examine my own heart--I mean when I HONESTLY examine it, I find all kinds of selfish desires: wealth, ease, comfort, the respect of my fellow man, the love of my wife and children, self-esteem, and so on. And yeah, there are other darker desires lurking down deep that I don’t wish to even LOOK at, let alone acknowledge or make public.

One of my ongoing, overpowering desires involves expressing my love of beauty and creativity. I enjoy the ACT of creating, whether musically, visually, or poetically. I love to engage in, observe, revel in, immerse myself, lose myself in the realm of the beautiful. Sometimes I find myself desiring beauty so much, it is like a narcotic--like a golden idol I’m tempted to WORSHIP.

This is one of the many reasons I need the Lord in my life. I need His presence. I need His truth. I need His only begotten Son Jesus the Christ. I need the Holy Spirit’s promptings to grab my heart and SHAKE it. I need my DESIRE for HIM to grow...and grow...and grow.

I need my desires to pant for God like an exhausted deer longs for streams of water. I need God’s word to follow me through my day, poking me like a cattle prod when my darker desires start to belch their poison from far, far down in my soul. I need a ready antidote for that sinful venom when I taste it on my tongue.

Desire can be a wonderful, meaningful, glorious thing--as can creativity and beauty.

But I must never forget that the most UGLY and POISONOUS being that ever lived began as the most beautiful of the heavenly host. And one of the things he counted on in Eden was that the woman would see in that forbidden fruit a thing “desirous for making one wise.”

Desire is like an awesome, gorgeous animal. It’s a huge, splendid tiger. There is coming a day when all the tigers of humanity’s desires will finally be let loose to roam freely throughout the land, never to hunt or kill again in all God’s new creation… 

But that day isn’t here yet. For now, that huge, beautiful beast must be on a strong leash. I can’t afford to totally set it free. Because all of my sins began, and will continue to begin, at the point of my strongest desire.

Lord God, may your strong, wise, beautiful hand always hold tightly to my heart’s leash.

Amen.

MNA

5/3/2020