Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You

Wow. Almost two months since I've written. Not that it really matters. I haven't stopped thinking.

So. Here's what I've been thinking. Between Great Books, reading The Brothers Karamazov, hearing David McNeely talk, and just talking to people.

Someone in my Great Books 202 class almost a year ago said, "You don't believe in God. You believe in people who believe in God. Your faith is in them." And that hit me. It was like...what? At first I was angry, then I thought about it, and I saw how it made sense. That doesn't mean I accepted it, I just saw the logical reasoning behind it.

And he got that idea from someone we read in Great Books 305 this past spring (Hobbes I think? They're all blurring together in my mind. It was either Hobbes or Hume. Oh wait. Yeah. Hume. Does it really matter?) It's essentially the idea of people create God.

And this is an idea I've been mulling over for quite some time. Not because I necessarily thought it was true, but because it countered my beliefs in such a way that I had no choice but to evaluate it.

This past Sunday, part of what David McNeely was saying was that we can know a lot about God. But we don't always KNOW Him. We don't encounter the living God, we don't get to know Him, we just learn a lot about Him from reading a book. His book. And I've heard that for so long, but this illustration really made it sink in. He said he knows his wife. He's known her long enough to know how she thinks, how she reacts, and know just who she is. And he didn't get that from reading a book about her. He got that from living life with her, truly experiencing her for all she is. He also said he read a lot about Joe Montana. Doesn't mean he can wave and say hey to him on the street, because he doesn't actually know Joe Montana. He just knows a lot about him.

And there is my conclusion. You may claim that I put my faith in people, that I believe in a created God, but here's where logic falls short: encountering the living God. Not just reading about Him. Not just observing what He says in the Bible and drawing conclusions about His heart. But knowing Him. Walking with Him. Interacting with Him. My God doesn't live in a book. My God is the Creator, not created. For a long time, I just kept knowing a lot about Him. But He's alive and active and I hope and pray you experience Him. That you encounter Him. That you get to know Him, not just know about Him.