I Thought I Knew

So what do I know of you / who spoke me into motion? / Where have I even stood / but the shore along your ocean? / Are you fire? Are you fury? / Are you sacred? Are you beautiful? / So what do I know? What do I know of Holy? / I guess I thought that I had figured you out / I knew all the stories and I learned to talk about / How you were mighty to save / Those were only empty words on a page / Then I caught a glimpse of who you might be / The slightest hint of you brought me down to my knees… – Addison Road, “What Do I Know of Holy?”

I’ve had a startling revelation several times here lately, and each time it’s like I’m realizing it for the first time. I grew up in the church and made a decision to embrace Jesus as my Savior when I was just a teenager. I’ve heard about him for 32 years and have been following in his footsteps for nearly 19 of those 32 years.

And with each passing day, over and over and over again, one thing is becoming strikingly and unsettlingly clear:

I know absolutely nothing about this God I profess to believe in.

With the passing of time, I’m becoming convinced the longer I seek after him, I somehow come to know less about him.

It’s certainly not because he is revealing less – no, certainly not.

It’s because he’s revealing so much more – and in the revealing more, I’m finding he’s nothing like I thought he was. I spend my days feeling like David when he wrote Psalm 139:6, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

The longer I follow God, the more out of reach he becomes - in this raw, majestic, infinite, unfathomable, too wonderful, unattainable, lofty kind of way.

But I was doing such a splendid job of convincing myself the other way for so very long, convinced I was making some headway in acquiring knowledge of him.

Oh, how I thought I knew Him.

I thought I knew what it meant to follow him.
I thought I knew his Word.
I thought I knew he loved me.
I thought I knew his peace.
I thought I knew what his presence felt like.
I thought I knew his strength and his power.

I thought I had him figured out.

But it turns out I know nothing.

I know nothing of this God and his love.
I know nothing of this God and his grace.

The more I come to learn about him and spend time in his presence, the more absurd and outlandish he becomes to me, in the most humbling of ways.

Because, if I’m honest, what I think I know about Him are, in fact, the fractured and broken pieces of a God I have made up. Pascal said, “God made man in his image and man returned the favor.” I have returned the favor a hundred-fold over, day in and day out, for years, if not decades. I have this image of a God who is perpetually disappointed with me and perpetually upset with me, a God who is quick to anger and slow to love, instead of slow to anger and quick to love. I got “his anger is but for a moment” and “his favor is for a lifetime” all mixed up (Psalm 30:5), and instead have come to believe his favor lasts for a moment and his anger for a lifetime. That’s the God I know.

And it’s all wrong, this picture I have of him. It’s messed up and broken. This image I have of him that I carry around is heavy and burdensome. Didn’t he say his yoke was easy and his burden light? Then why is this image I carry around of him so heavy?

Because I’m carrying around the wrong image.

I’m buckling underneath the weight of a God I have created for myself, one that does not even remotely resemble the true character of God.

You ever feel a little stunned when you think about how little you know Jesus? Especially those who have walked with him awhile, has it occurred to you that you know only about one iota more about him than what you started out knowing? We get so full of ourselves, thinking we know so much when we know so little. My God, how could we be so arrogant?

Somehow, someway, I have to do the hard work of unraveling all of these twisted and broken images I have of him in my head, these false pictures of who I think he is. The Jews wanted a savior, one to save them from Roman rule. But Jesus wasn’t a Savior like they thought of a Savior. They wanted a king to extend his hand and wield his power on their behalf. But Jesus wasn’t a King like they thought of a King. They wanted a political leader, one to usurp earthly kingdoms and establish his own rule and kingdom. But Jesus wasn’t a ruler like they thought of a ruler. They wanted a prince, one who would brandish his sword and spill the blood of their enemies. But Jesus wasn’t a Prince like they thought of a prince.

And he’s not God like I think of God.

“’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,’” wrote the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 55:8-9.

He’s not God like we think of God.

And with each passing moment, I find that he unravels all that I thought I knew about him, replacing all those wrong images with the right ones, ones where he grows bigger and bigger, and I grow smaller and smaller.

In C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s work, Prince Caspian, he captures a tender moment between Lucy, the young girl who first entered the magical land of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Aslan, the Jesus-like Lion of the story. Lucy and her siblings are returning to Narnia after having been away for quite some time, but they have yet to encounter the great Aslan they had met in the first book. Just as Lucy was the first to enter Narnia, she, too, would be the first to encounter Aslan on their return trip:

For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him…[Lucy] never stopped to think whether he was friendly or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far around his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.

“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.

“Welcome, child,” he said.

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

“Not because you are?”

“I am not. But every you grow, you will find me bigger.”

Every year you grow, you will find Him, the True Lion, bigger.

And you will find yourself smaller.

And perhaps in Him becoming bigger and us becoming smaller, perhaps in knowing nothing, we realize one thing:

That’s all we need to know.