Back to the Well: Refreshed by Study

Rev. Matthew Sturtevant

March 18,2007

How do you know God?

Most of you have probably used the search engine Google to search on the internet for something that you needed.  Research for a paper…someone’s address…song lyrics…Google can help.

Have you ever tried to Google “God”?  Not completely satisfying, is it?  Even if you read all of these articles and websites, you might still feel like you don’t quite KNOW God.

The Bible has many models for how we know God, but I am experiencing two that I want to share:

Over these last 30 days leading to Easter, I am reading through the books of Psalms and Proverbs together.  I have always heard about but never tried a trick to reading these two in 30 days.  There are 31 Proverbs and 150 Psalms, so one chapter of Proverbs and 5 Psalms a day will get you through both books at the same time.  So far, so good.

But it has been a fascinating journey through these very different books.  Through their different styles, they both speak very differently about HOW we KNOW God.

“Psalms” way of knowing God

The Psalms give us one way to know God.  It is the knowledge of experience.  We see in the Psalms a collection of experiences.  Many are attributed to David, but the reality is that they were probably written by a larger number of authors.  And they convey different experiences, different fears, different emotions.

Psalm 100 is an energetic praise Psalm about how incredible God is and how great life is for the author.

Psalm 8 is a thanksgiving Psalm about the beauty and wonder of creation. Psalm 22 is a lament, angrily asking God why he had left the author, leaving him to live a horrible life.  It was the Psalm that Jesus spoke from the cross when he cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me.” Immediately following is Psalm 23, a Psalm quietly resting in the arms of God, in the midst of pain. Psalm 51 is a confession psalm of David: asking for forgiveness and cleansing.

These psalms are prayers.  They are born of experiences, of emotion, of loneliness or fear, of comfort or thanksgiving.  The psalms remind us that one of the ways of knowing God is through experience… through prayer… through admitting our emotions and our feelings to God.  How many of us can say that we have been blessed by a prayer experience, felt touched by God through a time of meditation or prayer.  I preached a couple of weeks ago about that time of solitude that leads us into the presence of God.  It is often in those times of quiet that we are able to know God in a special way.

Many of us probably feel more at home with the Psalms method of knowing God.  Prayer, meditation, “spiritual” ways to connect to God are all important to us.  Maybe you are the type of person to whom being honest and vulnerable with our feelings and emotions is important.  If you are a Psalms person, the way that you experience God, that we participate in worship, that we connect to others – all are emphasized.  “Psalms” teachers and preachers are vulnerable with their emotions, moderators instead of simply bearers of Truth.   Maybe your favorite books of the Bible are the OT narratives, or the stories of the Gospels, or the prayers of the Psalms.

Proverbs way of knowing God

But others of us have a different way of knowing God.  You might feel like you have more of a “Proverbs” way of knowing God.  The other book that I am reading through for Lent is Proverbs.  Proverbs is also about real life, but it reads very differently than the Psalms.  Instead of emotional pleas and honest confessions, Proverbs is about knowledge and wisdom.  The book of Proverbs was probably also written by several authors, though many of them have been attributed to Solomon, David’s son.

The book is a collection of short sayings or poetic aphorisms (ch. 10):

A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother.

Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Hatred stirs up dissention, but love covers all wrongs.

 Some are distinctly religious:

He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.

 Others are apparent to those with no religious belief, but fall into the area of common sense:

The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.

 And some are just funny, but true:

Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion.

The book of Proverbs gives us a different way to know God.  God is not only present through our emotions, but also our minds, through the common sense that God has given us.  We can know God not only through our meditation, but also through our study.  Richard Foster, in A Celebration of Discipline, talks a lot about the discipline of study, and suggests that it should hold a place next to other traditional disciplines, such as prayer and meditation.  There are two ways that he suggests that we study.

Verbal study is what we most often associate with knowledge.  It is the study of books, of teachings.  Through books, we are able to come to a new understanding of God and of the world.  Obviously the Bible is at the top of a bunch of lists, and Foster talks about reading the Bible as study.  He distinguishes reading the Bible as devotion or prayer from reading it as study.  The latter is interpretation – what it means.  The former is application – what it means for me.  Both are important.  If we only read the Bible as devotion, and never study it, we miss out on so much.

Some of us approach our jobs, our schoolwork, our hobbies, as thoughtful, analytical, studious people.  But then we approach the Bible the same way as we did when we were in elementary school – a book of cute stories and simple morality.  The Bible is so much more than that.  We have the capability to understand where it came from, what culture created it, how it relates to itself and us.  And that, in turn, creates in us such a richer and fuller devotional life.  Fuller interpretation leads to fuller application.  Growing in the ability to think theologically (how God interacts with the world) helps us to grow in many ways.

After the Bible, there are other books and readings that can be powerful.  The writings of Frederick Beuchner have been influential to me…Richard Foster…C.S. Lewis…Niebuhr bros…Tony Campolo

Beyond verbal study, Foster also tells us about nonverbal study.  He tells us about the study of the world around us:

Nature – what God has created and how plants and animals and rocks can tell us about his love and  creativity and power.

Humanity – anybody else like to people watch?  I love it: sitting on a bench in the mall or in the park and watching people and families go by – it is a fascinating study.  And Foster tells us that the study of groups and relationships, and individuals is part of how we can know God and our world better.  Beyond the small scale, the study of institutions and cultures and societies helps us to understand the world.

Ourselves – our own inner feelings and moods, our relationships.  When we do what Socrates said: “Know thyself”, we are better able to know God in comparison and sovereignty.

So study is an important way to know God better, and know his will for our lives.  Maybe this “Proverbs” way of knowing God is a better descriptor of how you attempt to know God.  Words like knowledge, information, reason, and truth are meaningful to you.  Books like Proverbs and the law in the Old Testament, or James and the writings of Paul in the New Testament are important.   The best way to know the Bible and God is through study and analysis.  For you, teachers and preachers have the role of analysts and Truth Bearers.

The Rest of the Story

There are at least these two ways that we know God.  But there is more to the story.  Even as we recognize both strains, even if we embrace or even fully integrate both, I believe we will find ourselves woefully insufficient to truly KNOW God.  The book of Job reminds us of this fact.

Many of us know the book of Job as the story of a righteous man who got a raw deal.  He was a man who lived a righteous and upright life, but still suffered from personal tragedy and eventually physical pain.  We often use the story to talk about the moral quandary: “why do bad things happen to good people?”

But there is more to the story than the first couple of chapters.  Most of this wonderful book is made up of these two attempts to know God.  On one hand, you have Job, the righteous man, as a representative of the “Psalms” approach.  He knows of his righteousness and so he spends much of his time in an emotional plea to God.  He knows the experience of living an upright life and feels it is not fair that he is in such pain.

If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales!

It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas – no wonder my words have been impetuous.

The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me….

Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for,

That God would be willing to crush me, to let loose his hand and cut me off!

(6) Sounds like the Psalms, doesn’t it?

Then on the other hand, you have Job’s four friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and eventually Elihu.  In their response to Job’s pain and his cries to God for justice, they respond in a very “Proverbs” way.  Their responses show the traditional theological assumption of the day: suffering is caused by sin.  Therefore, they assert that Job has obviously sinned in a way that he does not know about.  Their responses are analytical, theological, and rational.

God is mighty, but does not despise men;  He is mighty, and firm in his purpose.

He does not keep the wicked alive but gives the afflicted their rights.

He does not take his eyes off the righteous; he enthrones them with kings and exalts them forever.

But if men are bound in chains, held fast by cords of affliction, he tells them what they have done – that they have sinned arrogantly.

(36) Sounds a little bit like Proverbs, right?

So here in this book, we see these two strains in parallel tracks.  Two ways of trying to know God.  But in the end, both fall silent to the voice of God himself:

Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?

Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?  Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions?  Surely you know!...

…Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place,

That it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?

(38:2-5a and 12-13)

And when we read this, we realize along with Job and his friends that the heart of knowledge about God is not about our experiences or our knowledge.  It is about God reaching out to us.  It is about God’s grace preceding our works.  It is about Christ’s sacrifice for our sins before we even committed them.   We do what we do in response to that grace, but it must always be overwhelmed by a sense of humility and submission to God, not arrogance.

So back to our original question: How do you know God?
If we were to ask the question of Job, the answer would be simple: you don’t.  You can extrapolate logically and theologically and you can bring the fullness of your emotional self to bear and you will still end the day speechless before the Creator.

There is a piece of writing by an unknown author, dating back to the 1300’s, entitled “The Cloud of Unknowing”.  In it, we hear these words:

“For no matter how much spiritual understanding a man may have in the knowledge of all created spiritual things, he can never, by the work of his understanding, arrive at the knowledge of an uncreated spiritual thing, which is nothing except God.  But by the failing of it, he can.” (ital. mine)

Because we can’t know God, that is how we know God!  We know God simply as the unknowable!

This is a helpful reminder at this point in our series.  We have been preaching about the Christian disciplines: prayer, reading Scripture, study.  But Job gives us a helpful reminder that these disciplines are not ways to capture God, to fully understand God, to magically “achieve” the divine.  Instead of manipulating God, they are about allowing ourselves to be manipulated.  Instead of knowing God, they are about giving ourselves to God to be known.  This is an important reminder in a Google and Wikipedia world where we have the capability to know and achieve so much.  At the end of the day, God is beyond all our knowing.  The disciplines that we keep are helpful, but only if we have the constant reminder that in the end God is beyond our attempts to know.

So today, I am not asking you to do anything.  Instead of doing, simply be in the presence of God.  Simply stand in awe before God.  As we conclude our service, simply worship the God that is above and beyond our attempt to know…