On knowledge, addendum

So seek knowledge, yes.
But what to do when we've found it?

It's a process, agreed, but it is possible to really know stuff. I mean, I know people who know stuff, so I know it's possible.

What then, ennui?

That would be the worst: the weariness that comes from having been there, learned that, can expound upon it from memory. I know the right answers; I have the right angle.

How do we keep from that tired sense of accomplishment?

Having not quite gotten anywhere close, I can't tell you. But I can talk about Christmas.

When I wrote this, I was approaching my 25th Christmas. Not a huge span of time, but O Come, O Come doesn't thrill like it did the first times I really listened to the lyrics. I've thought a lot on the significance of Christmas. I've read articles, essays, heard sermons-- not exhaustively, but enough that Christmas doesn't make my intellectual pulse race like it would if it were new.

So. Now what? Resign myself to a wonderless, forced smile, mental channel changing celebration?

Or be glad for the small things? That the cold, dark night is decorated by little lights? That people sing more at all? That the season with the least sunlight has festivities to break up the monotony? (Can you imagine a post-Christian, non-celebratory winter? ugh.) That children have something to get excited about? That someone can learn a lovely old tradition for the first time?

I furthermore suggest...
For those who really are knowledgeable:
1) teach- pass it on. Be a means of grace.
2) apply- live it... and live it well till the end of your 80. THAT's an accomplishment.
3) defend- fight for it. (eg: Athanasius contra mundum)
4) create- for the propogation, study, admiration of truth- make it beautiful, make it accessible (i'm reminded of a comment I read once saying that growing up, the hymnbook was their catechism. i'd say Michael Card and Dennis Jernigan were some of my early catechists. Lewis and GK and other masters of language my latter ones.)
5) be humble.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. God is not impressed with worship-less wisdom. ...the world did not know God through wisdom. It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. All the knowledge we can gather does not make us more saveable- its purpose is to make us more glad, more wondrous that we are being saved!

6) be humbly grateful. What do you have that you have not been given? Misusing God's gifts is worse than never having received them. Knowledge- in a vacuum, as an end, not means- puffs up, but love edifies.

TEACH! Joyfully! Exuberantly! Seriously! Freely you have received; freely now give.

So,
Knowledge is a great thing, but it's not the only thing, the main thing, either. It's a means. It's a means. It's a means.
...for worship.
...for right service (worship).
...for right faith/ thinking about God (worship).

It will not be based on our knowledge that God divides us- sheep and goats- at the end of the age, but on how we applied that knowledge. [Do I forget grace?]

Knowledge is a gift... but not a casual trinket. It is, better said, an investment. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power.

The goal of every Christian, especially as regards the "little ones," is to be able to live (even if we couldn't conscientiously say it): "Be imitators of me, as I imitate Christ." And Christ did not stop with speaking wisdom- He was the wisdom of God- for us.

Yeah. That'll deflate your puffed-upness real quick. Be imitators of me...
...as I study and question (like Christ in the temple)
...as I rejoice and teach (like Christ schooling the disciples on boats, mountains, and country roads)
...as I wash dirty feet (like the Rabbi in a certain upper room.)

Part 3: On Knowledge

Intro here.
Part 2: On Virtue: here.
Part 4: On Self-control

recap: 2 Pet. 1 gives us a list of qualities that, if we practice them, we "will never fall": Be diligent to add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge... self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love.

My presuppositions: Not only do these qualities come from faith, they also strengthen it. They keep our faith from being ineffective, unfruitful, or generally good-for-nothing. They help us become farsighted and to remember we were cleansed from our former sins.

My questions: Why? How?

Quality two: Knowledge
Knowledge, here used, will include learning, wisdom, and understanding. [Note: One of the reasons it's taken so long to type up "Part three" is the sheer audacity of me having anything to say on knowledge. But, by that token, i'd never write about anything at all except maybe cute quotes from Mexicans and my dreary, carnal responses to mundane life, the latter of which is not interesting at all and would totally disuade me from ever writing. so, pretentious or not, here's "knowledge".]

"Knowledge is power" is a oft-repeated 20th century mantra. I think, po-mo or not, it's true.

Because, you see, we, as God-believing Christ-followers, wrestle not against flesh and blood but against...

1) the flesh's persuasions, petulance, and occasional outright mutiny,
2) the devil (et al.) insinuations and position papers on us and existential reality,
3) the world's perspective and provocations,
4) ignorance's blindness, dimness, and shortsightedness,
and
5) bad theology's hallucinations.

These are enemies to clear-seeing, fruitful, enduring faith in Christ. On a good day, they can get to us. On a bad one...

Is there a defense? How can we fight them? Do we just have to, as I tell the kiddos, "Suck it up, and take it like a man?" What if the enemies don't fight fair? What if we're too puny and inexperienced to fight, eh, the vast and vicious, devastatingly clever enemies of mankind?

Vicarious experience... and having to learn the hard way.

This is speculation, but I think Job's suffering was greatly, greatly exacerbated because he came before the Psalms chronologically and not just in the table of contents.  Moses, David, Asaph had tough battles made worse because they had never read the Gospels. Heretics have suffered for lack of catechism. People have lost faith for lack of Lewis, Shaeffer, Ravi. People daily go crazy for lack of truth.

...and, for those living A.D., (especially us inhabitants of the year of our Lord 2012), the horrifying and hopeful thing is that it doesn't have to be.

Not that knowledge would have made those early heroes' suffering go away, but that suffering was added on top of what they were already going through. Yet, we benefit from them because they were "constructing knowledge" through their experience. A hard way to do it for them, but we are blessed and taught because in the midst of hardship they were honest, they had faith anyways, and God taught them His mercy existentially.

***
Today, people still suffer for lack of Psalms, Gospel, catechism. Not just that, people go to hell and refuse heaven because they do not understand... God, reality, themselves.

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you..."

Our ignorance is inexcusable. Christ is the Image of the Invisible God, the Word of God, the Logos, the Expression of the Eternal Father. He is not hidden; He is revealed. He is not far; He is so near, so close, that grasping just a little, we might lay hold of Him.

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life--
the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us."

He is the ultimate possible experiential knowledge. (Christians, in an ironic way, actually are a type of empiricists. We just include data compiled before us and accept that this is one experiment that will take a while before we get the results back on.)

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

But that is not to say we do not compile as much information as we can about those things we hope for, the things we don't yet see. We want them. We're rushing toward them with all the strength we can find. Why would we not want to know more about them?

Faith is not for people who want not to see, not to have evidence. It is for those who are frustrated by our own finiteness in such a vast universe and near such an infinite God. It is for those who want to know as we are known but understand how far we are from that.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork."

The Holy Spirit is our wisdom and counselor. The universe (place) and life (time) compose our classroom and school day. Christ is our theme; the Scriptures are our source. The Church and her theology are our tutors. All knowledge, all questions, all experience are word problems on the test, needing right application of truth to "get them right."

One of the most amazing, freeing things I've ever been taught is that "all truth is God's truth." Dios es, as the Hispanics say, grande. He's really that big. Much of the Christian life is a fight against our misunderstanding of God and reality.  To refuse to seek knowledge- of any healthy kind- is to choose to embrace ignorance, to choose to underestimate Christ, and to choose to be content with fallen, "natural" misunderstandings... presenting one's mind as idiot prey to obliging predators.

And, as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. If our thoughts are erred (and they will be), we will err- in decisions, in actions, in worship, in communication of God. We will turn away from the God who fills heaven and earth because our world is too small for that to mean anything to us.

To refuse to seek knowledge is to hold myself up as sufficient and complete... to proclaim that I've got divinity "in my bag," and " 'No, thank you,' past couple millenia of God-seekers, 'no, thank you' past six thousand years of human recorded experience, 'no, thank you' brilliant investigators of the natural world, 'no, thank you' deep meditators on the human condition, 'no, thank you' new revelations of reality...

...my 24 years hodge-podge of public schooling, leisure reading, undergrad sometimes-studies, chance conversations, and weekly sermons are sufficient to 'get' God... to handle life... to make good decisions and participate in the Divine Nature."

No, thank You, I shan't have any more. I'm fool.

***
Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you. Love her, and she will guard you.

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.

...Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life...

The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens; by His knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge... fools despise wisdom and instruction.

All truth is God's truth, but theology is most necessary of it all. Pitting theology against "real" knowledge of God is a damnable false dichotomy. People with experiential knowledge of God and bad theology have been victim to sad and unnecessary suffering and sometimes apostasy. Christians turn away from the real God because they've believed gossip about a fake one.

...because everyone has theology; just not everyone has good theology. Yes, it's possible to know God and not know systematic theology as such, but that's only because God has had mercy and taught systematic theology to that person on a one-on-one, need-to-know basis. Yes, it's possible to know systematic theology and not know God, but that's like saying it's possible to be married to a stranger. Possible, but definitely not the purpose of the institution.

Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks,

"How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? 
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?"

...for the simple are killed by their turning away, and the 
complacency of fools destroys them.

If physics and poetry can provoke us to worship, good night, what do you think some good commentary will do?! There is much to say on the study of God. Maybe I'm not the best to say it, but I must say something, if only to myself. If we read anything, we ought to read truth about God. Beware having a shallow source pool. If it's true, it's probably been repeated. If it's false, it's probably been refuted. Seek God to give guidance. Be humble (it shouldn't be hard, reading the thoughts of some of the deepest people this earth has known) and seek, seek, seek truth.

Reason is a gift from God. If something is true, especially if something is true about God, it can hold up under intense pressure. Don't be afraid to question or to be dissatisfied, just remember you don't have to refer to God in 3rd person while doing so. Endure ambivalence and uncertainty, but don't get used to them; ultimately, they're temporary.

Above all, the purpose of theology is worship. Worship God when you "get it." Worship God when you don't. Worship God when something clicks. Worship God when you think you're a few screws short and have few hopes of finding them. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, not merely of those who have all their theological ducks in a row. Intellectually discontent or high on a God-epiphany, remember and rejoice that God rejoices to hear: "To whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life..."

Addendum: for the knowledge weary

Part 2: On Virtue

intro here.
part 3: on knowledge

recap: 1 Pet. 1 gives us a list of qualities that, if we practice them, we "will never fall".

My presuppositions: Not only do these qualities come from faith, they also strengthen it. They keep our faith from being ineffective, unfruitful, or generally good-for-nothing. They help us become farsighted and to remember we were cleansed from our former sins.
My questions: Why? How?

Quality One: Virtue

Definitions:
Virtue, according to Oxford, is "moral excellence; goodness." * Strong's lists this using as "arete" (a big deal for the Greeks) which is: 1) a virtuous course of thought, feeling and action; 1a) virtue, moral goodness; 2) any particular moral excellence, as modesty, purity.

When I think of virtue, I also think of Proverbs 31: early riser, hard worker, trustworthy, compassionate, wise, kind, generous. Someone who demonstrates good stuff on the inside and outside.

*Not really catechized, the best i can expound upon the historical virtues is to say go read Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III. He lists them as being faith, hope, charity, prudence, temperence, justice, valor. (That's a translation from Spanish, the only version of the book I have.) I haven't read the book in a while, so I'm not going into depth on them.

Connection to faith:
"With the merciful, You will show Yourself merciful;
with the blameless man, You show Yourself blameless,
with the purified, You show Yourself pure;
and with the crooked, You make Yourself seem tortuous (twisted)"
 
To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure...
The pure in heart shall see God...
 
So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
 
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts... for My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.

You thought I was altogether like you. But..."

***
When we sin, we obscure our vision of God. We were made like Him, but we've spent many, many decisions trying to mar the family resemblance. Making ourselves familiar with sin, we cannot now look at ourselves and assume God is like us. We choose to understand evil, to advocate for the devil, to sympathize with the flesh (an unreliable narrator if there ever was one)... instead of understanding God, communing (having in common) with Christ, and reasoning with His Spirit.

But we don't have to. When we are born again, we receive a "new" nature... a new natural, a second childhood, a new relationship with the Father we were always meant to adore. We have a second (first?) chance to be human, really, really human, in a good way, and as God-similar as the quinessential man Himself, Christ Jesus, showed us we could be. And the new relationship means that instead of obeying the first impulse that pulses through our brains, we learn from God how to be, how to do, how to grow into ourselves... We don't even know what all that will look like, except to know that when Christ appears, we'll be like Him.

So we seek to be like Christ. We become imitators, as dear children, of our newfound Father. But the crazy thing is, like Lewis said, people usually become what they pretend to be. Women are not born nurturers; but give us some kids, we pretend to be motherly, and end up BEING, thinking, sounding like our own mothers in all sorts of ironic, unexpected ways. Leaders might have leaderly tendencies, but a whole lot of confidence is just "faking" it, until all of sudden, one doesn't have to fake anymore. Everybody else really does need to do what we tell them to do, and we're going to make sure they do and convince them to want to. Our habits make us... identities don't just form habits; it works vice-versa as well.

What's it to do with faith?
When we seek to live virtuously- not just conventionally, but really to do, love, think, want what is good for us and for all, so help us God- we'll find our brain, our soul, our selves are changed. Deciding to love others will become so quick that we won't even notice the decision; we'll think it automatic, sort of like Someone else we know whose every work is done in kindness. [Let me insert: when we imitate God's goodness, we need to think a lot about motive. When has God ever done anything out of guilt? Responsibility, yes. Guilt? No. Fear? No. Obligation? No. Duty, responsibility are fine as long as we do something because it's a part of who we are. It's a function of identity, not image. God upholds His character but is not out to gain anyone's approval. He does good because He is good, He loves good, He wants to see good, He loves to have us see good, so on. There's a lot to it; I haven't thought it all through. Why does God do good?] As we do good, we'll be thinking, "Now, why am I doing this?" and we'll see the good effects and understand, "Oh. That's why God likes this." As we stand resist evil, we'll see it's ugliness and desperate power struggle. "Oh. No wonder God burns against this stuff. And I used to crave this?!"

When we do right actions from a right heart, we'll find we understand God a whole lot more. Instead of wanting to mistreat someone, and feeling God is going to get us for it, we'll love that person, and understand how we'd hate for that person to have to deal with crabbiness, like that of which we are capable. His thoughts won't be so alien to us as before. Instead of thinking, " 'Sell all you have and give alms?!' Ouch, how harsh, how radical," we'll think, "Man, look at all this stuff. Is there anything good I can get out of it before it all burns? I won't miss it..." By being like Him, we'll start thinking like Him. And people who think alike, duh, understand each other.

God our Father, without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, will be more recognizable as we seek to become more recognizable as His children. We won't just say "Let God be true and every man a liar." We'll notice, more and more, "In the midst of liars, God is true!" We will become not just positionally on His side, but on His side by identity, by thought, by deed. Not having decided just once to trust Him to save us, we'll have trusted Him day after day to save us, to change us, to help us, to give us strength, to give us love, to shut up this whining old man, to grow into the new.

Faith will not be us leaping awkwardly  in the dark because we feel it's what we're supposed to do, or even because it's our only hope (what faith is at the beginning). Our faith will be a relieved jump through the dark to the One we recognize in a world of strangers, someone we understand in a senseless world. True virtue helps us never fall because it trains us how to jump instead .

Untitled (Intro)

thought one:
"Then there are some statistics that we get from places like Barna Group and Rainer Research—these are Christian organizations that study church involvement patterns. They say that by the time someone who is raised in the church reaches their 30th birthday, there‟s an 80 percent chance they will be disengaged from the church."
~ Drew Dyck, family life today

background:
i cite 16 as the age when the existence of God really started working some major changes in my mind and life. (that was wordy, but i don't really have a better way to put it.) almost immediately, almost funnily, i started to worry about other kids, like me, raised in the church but living in a world where dark and deceptive forces (influences, ideas, desires) wanted to blind them to the light of God.

but now there is a new horror in my neighborhood... not of kids not accepting the work of Christ, but of brethren rejecting it. and part of the horror is this: how do i know i won't do the same? i've met my loyalty, and i am not impressed.

thought two: factors

last summer, my brother, his family, and some inlaws were discussing Romans, and one person asked, "Well, why do people leave Christ?"

Indeed. Do they misplace their faith... "lose" it? Is faithlessness a disease? Does it just attack people? Is it some inherent weakness in their particular faith (gulp)? If we could figure this out, couldn't we find hope for some preventative medicine at least, if not an antidote?

Gary turned the question over to us. My elder nephew voiced his opinion:

"Lack of self-control."

This does not surprise me from said elder nephew. He's a pretty hardcore man-child. Just memorized "If" by Kipling, and very appropos the poem to his early-rising, systematic-reading, mountain-climbing self.

Though probably true, the comment sounded harsh to me, as i'm not quite so hardcore as he. Then, hardcore or not, i read II Peter 1, and i thought again.

It talks about supplementing faith with
~virtue
~knowledge
~self-control
~steadfastness
~godliness
~brotherly affection
~love

Wait, "self-control"? I thought of Benja and paid more attention. Now, i like lists, and i like to think about the lists in Scripture, but this stood out... and here's why.

8For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.


That part:
You.
Will.
Never.
Fall.

Whoa. That made me do a double, a triple, a multi-take.

thought three: but what about grace?
In recent times, i am very, very wary of legalism and strident about grace, so i had to think about that in relation to the text. Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

 It is God, God, God and His grace and Holy Spirit and love and the work of Christ that saves.

We just trust Him.

However, that trust in Him is not
inevitable,
indestructible,
or even as constant as grace.

It is a gift of God, but one that is to be guarded and developed, (not by the flesh, but by cooperation with the Spirit.) When we are faithless, (just like when we are loveless, joyless, unpeaceful, also things worked in us by Him) He remains faithful (because that is how He is). However, faithlessness can lead to despair and denial, in which we refuse God's grace, and He denies to override our wills. At that point, we're not just suspecting bad things about God, we choose "No God." Faithlessness is a very bad and dangerous place to be. You're standing over an abyss, held only by God's grace, and contemplating commanding Him to let you go.

So.
Our faith isn't everything, but it is the means of everything- to and from God. And if it is so important and yet non-inevitable, how to keep it, take care of it? How to cherish this gift Christ has given us?

Defining terms: Faith = trust in God to be God... to be good, loving, righteous, true, saving. And the above list of "good things" are supplements to that trust... (Hokily, I think of vitamins.) These qualities (virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, brotherly kindness, love) energize, strengthen, work with, and refine that God-worked faith to be something enduring and precious to God... that we will never fall.

This is part one.
Part two, forthcoming: On Virtue