Knowing, or Knowing About?

Believing something vs in someone
The keyword of the evangelical message is "believe". "Believing" can be centred on content, as in "believing certain facts", or on a person, as in "believing in someone". The meaning of these two applications is so different that it seems a different word would be appropriate. The translation of a Greek word to "faith" (KJV) or "faithfulness" (NIV) is a similar issue - those words have significantly different meanings in English, although some thought can show that one virtue does not occur without the other.

We come to believe in a person by various routes: their credentials, someone else's confidence in them, consistent experience with them, naivite. We come to believe in information also by various means: the word of a person we believe in, repeated hearing or speaking ourselves, experience, logic, gut feeling, impressive presentation, greed, fear, and so on. So they are similar processes. To convince me to believe in a person that I doubt, requires observation of that one's performance, either by myself or someone else that I have confidence in. To convince me of facts that I doubt, requires persuasion, further information, discussion, some experimenting.

It seems that "believing in Christ", although suggesting the confidence in a person sort of belief, has come in evangelical jargon to mean assenting to information about Christ. This is more concrete and easier to impart to and test in others. It is true that one cannot meaningfully believe in the person of Christ without knowing any information about Him. Paul's preaching, as recorded in Acts, addressed both aspects. But one can know (and believe) a great deal of information about Him without believing in Him. Most of the Lord Jesus' teaching focused on the nature of His heavenly Father, himself as Immanuel, and living in the Kingdom.

What do we learn in church?
It is common to say that one goes "to church" to learn about God. That is primarily through the sermon, or the Sunday school. These media are well suited to inculcating information. They are however weak regarding bringing one to know a person. That comes more from living together - working, solving problems, laughing, crying, feeling tension and relief, or just spending time. While our evangelical tradition has perfomed well at teaching us about the Bible, theology, and Christology, it would seem to have failed at bringing us to "know Him" as Paul shared his longing in Philippians 3. That is not to say that many within the evangelical tradition are not having a healthy knowledge of and relationship to the Person, but only that when it does occur it is through other avenues than the preaching and teaching and meetings and conferences and seminars and books that are supposed to achieve this. It is through spending time with God - working with Him and seeing Him work, solving problems with Him, laughing and crying with Him, feeling tension and relief with Him.

What difference does this make?
We expend much time and resource on those things which impart information but only peripherally bring us to know the Person. The harm in this is that it can actually obstruct our knowledge of Him. It can lead us to put our faith in a formula for salvation rather than on the Author of our salvation, to see salvation as having arrived at grasping the formula rather than experiencing the working of it in our lives. It may actually foster pride in having arrived rather than the broken and contrite spirit without which no one comes to God. It arrogantly builds thick walls between elements of the Body of Christ, defined by splitting hairs of nebulous doctrine, when His great work of grace was to break down those walls. In place of a glorious Body, it sees only its own sect as being accepted in the beloved, and the rest as being apostate. It presents growth in Christ as the ability to split those hairs ever finer rather than an increasing love and submission toward Him. It can measure maturity by testing knowledge, but does not know how to measure love, so extols the one and fears the other. Rather than grace and love for those with differences, it promotes deadly hate. Rather than presenting the power and Person of God to a blind world it presents circuitous arguments, pride, self-centeredness, and mind-numbing jargon.

What can we do?
Put knowledge in its place. I do not come to know my wife better by memorizing all her vital statistics, studying her genetics and physiology, and writing endless theses on how these all fit together. I simply need to spend the kind of time with her that was mentioned above. As I do, some aspects of these details about her will become relevant, but only as part of the picture and not something to agonize about as though trying to treat a disease. I wonder if our dissection of God is not more about trying to control Him than to know Him. Perhaps our gatherings as believers could keep this more in perspective by holding knowledge in the same sort of humility that is needed to approach God in the first place, by recognizing love and relationship above correctness, and by sharing the power and presence of the Living God in our lives above how much we can talk about our doctrinal models. This will need less of schools, teachings, seminars, and books, and more of Him. May we encourage one another to know Him. -philw