Knowing and Believing, Easter 2 April 15, 2012

Believing and Knowing

 

Today's readings include  this passage at the very end of  the Gospel of John, when the risen Christ Jesus appears to the disciples:

 

²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” ³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.   John 22:29-31

 

This connects directly with what I have been thinking about all week - believing and knowing.  How to we, who have not seen "come to believe", and what does that mean?  Is there a difference between knowing and believing?  These questions have been bouncing around in my head like beebees in a boxcar.  Help me think this through.

 

"Believing" and "knowing" is a strong theme in the Gospel of John. The Greek word we translate as "believe" occurs 10 times in Matthew and Mark, 9 times in Luke, but 99 times in John!  Translation from one language and culture to another is always tricky, and translation across millenia is trickiness with stilts on.  The word seems to have several colors of meaning, just as "believe" can have in English.  From what I read in the on-line lexicons and my Vine's dictionary, it is often used to mean to be persuaded of, confident in or entrusting oneself to an ideal or a person.  It is more than mere intellectual agreement.  There is a deeper personal entrusting involved.  At this moment, my son Lucas is struggling to write an 8th grade essay, and I just said "Look, I really believe in you".  He understood immediately that I had made a strong, emphatic statement that I had confidence in his abilities.  Believing, in its most common English useage at least, can have a tentative ring to it. In a continuoum toward certainty, I wonder, then postulate, believe, am nearly certain, am certain.  Not sure if it does or not in the Greek of John's gospel (1).  Believing also has an act of will associated with it.  You often choose to believe something or someone (2).

 

It seems that "kinowing" is related to believing, but has several distintives that set it apart.  Knowing involves an experience, as in knowing a place or a person's face.  It often involves a relationship, and the communication that goes with it. Knowing is not nearly as much an act of will as is believing.  I had very little choice, if any, in most of the things and people I know best:  my family I of origin or my hometown.  My best friends really just appeared on the scene.  In the case of my spouse, when we were courting there was a palpable sense that we were being carried along by something (Someone) much bigger than both of us.  Yes, we chose to have children, but these particular young souls that I love so and am getting to know were beyond my choosing.

 

Earlier in John's gospel, some disciples who have been walking with Jesus exclaim  "for we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God"  John 6:69

I love this passage because it puts believing and knowing together.  I love it too for the "we" in there - this does not need to be a solo flight.  

 

In that verse there appears to be a movement from believing to knowing.  The way I "came to believe", to know Jesus as the Holy One, entrusted  with the whole of my life, happened in almost the reverse direction.  I was singing in a youth chorus, as I had done many times, singing "the Lord of love has come to me", as I had done before, kind of mouthing the words, but really believing much of it. That is when I had a all-encompassing experience of the loving presence of God.  While I was not sure what had happened or what it meant, that experience was a kind of knowing and being known that spurred me on to learn more, experience more, and gradually to come to believe, by which I mean an ongoing entrusting of myself to God, to God's purpose and path.  It is much more than an intellectual agreement, it is a relationship, and experience that "I know that I know that I know".

 

Last Sunday, Easter Sunday, our little house church Living Hope Fellowship me at our place and we asked "What difference has the resurrected Christ made in your life?".  Several folks shared their personal stories. Some were of deeply moving and dramatic Presence, others of the love of God known during dreams.  Others,  like Tolstoy's cobbler, had experienced the living Christ in other people.  There was truly a variety of experience (3), and a variety of ways of knowing (4).

  

It has been said that the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all (5).  I think this means that in this age the old paradigms of knowing as "children of the church", or by mere systems of belief and arguments, will no longer be sufficient to support a living faith.  Mystical experiences of the presence of the living Christ, which feed us at the level of heart and soul will be critical to life as Christian (6) (7).  I am sensitive to those whose ways of believing and knowing are different than the "mysical" and who may see that these mystical  sxperiences exclude them.  I wonder if this was precisely what the Gospel of John was getting at with" Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe".  Blessed are those that have not had  dramatic, emotional experiences or gut-level unmistakeable encounters with the Holy, and yet have come to entrust their lives to the risen Christ.  It is my conviction that there is room for both, and more, in the house.

 

Blessed also are those that read long posts from those that hardly know of what they write. If you have made it this far, I'd love for this post to generate discussion, disagreement, lively sharing of stories etc.  What say you?

 

Have a good night,

 

John

 

 

 

Notes:

(1) OK, by way of full disclosure, if any were necessary, when it comes to N.T. Greek, or much else N.T. I am a total hack.  Its almost as bad as, say, letting an engineer do theology..er, um..oops.

 

(2) In writing this, I came accross a foundational essay by William James, "The Will to Believe", in the category of the ethics of belief. Worth a read.

 

(3) another nod to William James: "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

 

(4) I came to know a little bit about ways of knowing through the Lindisfarne School of Theology.  We touched on the Harvard study of Women's Ways of Knowing. 

 

(5) Karl Rahner

 

(6)  I came across a nice blog that moves the discussion into the value of the spiritual disciplines:  http://www.ethicsdaily.com/why-future-christians-will-be-mystics-cms-19254-printer

 

(7) I wonder if theorder of knowing and believing is akin to the human emotional response in general, like "William James' bear" (Google it) (another nod to that guy..what is going on...is it his birthday or something?...seems to be hanging around here a lot, maybe even in the spiritual sense : )