Sometimes I really want to fast forward to Heaven.
It makes me tired to listen to debates about God. I want to know Him.
When you love someone deeply, do you find other like-minded people and debate what he is like? Or do you go and sit at his feet and know him?
For the past couple months I've had a recurring mental picture of having the apostle Paul as a dinner guest in my house. How much would the talk with Paul be about the mechanics of theology (and I know that Paul can get mechanical), and how much would just be the joyful display of a man in love with his Savior? If he were there at my table, would I want to ask Paul to explain all the hard things in Romans 9, or would I be asking him to tell another story about the amazing miracles of Christ in his life? Would the Christ-likeness of Paul be more evident in his wise words or in his attitude and conduct to the others at my table?
Maybe I'm leaning too far in the direction of the experiential at the expense of other primarily important things.
But right now I just really want to be there.
8 comments:
Help me out here...
Are you saying that the existence of Christianity precedes its essence, or only that it takes priority?
Hey Emily,
I know what you mean....I've been wondering when does discussing theology or philosophy embody my knowing Christ, and when does it become a sort of mind game? What does knowing Him look/feel like?
I've been reading 1 John lately and have come to love his approach to Christianity and God. He doesn't come at you with a solution to the triune God or whether or not depth can exist without length or width :~)....but he simply says, "Little children, Love one another." Being the last apostle alive and having walked with Jesus as a young man and being the disciple whom Jesus loved, he began to realize in his later years that Christianity isn't founded on people perceiving correctly all truth (see Dante and his cosmology! :-). Rather we are called to love.
Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments," not, "if you keep my commandments you will love me." (John 14:15)
I take this to mean then, if debating about different attributes of God does not cause me to love Him then it ought to be thrown out. If reveling in His “glorious mystery” causes me to love Him, then by all means we ought to do so (and vice versa). It’s not about having the perfect apologetic, rather loving my fellow human beings....having a relationship with them :~).
Just to clarify....I’m not saying apologetics should be left alone. All I’m saying is, whatever causes us to love God and people correctly (emphasis on correctly), that is what we should do.
Well, there's my 2 cents about that. If I sound like a heretic please let me know!
Dan -- not sure how to answer your question. I was just saying that I want to be with Christ, as opposed to talking about Him.
Nick -- you don't sound like a heretic! (but I am curious to know why you think that John's perception changed over his lifetime) Yay for you liking the glorious mystery song. :) So... if two caribou fight a bear...
Definitely the bear! He is just too powerful (unless the caribou got lucky) to be overwhelmed by two caribou.
I think I supposed a change over John's lifetime as a natural maturation process. He was known first as "the Son of Thunder" and later became known for his love and compassion towards others. Not to mention there also seems to be a distinct difference in his style of writing; between his gospel and his three epistles (and Revelation).
Miss you, Emilius.
mle, I'm just being a silly medievalist again, always trying to put people and ideas into "proper categories."
To clarify my original question,
I'm still not clear on whether you think theology (and our conversations about theology) are derived from the loving acts/mystic experience/etc, or if you're saying that the theory is prior to but less important than the action.
It seems to me that your friend Nick (hello Nick!) is saying that the existence of correct Christianity (us loving one another) comes before its essence (a theology of love.)
(FWIW that's a trait of existentialism and Kierkegaard et al.)
Either way, amen to the wanting to be with Jesus part.
I find the comparison confusing. It seems that by contrasting theology with experience, we may be confining theology to only an intellectual science, and experience to just a practice of the heart (or at least something more relational than the head). I would agree that we shouldn’t confine our relationship with God to our intellect, but I don’t think that true theology (or talking about true theology) is merely a thinking game. In Mark 12:30 Jesus says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” God didn’t save our heart alone, or any one faculty of our soul, but our whole person. If God created our soul with a mind, a heart, and a will to act, and then reconciled all of those faculties to Himself again in Christ, and finally calls us to love Him with them all, then it seems that all should be exercised in our relationship with Him.
I don’t think that we come to know someone by knowing only about them, but I also don’t think that we should withhold our questions regarding the God who says “Seek, and you will find.” I suppose that to some people, some questions may seem inapplicable, or maybe even inappropriate, but to the person who has those questions, to not ask them would only mean more estrangement from meditating on and embracing the mystery of our God. The best I can think is that one should not ask the questions that they don’t have, but if they have questions, God forbid they don’t ask.
I agree with you Emily that if a discussion becomes a vain debate, then we really miss the point of discussing in the first place. And I agree with you Nick when you say anything that doesn’t promote love for God and our neighbor is not edifying; I too have been impacted with 1 John and his admonition to “Love one another.” But it seems that if Paul was to attend a dinner party, he could just as easily love the guests by sharing with them correct theology as by conducting himself with humility and manners provided that he speak the truth in love. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:… a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”
Also, it seems that marveling at God is not necessarily meant to be merely between me and God. I don't think that someone is removed from God by talking about Him with others, and not only to Him. It's interesting that when Isaiah saw the throne of God, he describes the seraphs as not just absorbing the beauty individually, but rather that they were calling "to one another" saying "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”
-Psalm 27:4
Thanks, camlost, for posting and shining a different light on the discussion. I guess I need to keep working on articulating exactly what it is that I mean. :]
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