Assumptions

Hi.

Considering that the interim between my last post and today have been three of the most profound months of my entire life, and that since I have approximately 3.8 million things to say, and since there is a .038 chance of me being able to get it all down, I've decided not to backtrack (oh, the agony! For me. Not you. Most likely), and so I begin with today.

Of course today is entirely informed by the last three months, but I can't win them all.

Assumptions. Ever get caught out by them? Ever say, rather glibbly, “I know exactly what you're thinking,” only to have a suddenly piercing look turned upon you accompanied by “Do you? You think you know me, but do you?” Of course we don't. How many of us really know anyone? Even ourselves?

I woke up this morning (a plus) with Jesus messing about in my brain (bigger plus). In the last few days I've had a couple run-ins with the Creator that have left me— well, a little breathless, scared, and in the beginning stages of being seduced. And I don't mean the nice, safe kind that comes from long looks and moonlight and proximity. I mean stomach-flipping, back-against-the-wall, “who-in-the-world-is-this-and-why-am-I-alone-with-Him?!” seduced. So when He asked this morning (to paraphrase) “You think you know me, don't you?” I was mercifully aware that it was a trick question.

I used to think I did. As recently as last week. We humans have a horrible tendency to believe that all we know is all there is to know. We may admit aloud that there is a world of knowledge we haven't tapped, but in the concrete, practical aspects of ever-day living, we live as if our knowledge is the complete (meaning “whole”) truth. We have to. If we didn't we'd fly to pieces with the uncertainty, cowering in the daylight like paranoids schizophrenics. The trouble comes when we start building castles on this sand.

My dad has a saying: God has a way or peeping around the corners of our dearest-held ideas and saying, “Boo!” This morning, Jehovah politely suggested that all man's ideas about Him, our theology, our hope, even our faith, is built on us trying to manage him. What we understand we can control. We don't like loose cannons. We're alright with God being “good, but not safe,” as Lewis puts it, but what if He's actually, well, dangerous? What if He's a lover so jealous and so besotted that He'll stop at nothing to get the girl? What if He means that we must walk by faith and not by sight? And what if I'm wrong even about all of this? To a core level, I think we believe we have made God. Bound by our little bitty time-structured existence, we did not see His self-existence create us. We did not— do not— see the power and the glory that runs unfettered through the cosmos. We don't think of God as a person (in the positive sense), a person who is completely themselves, predictable in some ways, and totally unpredictable in others. People have written about this for ages: having God on His terms, not ours, taking Him out of the box, letting Him be the captain of your fate, etc... All worth-while ideas. But they all seem to depend on us doing or not doing something. They leave no room in our paradigms for El Gibhor to suddenly wheal around and scare the hell out of us. What we really mean by all those ideas is God gets to be God to the level we understand Him. He must act within our ability to comprehend or He's being pointless. After all, if we don't get it...

Agh! The arrogance of Man! The arrogance of me!

People, God is God! I don't know how else to say this. He is Himself, not our ideas about Him. We may think He is such and such a thing, or is bound to behave in such and such a way, but He is not! We know so little about Him. Forgo assumptions. Ask Him Who He is. Unimaginably, He wants to tell us.

Just be prepared for that delicious terror. You'll get addicted.