Pursuing the Unknowable
Have you ever tried to make yourself stop thinking about something? If so, you know how difficult that is. As soon as we tell ourselves, “I must not think about this,” we find ourselves completely unable to not think about it.
Leo Tolstoy (author of War and Peace, among other tomes) was a victim of this many times in his childhood. Whenever young Leo would annoy his brother, his brother would make Leo stand in a corner and tell him, “Stay here until you stop thinking about a white bear!”
Poor Leo would stand in the corner for hours, telling himself he must not think about a white bear, which simply planted the image deeper in his brain.
This experience translates very clearly into our spiritual journey. Most of us can relate to Paul's words in Romans 7.
I don’t really understand myself.
I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it.
Instead, I do what I hate.
I want to do what is right, but I can’t.
I want to do what is good, but I don’t.
I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.
~ Romans 7:15, 18-19
We often struggle to “not do something,” yet in trying to not do or not think something, it ends up occupying our brain non-stop.
However, what if, rather than simply trying to quit what God doesn't want, we were to hunger after what God does want. It's a positive, rather than negative, approach to walking with Christ.
It makes sense, if you think about it. If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, or if we seek first the Kingdom of God, then the rest sort of takes care of itself. Why would we continue to fill our emptiness with secondary things (addictions, brokenness, and sin) when we are constantly filling it with the water of life?
Given the choice between a real, tangible experience with God or an experience with gluttony, anger, pornography, drunkenness, promiscuity, or whatever sin you care to name, would I not always choose the tangible experience with God?
Ah, but therein lies the rub. Not every experience with God is tangible. God is not a constant in the sense that we know what we're about to receive every time we go to him. We (hopefully) know we'll be loved, but we don't know how that love will be expressed, or whether we will “feel” it. Will it be a passionate, charismatic experience? a still small voice? a godly silence? a desert experience that feels empty (though it's not)?
However, those other experiences (the promiscuity, the hatred, etc) are constant. We can control and capture an “expectable experience.” In other words, we know what we are going to get, even though we know it will ultimately harm us. And the desire for constancy (even a harmful constancy) draws us away from the Cloud of Unknowing.
PAUSE and REFLECT: What approach do you normally take to walking with Jesus? Do you tend to focus on avoiding what God doesn't want, or pursuing what God does want. Take a moment to think about this - what has been occupying your mind and motivation this past month?
How willing are you to pursue something or Someone who will never acquiesce to your desire for a constant experience? You will be loved, for sure, but you will be loved by Divine Mystery, not God-in-a-box-certainty.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about uncertainty tolerance. Without it, we are unable to embrace Divine Mystery and allow God to be God. Unfortunately, the desire for certainty hinders our pursuit of God, because to hunger after him must include the surrender of our demand that every experience be constant and certain.
God is holy and untamed, and he refuses to be domesticated by us. He will not bow to that pressure.
We are invited by Scripture and the Spirit to take the positive approach to our journey with Christ. May we hunger for what God wants rather than simply try to stop what he doesn't want. May we pursue this grand Saviour, even though we know he may lead us through the emptiness that brings the fullness of his presence.
May we accept him as he is and embrace this wild relationship, life-together with the untamed Life-Giver.
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Photo by Stefan Widua on Unsplash