knowing God

"The proper study of God's elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead... There's something exceedingly improving to the mind in the comtemplation of Divinity. It's subject so vast, that our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity... While the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it... Whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is also imminently consolatory." -- CH Spurgeon

JI Packer starts his book by quoting from one of Spurgeon's sermon which he found to be a "fitting preface to a series of studies on the nature and character of God." Knowing God is at the very core of our Christian belief. It humbles ourselves, and provide the utmost consolation to us by knowing that our entire life is in the hand of God, a Spirit infinite and eternal, unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. However we need to be aware of the danger of falling into the pitfall of just "knowing about" God.


Knowing God vs. Knowing about God

A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him. Perhaps we already have a sound doctrine with us, but do we have the gaiety, goodness, and the unfetteredness of spirit which mark those who have known God? Do we have great energy for God? Do we have great thoughts of God? Do we show great boldness for God? Do we have great contentment in Him?

We need to humble ourselves and measure ourselves not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in our churches, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts.


By His grace, He has let Himself to be known

In order to be known, God has given us His grace by revealing Himself, He comes to you and begin to talk to you, through the words and truths which are written in the Holy Scriptures.

Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing with Him as He opens up to you, and being dealth by Him as He takes knowledge of you. Knowing God is a matter of personal involvement, in mind, will, and feeling, committing yourself to His interests and identifying yourself with His concerns. Knowing God is a matter of grace, the initative which is of God's.

Packer went on to describe each attributes of God: God unchanging, majestic, wise above all, His word, His love, His grace, His goodness, and His justice. I would like to highlight the part about God's wisdom here.


God's wisdom

"His wisdom is profound, his power is vast." -- Job 9: 4

"He has great power and mighty strength, ... His understanding no one can fathom" -- Isa 40: 26, 28

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." -- Isa 55: 8-9

His way is higher than my way, and through what had happened in my life I started to understand this great truth. I had experienced a time when I thought I have a "perfect plan" for myself but in the end God thwarted everything and denied all the seemingly "perfect plan," made me to wait and only after some time do I get to understand that indeed His way is far higher than my way.

"We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God if we remember how long and how graciously he once waited for us!" -- CH Spurgeon

Through this perhaps He would like to strengthen us: in patience, good, humour, compassion, humility, or meekness. Perhaps He has new lessons in self-denial and self-distrust to teach us. Perhaps He wishes to break us from complacency, unreality, or pride and conceit. Perhaps His purpose is just to draw us closer to Him.

"Still He teaches believers to value His promised gifts by making them to wait for those gifts and compelling them to pray persistently for them before He bestows them." -- JI Packer

Short summary of "Knowing God" by JI Packer

deceptive self

Self-deception enables those who are nothing to think they are something. -- Galatians 6:3

First, I have lots and lots of belief.

Second, I believe that some of my beliefs are false.

We have been wrong many times. Moreover, there are many beliefs we haven’t so much considered them for ages. So there are false beliefs swimming around in our consciousness somewhere or the other.

Third, It’s fairly likely that I don’t believe all of the things I think I believe. Thus, how do I know that I really believe in the things I think I believe?

This is the question that gives rise to the problem of self-deception. In order to know ourselves, we need to examine our acts. With very few exceptions, no one has any trouble acting out their beliefs. You do act in accordance with your beliefs. More likely, you just don’t believe what you’ve thought of yourself as believing.

Rather than trying to work up behavior consistent with what we think we believe, we should be begging with the man who wanted desperately for Jesus to free his son from the demon that possessed him. “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24)

Thus what is self-deception?

Whenever there's a pressure associated with believing something, there's a possibility of self-deception. A mother can’t live with the belief that her child is on drugs. A husband can’t live with the belief that his wife is cheating. Nearer to our situation as Christians, another example could be a convert who can’t live with the belief that he’s going to hell for lack of belief.

I am counted as a deceiver if I act for the sake of causing other people to believe something, or to continue to believe something, without regard for the truth. I’m trying to manage others beliefs, but I’m not trying to move others along toward the true belief.

“To be self-deceived is to avoid using rational standards for evidence whenever it suits our purposes.” -- Jean-Paul Sartre

What leads us into self-deception?

Attention management, procrastination, perspective switching, rationalization and ressentiment

How can we break ourselves from self-deception?

I just want to stimulate our thinking, that perhaps we are now in this state of self-deception. The best way to solve this problem, and of course all other problems which we face as human is to return back to our Creator, to return back to our "manual" which is His Words. Anyway what's written here is just a summary of a summary made by a friend of mine. To get a bigger picture, you could read the book, or the summary linked below :)

from I Told Me So

http://ardianto86.tabulas.com/2010/05/28/i-told-me-so/

http://ardianto86.tabulas.com/2010/05/30/i-told-me-so-2/

mere christianity

Oh well I have been indulging myself with books lately, there just too many books which I haven't finished reading. Actually "Mere Christianity" was one of the first Christian books that I read. I wanted to recommend this book to a friend, but before recommending it, I need to know what does this book talk about and whether it's relevant to their struggles and could help them to grow. Actually I couldn't really remember what did CS Lewis say here, that's why I re-read it again, and it was refreshing :)

CS Lewis starts this book by giving the a clear idea why there exist a "universally accepted golden standard" in the human life. He believes that human being must behave in a certain way but in reality we tend not to behave that way! He called this "Law of Nature" and it's not instinct at all. It's also not a social convention, and it's not a human invention. Therefore, it's something that we do not invent ourselves and we know that we ought to obey it. And where does this Law come from? Who is the source of this absolute goodness that become the standard of our life?

Christianity does not make sense until you have realized that thee is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken the Law and put yourself wrong with That Power!

What do Christians believe in?

I believe that there's a piece of truth in other believes and religion. There exists two views on God. One is called Pantheism which believes that God is beyond good or evil, and the universe itself is God. Thus pantheists do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The other view is Christian view which believes that God created the universe, He is personal, and He can't be the universe itself!

CS Lewis was an atheist before. His argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how did he get this idea of "just" and "unjust"? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. Therefore there must be some source of Power beyond us that put in us this idea of "justice."

Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

It's also of no good of asking for a simple religion. Real things are not simple! Besides being complicated, reality is usually odd. Reality is usually also something that you could not guessed.

Now let's turn to the idea of good and evil. The problem of evil has been puzzling human mind for long. Mani (c. AD 216–276) tried to explain this problem of evil with his view of dualism. He believed that there are two equal and independent power of good and evil, and these two powers are at constant war with each other. St Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) was once the follower of Manichaeism and he believed that is the solution to his question, "Where does the evil come from?"

However after some time he abandoned this believe and come with a different view to solve this problem of evil. He believed that evil is not an entity, it's not exist in the first place. Evil is a parasite, not an original thing. Evil is the absence of goodness. Augustine no longer asked, "Where does the evil come from," but rather he now ask, "Where is the source of this light, where does goodness come from?"

Yes, the universe is at war, but it's not between the power of good and evil! Rather, it's a civil war, it's a rebellion! Satan rebels against God, we human rebel against God.

But we could then asked, evil has made himself the Prince of the World, but why God let it that way? Does it mean that God is not in control of what happening in the world? Well, it's because God created things which had free will. Why is that so?

Because free will though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

What did God do next? He gave us conscience, so that we can tell which one is right and which one is wrong. He sent the human race what CS Lewis called "good dreams": those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men. He then selected Israel as His chosen people and spent time with them hammering into their heads what sort of God He is.

Lastly, He sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ as a perfect penitent for us, through the line of the Israelite. He is a man, therefore He could surrender His will, suffer and be hummiliated, and die. He could do it perfectly because is God Himself.

The perfect suffering, the perfect death, the perfect submission, were not only easier to Jesus because He is God, but were only possible because He is God!

If we would like to put everything in the timeline, it would look something like this: in the beginning there was God and He created the universe and everything in it → the great rebellion → the fall of Adam and Eve → Jesus Christ, our perfect penitent → our sanctification, a Christ-life in us → consummation of all things in Christ.


How should we live as a Christian?

Why do we do good? It's not to please God, it's not merely for approval. It's because Christ in us. It's not that God will love us because we are good, but God will make us good because He loves us. By saying "Christ in us" we do not simply saying that we are thinking about Christ or merely copying Him, but Christ is actually operating through us. We are His tools.

There are three important parts of morality: First, relations between man and man, fair play and harmony between individuals. Second, our own individual purity, the need of tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Third, relations between man and God, the general purpose of human life as a whole.

There are also seven virtues. The first four are called "cardinal virtues": prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. The other three are called "theological or Christian virtues": charity, hope, and faith.

I would like to highlight the part of Faith. In this book, CS Lewis described faith in two senses or on two levels. In the first sense it means simply Belief, accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity.

In this sense, faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.

That's why faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just creature dithering to and fro. Therefore we need to recognize the fact that our moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church going are necessary parts of the Christian life.

Next is Faith in the second sense, or higher sense. The question of Faith in this sense arises only if a man has tried his level best to practice the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God's own. Thus he discovers his bankruptcy!

When we found out ourselves failing to keep God's law except by trying our hardest, and then failing again, we will come up into a vital moment at which we turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't." I would like to close this with a passage from Philippians 2:12-13:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Our progress in sanctification is thus both work of God, and also our own work. Yes, we must work our best to keep all His commandments and virtues. It's also the work of God in us, He works to shape us into Christlikeness. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism put it, it's like "a man who has a terrible disease, and is given one of the new wonder drugs, he will suddenly be delivered from the power of that disease. But he will still have a long way to go before he's completely strong and well." And yes this is Faith the second sense, we work out our morality and we belief that God is also at work in us.

Soli Deo Gloria