H,
“Is
it obedience over knowledge?”
In the difficult realm of
what we choose to believe or disbelieve about God, we often encounter these
signposts of another era that make present faith seem obsolete. It is much
harder to believe now than it has ever has been. The world is a cesspool of
random tragedy and magnificent material progress. There is one side of this
planet conformed to the existential nature of being much more than the other
side that grapples daily with the nature of existence in terms of being alive. This
one side has answered some of the questions of material progress with pockets
of poverty that fall under the line of indifference. The idea of hard work and
opportunity is not a fable but more a reality than on the other side where
there is a need for some divine intervention to wrestle out of the gloom and
into the light of the basics plus more. The absolute dream of the other side is
to go over to the one side. Progress is themed this way. It is like if in the
time of the historical person of Jesus all he told us was: try and be a Roman
Citizen. This is the height of civilization, try and be a roman citizen.
Many of our sermons sound like this. Don’t
they? The head and not the tail has become the height but not the depth.
This fairly long
introduction has really been about my effort at reconciling the material
existence on earth with the spiritual pilgrimage of being, as Cornell West puts
it, “a redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities”. There is something simple
about the embrace of faith that may lead us to think it is not enough to cover
all the sins of the world. This is the hasty conclusion we come to when we
reduce all of history to one single idea about God: if there was one, then
things would be better. Or, it does not make sense to make sin important. Or,
intelligent design cannot explain the chaos in the universe. Or, someone died
and I cannot see why. None of these things should be dismissed as petty. They are
not. None of them should be god either.
When Essie was born I got
this feeling in my own heart that was not of any light at all. A child growing
up in a dangerous world would scare any father. A girl growing up in a world
that does not recognise the absolute equality of gender, even many in the faith
do this, can only give a father night terrors. I was full of a certain rage and
pledged myself to acts of violence. This is not godly or God. This is just me
trying to make my way in the world with what I know. Of course God has another
line. I cannot save my precious daughter from the dangers of the world. I cannot
save myself. I was resigned to vengeance. Yet, God is resigned to love.
Do you see my point? What we
know by living in the world is always contrary to what God is trying to tell us
about ourselves and the way we should live for Him in this present world. The former
is the shortcut to feel better, to justify our actions and to feed our
megalomania about how we control our fate and the fate of others. The latter is
a true appraisal of a transient world where nothing can pass into the impending
Kingdom and so we must always act in the opposite direction from a priori knowledge.
Finite reason cannot fathom infinite deity. We cannot act merely on a posteriori knowledge
either. We have not had
the experience of everything yet.
We must have faith and learn
to obey. Faith first because you have to
believe there is something more than your mind can fathom and that other is the
definition of good. Obedience because then you are in a new reality and you do
not know your way. You must follow. All you have known before is not all that
useful. You must follow.
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