Begin
Silence, Stillness, and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Silence, Stillness, and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Devotional
My
Favorite Way of Knowing
Friday, March 27, 2015
Friday, March 27, 2015
There
is nothing in all of my experience in (?) years of living on earth that
connects me to God and to Real and Actual life on Planet Earth and helps
transport me out of my miserable little myopically perceived tiny realm
of existence than the God given faculty given to all of God's image
bearers. It is the gift of imagination.
Perhaps the quote that describes best
what Christianity has done for me is this one, the first part of which I
have paraphrased for a little for clarity.
"The waking world is considered
by most people to be more real than the world of our dreams.
This is because it can contain within it the dreaming world: the
dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the world
that I live in when I am awake.
For the same reason I am
certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the
theological, from pure reason to seeing things as God has revealed them
to me, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit
science, art, morality, beauty, reason, and the sub-Christian religions
into itself. The scientific point of view cannot fit any of these things
into itself, not even science itself.
I believe in Christianity as I
believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by
it I see everything else."
CS Lewis.
It is the last line of
the quote that has captured me.
I have discovered
what CS Lewis discovered.
Through the Christian Story I can now see all the things I never
saw before.
It’s like history, science, literature, entertainment, nature,
relationships, work, world conflict, how the world really works, all of
it now has a “glow” beneath it, above it, surrounding it, permeating
it.
It all now makes sense.
The world is not just something I’m in and I’m simply to make
the best of.
It’s God’s world.
God is what it’s about.
God is what everything is about (even
the worst of all evils is about God in the sense that it exists only as
an “anti” thing.
Without its “anti”-ness” it wouldn’t exist, just as bad
doesn’t exist without there first being a good off of which all bad
and evil live as a parasite)
In short, the only way a
very primitive creature could ever know what is to be known about a very
advanced creature is for the advanced creature to explain, reveal
itself, to the lesser creature.
And in that explanation, in that self-revelation of the superior
creature, the lesser creature could only apprehend what was revealed
according to its limited capacities.
An eagle revealing itself to an earthworm, might result in the
earthworm describing the eagle as gnat because that’s the only
analogous thing the earthworm has experience.
I’m the earthworm
trying to comprehend what God is like based on what’s he’s revealed
to me about Himself.
Therefore I use the faculty of imagination, just like the writer
of revelation.
He didn’t make up anything, instead he described the indescribable with the best of what he could imagine, and that took him
to the truth of God and God’s world.
When I read the
Chronicles of Narnia, for example, my mind, heart, passions, yearnings,
and imagination all soar.
In so many ways there is more truth to be apprehended in our God
given, God led imaginings than in any rational/scientific mode of
discovering truth.
Of course imagination has to be driven and directed by God but
ironically God’s “boundaries” are
expansive, they end up taking our minds and hearts to God places we
could never dream up on our own.
Question to Consider
In what ways do you allow your mind and heart to soar as you imagine God’s great world both transcending and breaking into yours? What kinds of things might you do in order to meet God through imagination, beauty, or truth bearing fiction?
Prayer
“Lord, thank you for the gift of imagination. I believe that imagination is not a truth avoiding faculty, rather a truth discovering one. Help me Lord to be attentive to all the ways you want me to be able to encounter you, be it in a move, taking in an art show, walking through the woods, or sculpting a clay pot. May you give me the gift of encountering you in every aspect of my life. Amen."
Conclude with
Silence
(2 minutes)
For
more:
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Pastor,
ReplyDeleteThis has been a wonderful and enlightening three-part blog on the ways we can know and experience God. Thank you for this series.
I do need to "take you to task" on the point you used to introduce these blogs: "...our brightest and best Christian apologists are tacitly ceding the argument for Christianity in favor of their opponents by inadvertently debating on the epistemological turf (reason, science, proofs, physical and historical evidence) of their opponents."
I think it is important to realize that "reason, science, proofs" should be able to reveal God to us. In fact, it's been said that God meets us where we are when we are seeking Him. Many of us first needed to see that the reality of Him (or in my case, His Son) could be proven rationally. For me that came through "More Than a Carpenter". Some may need more than that; some less. And God - the Creator of science - will provide more to those who are earnestly seeking (and to many who are not).
That said, your set of blogs has opened my mind to realize that the rational proof that I needed before I was an infant in Christ was perhaps just baby formula to start me off. As I grow I should also partake in as many of the other ways to know Him (...as I can handle).
God bless,
Bob R.