Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

How to know you know what you know

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Acts 2:4
They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

A branch of philosophy called epistemology explores "the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope." So succintly says Wikipedia. In the Bible, which according to itself is true and inspired by God, not everybody knows everything all the time. In fact, it's taken as a given and a grace that we don't.

We might have eaten from the tree of knowledge, but right away Adam is ashamed of what he suddenly knows. God takes pity on Adam and Eve and protects them from eating also of the Tree of Life. God does NOT allow their bastard knowledge to become the foundation for his children's eternal life.

They try anyway. The power of what they know brings them together, and their Tower of Babel (see Genesis 11 and both great film versions of "Metropolis") would bring them power and fame. This is not a good thing, even for themselves. Their need for power and control prevents them from depending on God, and from loving each other. So God "confuses their language, so that one will not understand what another says."

Sound familiar? Well, it does if you understand English.* And if not? Well, it's just a batch of babble, isn't it? And that's familiar too. Babble-rousing has been a huge part of our history ever since the old days of Genesis.

God cuts through this confusion and mis-understanding by speaking to "prophets" and others, sometimes in their own language, sometimes in His. Moses listens to God speak through a burning bush and discovers the power of passive resistance, leading a great revolution and exodus in Egypt. Thus is born the nation of Israel. Ezekiel's remarkable visions were full of God's words to him, words he was told to share with his people. And God promised another prophet, Joel, that someday he would pour out his spirit "on all flesh."

But is that what we want? Can we tolerate that kind of pouring out? Paul says that "what may be known about God is plain" to us and has been since the creation of the world. In spite of that, he says, our "thinking became futile and our foolish hearts were darkened." Maybe I don't want what God wants to give.

The Holy Spirit gives me a new willingness to say "yes" to what God wants to give. I may or may not cut through human babble and speak in a foreign tongue, but God gives me more understanding of His words. In this understanding I begin to depend on him and begin to love someone beside myself. I see more clearly what is true and what is not. What I can know, what I cannot. Mystery is sometimes illuminated, but always validated.

It's almost always better not to pretend I know something I don't. I avoid walking out on limbs that will break and plunge me to my death. And I won't encourage you to walk out there with me ... "Come on, we'll be all right, let's just drop bombs deep down near our aquifers and let them explode. We need natural gas. The water will be all right." Do we really know that's true? How much risk should we be willing to take?

God's spirit guides me into all truth. Not the kind of truth where I know everything. God's truth allows me to be dependent on God, and love others, and know that I often DON'T know. And to be OK with that.

God is love. God is truth. I can rest on that.

There is no love and no truth and no value which does not come from you, Lord. Thank you for guiding and holding and keeping me while I learn that. I learn it again and again because I forget it again and again. But You don't move. You stay with us. You endure forever, and we give thanks to you. O Lord.

*Esperanto was first published in 1887 and is today the most "reasonable" potential universal language. Wikipedia is available in this language (http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedio:%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do) if you're curious.

Devotions Archive

How to know you know what you know

Sunday, June 12, 2011