Scared of really getting to know God
There’s a curious expression I’ve
heard all my life among Christians. It goes something like this:
“I want to be closer to Jesus
(or God).”
It’s curious to me because for
years, I didn’t know what it meant. I’m not sure if we can be spatially closer
to God because God is omnipresent. I’m not sure if we can be relationally
closer to God because, in Jesus, we are as “close” as we can be. I really resisted this expression for years because it struck me as an expression that meant, "I want to feel like God is present," which, too often is the case, is an attempt to chase a feeling about God instead of God.
Nevertheless, I accept that
expression more and more. It reminds of what Paul said in 1 Cor 13:12. Corinth was known for high quality copper mirrors. Paul uses an object they would have
known well to make an analogy about knowledge of God.
“For now we see in a mirror
indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I
will know fully, just as I have been fully known” (NET).
Of course, if I were to see
you behind me in a mirror, it would be “indirectly” looking at you. But, if I
saw you “face to face,” then I would look at you directly. Paul’s point isn’t
about seeing God, but about knowing God directly. Notice how Paul
suggests that I don’t know God fully,
but that God already fully knows me.
If that’s what you mean when
you say, “I want to be closer to God,” – that you “want to know God more,” then
I’m with you.
I say the same thing about my
wife and friends. I want to know them better, “be closer.”
Of course, there’s a real fear
sometimes with really knowing a
person. It means they really know
you, too. Maybe I don’t want you to know everything about me. And what if I
feel the same towards God? “If God really
knew me, then He’d want me to change or do something…”
C.S. Lewis said he struggled
with such a thing (in an essay called, “A Slip of the Tongue”):
“I say my prayers, I read a book of devotion, I prepare for, or receive,
the Sacrament. But while I do these things, there is so to speak, a voice
inside me that urges caution. It tells me to be careful, to keep my head, not
to go too far, not to burn my boats. I come into the presence of God with a
great fear lest anything should happen to me within that presence which will
prove too intolerably inconvenient when I have come out again into my “ordinary”
life. I don’t want to be carried away into any resolution which I shall
afterwards regret.. . .
“This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea (I
think St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there neither dive nor swim
nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and
holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal.”
C.S. Lewis goes on to say that
our great protection against the temptation not to “go all in with God” is not
in pulling back our faith or safeguarding our wallet or habits. Instead,
“Our real protection is to be sought elsewhere: in common Christian
usage, in moral theology, in steady rational thinking, in the advice of good
friends and good books, and (if need be) in a skilled spiritual director.”
What about when we fail and
hold back from our attempt to “get closer to God?” What if we just keep
dabbling in His presence?
“He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no
promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last
resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as
our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us
make up our minds to do it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live,
no 'ordinary' life.”
And later, "Failures will be forgiven; it is acquiescence that is fatal, the permitted, regularised presence of an area in ourselves which we still claim for our own."
And later, "Failures will be forgiven; it is acquiescence that is fatal, the permitted, regularised presence of an area in ourselves which we still claim for our own."
So, I wonder where you’re at.
Are you seeking to know God more? Or, are you afraid “to go all in” in the fear
that He might demand you surrender part of you or tell you to stop doing
something? If so, that’s a compromise not supported in the Bible. There is no
notion that we get to have some of
God or that we can surrender some of
ourselves. Christ said those who follow Him must deny their wills and pick up
their crosses. It’s everything or nothing.
What if my wife demanded all
of my loyalty and I promised to give her “as much as I could but couldn’t
promise too much”?
“For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless
us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we
try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no
bargaining with Him.”
If you’re not trying to “get
closer to Jesus” right now, today, and each day, why not? What’s holding you
back?
