Don: The reunification and reconciliation of Man and God is at the core of the acts and processes of worship. To seek God is to acknowledge that there is a space where He exists—a “God space”—that Man seeks, if not to occupy then at least to find the entryway thereto. One might argue that Man has been doing this ever since the Fall. God remarked that as a result of the Fall Man became like God, knowing good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil is properly the domain of God, not of Man.
This was illustrated in the parable of of the Prodigal Son, whose celebrated return home was viewed as evil, undesirable, improper, and unacceptable by the elder son but as good, desirable, joyful, and proper by the father. Most parables are about God seeking us. It seems somewhat arrogant to think that we can seek and find an omniscient, omnipotent, eternal God. We are as two-year-old children playing hide-and-seek with its father. A toddler cannot hope to find dad unless dad wants to be found, but a good father will of course not only allow himself to be found but will celebrate the reunion with unfeigned joy. The father allows himself to be “found” essentially by placing himself directly in the toddler’s path, by putting himself into the toddler’s space, as it were.
In his sermon on Mars Hill, the apostle Paul talked about God’s playing hide-and-seek with us:
The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ (Acts 17:24-28)
God’s space and Man’s space for God are not the same. We want to put God in “temples made with hands,” but God is bigger and broader than any temple. Solomon explicitly recognized this when he dedicated his own great temple to God and felt it necessary to ask for special consideration:
Now therefore, O God of Israel, let Your word, I pray, be confirmed which You have spoken to Your servant, my father David. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built! Yet have regard to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplication, O Lord my God, to listen to the cry and to the prayer which Your servant prays before You today; that Your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, toward the place of which You have said, ‘My name shall be there,’ to listen to the prayer which Your servant shall pray toward this place. (1 kings 8:26-29)
God’s space is boundless, yet Man seems to want to confine him in a smaller space, where He can be more easily found! Man himself seems unable to wait for God to find him. The “Lost” parables (the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost—the Prodigal—son) illustrate that God will not suffer us to be lost but will leave no stone unturned to find us. But like the Prodigal son, we seek our Father on our own terms, not on His. The son may have lost the father, but the father did not lose the son:
And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. (Luke 15:13)
But the country was not so distant that his father could not see him:
So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)
And these were the son’s terms:
I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”’ (Luke 15:18-19)
He still didn’t get it. He thought the father expected perfection in his children. Jesus knocked that right on the head. We must accept that we are imperfect, and that therefore we need the grace of God. The Bible says we must confess our sins (John 9), but the Greek word used for “confess” really means “to speak the same,” or “to agree.” We need to see ourselves as God sees us. We need to agree with what God says. He says that a father’s house is a place of joyous return and reconciliation for those who were lost; their sins cast into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
We are God’s children, and if we recognize our imperfection and accept His grace and forgiveness, we can be reconciled with Him, as was the Prodigal:
And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate. (Luke 15:21-24)
The father never even acknowledged his Prodigal son’s confession, and went straight to celebration instead.
Our prayer, then, should not be: “Help me find you, God,” but rather: “I’m lost; please find me!” A frenetic search for God is not the picture we see in Scripture. Rather, what Scripture tells us is:
“Cease striving and know that I am God;…” (Psalm 46:10)
I think it’s the same message my old professor used to say to his residents when they started to feel overwhelmed by the situation in the OR and would run around in a panic, trying to fix things: “Don’t just do something! Stand there!”
It seems, then, that seeking God is a passive business, not a pro-active one; that we find Him by waiting for Him:
Wait for the Lord;
Be strong and let your heart take courage;
Yes, wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:14
And:
Yet those who wait for the Lord
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary. (Isaiah 40:31)
Isaiah brought the active and the passive neatly together, when he said:
And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him. (Isaiah 8:17)
The active and the passive search for God are not mutually exclusive but are aspects of a singular concept. Which brings us back to technology, and its role in the search for God. Technology is an enabler. Can technology enable us to wait for—to seek—God? If the possession of “might” and “riches” amount to the possession of technology (which I think they do), then Jeremiah points to the answer:
Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)
Knowing God is defined here as knowing that He delights in the exercise of “lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth.” If knowing and seeking God amount to the same thing, can technology play a role in the knowing and seeking?
Donald: The journey we describe as “seeking God” is undertaken not on a wide path, but on a narrow one, or so we are told. The way is not made for discovering God easily. This is a strong contrast with the notion of waiting for God to find us. Should the way be difficult? Do we make it unnecessarily difficult?
Jay: And what is at the end of this narrow path? Salvation? Knowing God’s will? Knowing oneself? In Scripture, seeking and knowing are often identical, but in reality they are not. For Man, the end result of knowing was the fall from the garden. So why do we seek God at all, if not for the purpose of knowing, and becoming thereby more like God, more powerful.
Donald: If seeking can be passive, as just discussed, then whether one seeks God actively or passively would surely affect any answer to Jay’s question. But Christianity seems always to call for the active search. A passive search would seem to change the very nature of the Christian journey.
Jay: There are two relationships at stake in the Christian journey: One’s relationship with God, and one’s relationship with one’s fellow Wo/Man. Might it be that one of those relationships should be active and the other one passive? We think that activity is required to establish and nurture a relationship. To establish a relationship with God, we expect to have to pray to Him and perform other acts of worship. But the Scriptural references to being lost and remaining still and waiting for God seem to suggest that such activity is not required. We each have only so much time and energy: Should we use them to develop our relationship with God, or with Wo/Man?
David: The Daoist has no doubt that one does not search; one simply follows the Way, and that is a passive journey:
There is no calamity greater than not knowing what is sufficient; there is no fault greater than wishing to acquire. Thus the sufficiency of knowing what is sufficient is eternal sufficiency. (Dao De Jing 46)
Without going out your door, know the world; without looking out the window, know the Dao of Tian [the Way of Heaven—DE]. The further you travel, the less you know. Hence the sage knows without going to it, names it without seeing, does nothing and it is achieved. (Dao De Jing 47)
He who studies is daily enlarged; he who follows the Dao is daily diminished. Diminished and then diminished yet more, at last attaining non-action (wuwei). Never acting, nothing is undone.
To control the world, undertake nothing. Once you undertake to do anything you are unfit to control the world. (Dao De Jing 48)
(Translation by Robert Eno, 2010)
When you have achieved the ability to Do Nothing (what we are calling the passive waiting) then you have achieved everything—you have achieved Enlightenment.
Don: Which of the three central figures in the “Lost” parables—the sheep, the coin, the son—is the most noble? At one extreme is the coin, which cannot know it is lost, is not responsible for being lost, and is not expected to find its own way back. At the other extreme is the prodigal son, who willfully lost himself. The one thing common to all three parables is the joy of the owner/father at the return of that which was lost. The Dao seems to argue that we should be like coins rather than like sons.
David: To decide on which is the most noble calls for judgment—something we are in no position to deliver. The joy that is common to all three parables applies, in all three, only to the owner/father. The coin could hardly be joyful; the sheep… well, who knows?; and the prodigal son—despite the evident love of his father, the lavish attention paid to him and the gifts showered on him—clearly felt pretty bad about himself. There was no great joy in the items returned! If joy is God’s sole prerogative, then it would appear that we must simply have faith that by virtue of being (back) in His space we will share His joy.
Donald: Some lost young animals seem to express great joy when returned to their families. When can we find comfort in our journey? We come up short in our relationships with God and with Wo/Man. When can we feel that we are making progress toward the goal, that we are doing enough, that we need not feel guilty?
Robin: Many verses in Scripture tell us that we should seek God, the kingdom of heaven, and so on. So, knowing the goal, perhaps the priority is to learn how to seek. One lesson we seem to miss is that our search should be conducted with humility. We tend rather to lay out to God the terms of our search, including the demand that He make sense to us. Instead of making demands, we should be still and listen for His still, small voice. We are told to seek God, but we have to do it right, and that (q.e.d.) is not easy for us.
Donald: The journey is not difficult if all we have to do is accept God. If the way is narrow, is it because we make it so—not God? And how much responsibility does religion—and its office bearers—bear for making the way narrow or perpetuating it?
David: As office bearers, priests are required by their religion or church to define (or perpetuate a given definition of) the width of the path. To me, this is a disturbing thought.
Jay: We want to define what a search for God should look like. All religions have doctrinal pillars to help guide the definition. Baptismal vows, for example, tend to be restrictive. Step outside those doctrinal pillars and you are by definition off track in your search for God. Does it matter, as long as the doctrine defines a valid path to God? And does God Himself say there is only one way to find Him? I believe the Adventist doctrine provides a valid and valuable way to seek God, but I do not know that it is necessarily the only such way. I am not even sure that the seeking itself is necessary, given the Scriptural quotes on being still and waiting. The key, it seems to me, is to seek to know not what we want to know, but to know what God wants. That’s what God seems to want us to know. If so, then the seek/know distinction may be critically important to understand.
Robin: Humility is the key to unlocking the distinction. It’s a key that has been lost to humanity for a long time.
Don: Donald asked if it’s possible to be both humble and certain at the same time.
Jay: I think it is. I think our own Adventist doctrine and culture reflects that.
David: I agree that humility is key. To me, humility in this context is not merely the admission that we do not know but that we cannot know for certain, except for one thing: The existence of God. I can say that not from any intellectual or emotional argument but from an inner spiritual conviction which is by nature indefinable and indescribable. I cannot speak for any other person, but I suspect that everyone feels or at least has felt this conviction. It’s just that it’s hard to heed it. I don’t think I am unique. I am not nearly as humble a person as I would like to be, but it seems to me that seeking God through the slightest application of the intellect is an arrogant conceit and a colossal waste of time—and that is precisely why we do it: To waste time, because otherwise we would to spend it really listening to the inner voice. I confess, I’m not sure where this leaves our class!
Donald: Within my faith community, the average household income does not far exceed the cost of our colleges and universities. Parents who send their children to such schools expect them to be held true to the principles of the church. Indeed, they would not spend all that money to send their children to a school that did not uphold values and beliefs similar to their own. But at the same time, few (in this church, at least) would be so arrogant as to claim that this was the only way for their children to find God.
Jay: Are there any common factors in the paths defined by the various religions and sects?
Robin: Jesus said it didn’t matter whether you were Jew or Gentile, male or female: God wants nobody to be lost. Nobody’s journey to God, even within a single church, is exactly the same. There are multiple pathways, but they all lead to God if they are authentically sought. Religions, sects, and churches bring much to many, but they can never bring everything to everyone. It is human to want to be right, but we must be careful, especially in focusing on our own church history and achievements, as we did in the presumptuously named video series Keepers of the Flame, lest we lose our humility. Let God be the judge of what is good and right. As sinners, we are by definition incapable of rendering sound judgment ourselves.
Donald: But Keepers of the Flame is a good factual description of what the church strives to do.
Don: Is it possible to be both humble and the self-appointed “Keeper of the Flame”? Is it possible for such an institution to produce and practice a spiritually useful doctrine that does not claim certainty?
David: Dao De Jing translator Robert Eno’s analysis of that text includes this:
The source of human deviation from the Dao [God—DE] lies in the way that our species has come to use its unique property, the mind. Rather than allow our minds to serve as a responsive mirror of the world, we have used it to develop language and let our thoughts and perceptions be governed by the categories that language creates, such as value judgments. The mind’s use of language has created false wisdom, and our commitment to this false wisdom has come to blind us to the world as it really is, and to the Dao that orders it. The person who “practices” wuwei [Doing Nothing—DE] quiets the mind and leaves language behind.
So we use the mind—intellect—to approach something that is simply not approachable by the mind.
Donald: At the end of life, is there any more clarity to this issue? Should we teach certainty or ambiguity? I believe there is a pathway that brings meaning and adds value to life, but should we consider our perspective as being the only perspective possible?
Don: We will continue seek the path of noble seeking!
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