Savoir King

 

Nope, that's not a typo. It's an awful theological-Francophone pun.

Leading worship Wednesday afternoon at CU prayer meeting, just reminded of the amazing truth that we are able "savoir [the] King" - to know the King. First, that we even are rationally aware (savoir) of His existence, like maths, logic, etc. That He has let us in on this mystery, of His existence. But, more than that. we get to know Him as a person (connaitre), fathom some of His habits, His characteristics; to see a small portion of His nature. It's amazing love, but, fearful. His nature is scary. It's different. I've just finished Deuteronomy this morning, and found myself thinking "my God, You are very different to me". Polycottons are sinful. But this is who He is, we cannot tailor God to our wants and desires, or else He is no longer God.

In fact, this is probably the only area on which we find Nietzsche and Tozer are in agreement. Nietzsche's main argument against God - and by that I mean, laying aside the childish stuff he writes in Beyond Good & Evil, where he likens Religious belief to the awkward stages of puberty, and laying aside also the interesting but empirically invalid divisions of history into "three epochs", the last of which, supposedly, we're living in wherein we've sacrificed God Himself, although Freddy never backs these claims up - the main argument he has against God is that He's too domestic. Whereas the God of the Old Testament was fierce, the God of the New Testament is for the "weak-willed", He's simply too nice. In short, the problem Nietzsche has with God is something wrong with Nietzsche's perception of God. Nietzsche's YHWH is too small.

Aiden Wilson Tozer agrees. I'd quote you, but Alf has my copy of The Knowledge of the Holy, but in essence, the biggest danger facing the Church is our perception of God. God is not our good luck charm. God is not there to help us out when we do something crazy. God is not here to make us rich. God is not more interested in kittens than pro-wrestling. Our God is too small. When we understand God, when we can fit Him into neat categories, when the Trinity makes sense - then we have misunderstood God.

Anselm's argument for the existence of God is that, logically, we all have something we can think of that nothing greater can exist, or, in his words, "He is something than which nothing greater can be conceived". The only way to improve this Being is by making Him exist - that is the only thing that could possibly make him better, and, since there can be nothing better, He must exist. BUT even this doesn't go far enough. Because God is bigger than the greatest thought we can have. The thing that "something than which nothing greater can be conceived" is still too small a God. If we ever define Him solely in our own experience, solely in our understanding of Him, then we have missed who He really is.

God is fierce, God is holy, God is totally unlike us. This is what the Old Testament screams, from creation to the Fall to the patriarchs to the law to the history, through the wisdom, through the prophets: "I AM NOT LIKE YOU". But at the same time, "I HAVE CHOSEN YOU". We need to get these 2 in the right order in our minds. We cannot grasp the magnitude of the second statement without understanding the magnitude of the first. This concept, that where sin increases, grace increases further - that, even greater than this unfathomable rift between us and God, greater is the distance that God has removed us from our sin - this is incredible. We now come before Him in a weird mixture of confidence through Jesus, yes, but with reverent and holy fear. You are so not like me. I am so not worthy of knowing You.

Anyway. It was a good afternoon, fun times in spontaneous singing and stuff. And it's a good, reverb-y room, which makes hitting high notes (G#!!!) easier. (The G# wasn't during the time of worship, or I would've ended up like Uzzah, for real.) But it is absolutely freezing.

This is the view from Stevenage, back home:

Is it autumn? Is it winter? Who knows! But whatever it is, it's typical that it happens a day after I come back to Brighton. Here, it is just freezing.

Oh well.

At least I've still got the sea.