Believe Me
. . . what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, . . 1 John 1:1 NASB
Heard/seen/touched – Occasionally it’s good to peek behind the curtain. What we find helps us realize that all that mysterious and dramatic stuff going on in front of us is really just the work of a small, little man manipulating the machinery. In the case of the “mighty Today’s Word” show, if you peeked behind the curtain you’d see this spiritual trauma victim trying to keep his head above water in the overwhelming world of exegesis and paradigms. There’s no great scholar pontificating from years of white tower investigation. There’s no distinguished academic career, honorary PhD’s, or critically acclaimed tomes. There’s just this rather ordinary guy struggling to figure out where God is in his life and in his world. Just a guy trying most of the time to do the right thing—and failing often enough to know he doesn’t have the answers, just more questions. The man behind the curtain thinks too much, he’s been told, but, in a way, he can’t help it. It’s how he’s wired. And his problem is that thinking so much about these mysterious topics often leaves him feeling particularly lonely, vulnerable, and discouraged. He’s not like those disciples who could claim eye-witness observation of the person who changed their lives. He’s heard the stories, read the “reviews,” even seen a few things that convince him there really is a good God somewhere in all this. But occasionally that doesn’t seem to be enough. He’d like the mystery and awe and grandeur of it all to overwhelm his skepticism so that he could mimic Aquinas and write, “It’s all straw,” and then just meditate for the next twenty years, but that doesn’t seem to be his fate. He would rather take photos in faraway places.
And since you’re peeking behind the curtain right now, you might as well ask this little man in front of the controls what he actually believes—or at least thinks he believes now because he’s learned that things tend to change when you really think about them. He would respond,
“Well, I still believe that God is good and that, however difficult it might be to imagine, He is still in control of His creation. I’m not sure how this works out since I seem to be surrounded by evil events and evil intentions, but I’m not ready to give up hope that God knows, and that He will eventually fulfill His own plans for reconciliation.
“I am no longer certain about the role of the Messiah. I don’t mean that I question Yeshua as Messiah. I mean I’m not sure I understand what that means for anything more than the confirmation of the coming Kingdom. I am still confident that his teachings and his practice are vitally important, but I don’t think the goal is my happiness. I’m really in Heschel’s camp on this: History is a nightmare. I choose to be an optimist despite my better judgment. I do find it difficult to maintain that choice. I see a lot of bad things in this world—things that just don’t seem to have any reasonable explanation.
“What about the Bible? Well, the more I study, the more I am inclined to see the Bible as an ethnic, cultural, political collection. I am still convinced that God spoke to the prophets, but I am also convinced that the message was couched in socio-political, temporal packaging, and I don’t really understand what it says until I can unwrap it. It’s a lot more work than it used to be. Most of the time I’m really not totally confident that I understand what it says, but it’s progress that matters here, I suppose. I know that when I read great scholars of the text, I discover insights. That’s encouraging. I also know that I have to let go of more and more of my own assumptions, particularly those I grew up with in the West. In the end, I wish that I could just have that inner warm feeling of God speaking directly to me through the Bible, but it’s a wish, not my reality. My reality is that I find the words valuable, the teachings important, but somehow a little less personal than they were when I was an evangelical believer. Maybe that’s just because I am getting old. Maybe.
“My biggest struggle isn’t with the text or the context. It’s with, quite frankly, prayer. I know my own faults and failures so well that I really don’t feel worthy of prayer at all. It feels like a sham to me to speak with God, like I’m trying to convince Him to help me when I know there’s a deep part in me that doesn’t want His help. It’s kind of self-punishment. I deserve chastisement. I know that. Maybe Martin Luther is still embedded in my subconscious somewhere. When I write, I’m sort of pleading for forgiveness at the same time. But it’s getting harder. There are days when I don’t think I have anything worthwhile to say.
“So, I use that protective curtain to keep prying eyes, like yours, away.
“But, secretly, I’m glad you asked.”
“Heard, seen, touched.” Oh, how I wish I could have been there.
Topical Index: 1 John 1:1
