I want to know God.
When Jesus prayed for me and for all believers he said:
Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.
And so I had better check what I think I know about God with what Jesus says he has made know to me.
The trouble is that the way we usually learn is to build information together bit by bit. And as we learn we attach meaning to the information and construct a story or narrative to make sense of it. These stories then become ‘our truth’ – and from there we act as if they are true.
I recently heard someone make a passing remark about God being ‘an old man in the sky in a dressing gown’. Now that is both funny and tragic. And yet you can imagine the steps that happened to get to that place – the pictures of God as an old man with a white beard, dressed in robes; the discussions about heaven being in the sky somewhere far away. God is distant and strange. If that is what we believe about him then we will act as if that is true.
We have all sorts of narratives running in our heads, not only about God, but also about who we are, what a family unit is, how we should behave in church, how we should relate to others. These narratives rule us and can ruin us.
Jesus clearly understood the importance of how we learn through narrative – he used stories, or parables, to teach what he wanted us to know.
A key part of becoming like Christ is therefore to check out the stories that are running in our heads and make sure they match what Jesus teaches in the stories he told. We need to learn replace our narratives with Jesus’ narratives.
And so, going back to modelling – if someone can do something, I can learn how they do it and then teach others how to do it too.
I want to know God in the way Jesus said he has made him known, and I want to find out what it means to have the love God has for Jesus in me.
First I need to check out the stories that are running in my head about God and Jesus – then I can begin to replace them with the stories Jesus told.
When you close your eyes to pray what stories or pictures about God do you have in your mind?
Leave a comment