PLGRM

You know the idea that if you keep having the same problems over and over in different relationships, then the smart bet is that you are the problem?

That you’re the common denominator?

In my own life, it’s that I’ve been reticent to let people know who I am. I’ve worked on this a lot in recent years, but there was a time in my life where I drew boundaries to a fault. The result was that the people I worked with and those who I would name as friends didn’t really know me all that well. This is not an issue in and of itself, but when something problematic or difficult came up, malicious intent was assumed.

This kept happening to me.

I’d be accused of being selfish or manipulative or something, and I could not figure out why or what was going on. The things people were saying about me were so counter to who I understood myself to be. I was floored at the stories they would tell themselves. How could these friends and coworkers think that about me?

Didn’t they know what they were saying didn’t match with who I was?

No. They didn’t.

That was the problem.

I was never open with them about what I was thinking or feeling, and, as a result, they had no clue how to interpret my actions. So they assigned me harmful motives.

I could get mad about this if a) it wasn’t basically my fault, and b) it wasn’t a normal way that human beings see the world and operate.

It’s an apocryphal but useful story that medieval mapmakers used to inscribe “There Be Dragons!” at the edges of their maps. We didn’t have a complete picture of the world at that point in history and there were a lot of places we knew nothing about. As the story goes, when indicating areas we had no knowledge of, we claimed that that’s where the big, scary dragons lived.

Again, it’s a fiction, but a useful one.

When we don’t know something about someone, isn’t it incredible that we always seem to fill in our gaps in knowledge with horrible explanations? If a friend is late for a lunch date with us, why do we always assume it’s because they forgot, were in an accident, or don’t really care about us? Why don’t we tell ourselves they stopped off to buy us some flowers?

Why do we assume the worst? Who knows, but we do.

This is a problem because assuming the worst of a person, events, etc leads us to declare “There Be Dragons!” and enter with a posture of conflict. When we don’t know who people are, we turn life into a “me game, not a we game.”

Last week, I introduced my theory that Jesus is the solution to the problem of sin and evil because Jesus reveals to us who God is. Why is sin and evil the result of not knowing who God is? Because there are gaps in our knowledge and we’ve decided to declare that “There Be Dragons!”

The good news is that God has been working since the dawn of time to “fill in” those gaps in our knowledge. One honest way of reading the Bible – the story of God’s relationship with us and all creation – is of a God who is continually teaching and revealing things to us so that we can more and better live as God’s people.

Before the arrival of Jesus on the scene, how many ways can you think of that God chose to reveal things to humans? Here’s my off-the-cuff list:

• Dreams
• Prophets
• The 10 Commandments
• The words of the Torah
• The words of the Prophets
• Other sacred writings of the Hebrew people
• Angels
• Pillars of Fire and Smoke
• A burning bush

In some cases (such as dreams), God used a particular method multiple times. There is a unifying quality to these revelations that I think is important for our discussion: Each of these instances concerns God revealing intentions, instructions, corrections, expectations, prohibitions, etc.

None of them reveal who God is.

This is a significant distinction, in my opinion.

Jesus is not just the revelation of what God intends. He is the very revelation of God.

Now, I absolutely think there is something profound and important about a person sharing with others what they intend and expect, but it is an entirely different thing to know the person.

Back to the earlier example of myself, I sent a lot of emails and said a lot of things about my intentions and expectations, but I rarely (if ever) shared myself. That may sound like a distinction without a difference to you, and it did to me for a long time. I was telling people what I expected; didn’t that show them a bit of who I was? Turns out, the answer is “No.”

To know another is to have a relationship.

Intentions and expectations are one-way streets. There is no reciprocation. I can agree or disagree with the intention. I can abide or not with the expectation. But that’s it. Contrast that with the reality that there is a disciple named in John’s Gospel as the one “whom Jesus loved.” Whoever that disciple was was known by Jesus and (presumably, because this is the way love works) knew Jesus. This disciple didn’t simply receive a set of instructions or a list of expectations. There was a give and take in relationship that made all the difference. So much so that when Jesus did give instructions they were understood in a context and seen as part of a larger whole.

That is an entirely different situation, isn’t it?

I’ve said that Jesus teaches us who God is and it is for this reason and this purpose. Through Jesus, we get to have a relationship with God (the Apostle Paul speaks of it as our being reconciled to God) and because of this relationship in which we come to know God, we see that our acts of sin and participation in evil run counter to this relationship.

But this still begs the question of how we can know anything about Jesus in the first place.

If Jesus is the special revelation of God that reveals not only God’s intent but God’s very person, how do we know?

What kind of criteria or parameters are we using to make this kind of claim?

Next time…