May 18, 2008

When I was in seminary, I took a course entitled, “The Love of Learning and Desire for God.” The best thing about the class may have been the title. This advanced systematic theology course required abstract intellectual thinking. We read a lot of Von Balthazar, which means we read a page, stopped to make sense of an idea, squinted until the gray cells caught up, then moved on to the next page. The exercise was stimulating and definitely character building. My difficulty with the class was that I am at heart a practical theologian. When I study divine truth, I want to know how it looks on the ground. If an idea is of God, about God, or from God, I’m wondering how it gets worked out in the world. My driving question is, so, how does God want us to react and respond to this truth? 

After much squinting and dissecting, my pragmatic mind resolved Von Balthazar’s thesis to this simple truth. All human beings carry within themselves two sublime drives. All human beings have an instinctive desire to think and make sense of the world around them, and they all want to connect to some power greater than themselves. Woven tightly, microscopically into our DNA is a love of learning and a desire for God.

What the love of learning actually means is that we want to understand how the universe holds together. We want to know the boundaries and the principles that govern the world. We need to settle our minds on how life is structured so that we don’t feel as though we’re on the brink of chaos moment to moment. We need to know some certainties so that we have a sense of control and order. Control and order give human beings peace of mind. We love to learn because learning brings us knowledge and knowledge brings us confidence and confidence brings us deep-seated relief.

If we understand how the seasons change and the tides shift and the body handles diseases and how the adolescent mind functions – then we can make contingency plans. If we learn about the aging process and human development and emotions and brain function, then we can wrap our minds around the fundamentals of relationships and our lives become both enriched and stable.

Beyond learning and mastering the fundamentals for survival, human beings yearn to learn advanced lessons. We hunger for answers to greater questions. In addition to getting through the day without being eaten by tigers or bitten by an asp, we want to know the “meaning of life.” We want to know our collective and our personal purpose on earth. Why do we humans have the capacity for abstract thinking? Why can we imagine and create? Over all other life forms, why do we make art and music, poetry and pottery? Why were we created with the capacity to reason and to change? We are very complicated organisms – highly evolved and our most distinctive attribute is our curiosity. We wonder.   We ask and inquire. The drive to know, this love of learning is the most central human characteristic. This quality makes us unique in creation. The ability to raise our eyes from the plain of survival up to the heavens is our greatest birthright. The capacity to look beyond food, shelter, and reproduction to ask questions of the cosmos is the essential human purpose. To inquire and to learn is human destiny. 

Wrapped around those molecules for questioning and learning are atoms of desire. Since the time humans began to move upright, we have had a longing to connect to God. In the deep recesses of our minds, in the core of human sub-consciousness, there resides a desire for God. Humanity across all time and all cultures has yearned to make contact with a power, a source greater than itself. Aborigines and Zulus, Innuits and Cherokees, Sardinians and Parisians all look beyond themselves to something greater. Human beings have a sense that there exists in time and reality beyond our universe a creating force. There is, there must be, an originator, a mind, a strength, a goodness, an awesomeness far deeper, far greater than our own capacities. As smart, ingenious, strong, and creative as we are, we do not have the stuff to begin and sustain creation. Something else must be. Something else called all life into being. Something also set cells into motion. We call the something else God. And, we want to know, to learn about, to connect to this God. The human desire for God is extensively documented. In archeological digs, you find it. On the walls of ancient caves you see it. Hanging in the great art and history museums of the world, you see evidence of the human quest and interest in the Divine. This desire for God has not been documented in crustaceans and marsupials, but in the last decade, human brain mapping has shown that specific areas become stimulated by thoughts and images of some greater power, of God.

So, intrinsic to our being are these two drives, a love of learning and a desire for God. Sometimes they are similar and compatible pursuits and sometimes they seem at odds with one another. Sometimes the rational pursuit of knowledge and evidential truth seems at variant with the reality and presence of God.

Sometimes we survey the conditions of our world and we question the existence and essential goodness of its creator. When cyclones hit Myanmar and the levees break in New Orleans, when a young father dies of a heart attack leaving small children behind, when a job goes away, when someone we love gets cancer, and we pray and pray and it doesn’t go away – where is the evidence of a loving, committed God then? 

We were created with minds to think and reason and learn, and those gifted minds will use their reason. And, sometimes, their reason leads to doubt. Suddenly, desire for God, belief in God, faith in God seems irrational. Connection with God now feels like superstition. Here we find ourselves in front of a looming dilemma. We carry in us a love of learning – an appreciation for reason and truth, and we carry in us a desire for God, a longing for the hope and peace of mind that God promises. 

What do we do when our rational mind sees things that seem to contradict God’s presence and, yet, our heart wants to hold God’s goodness close? When we have doubts, do we have to choose between our reason and our God? No. That’s the answer. No. God does not require blind faith in order to be in relationship with us. Doubt is part of the human condition. Dear ones, you may wonder, how can I say this with such confidence? I am certain because God’s own divine messenger tells us so. We just heard His declaration. In the final words of Matthew’s account on the life, times and mission of Jesus Christ – God’s emissary to the world - we learn doubt is no deterrent to God. 

After the crucifixion and resurrection, just before Jesus leaves this earth to return to his father, he sends word to the remaining disciples. “Meet me on the mountain.” The eleven go and see the Christ and they praise him, adore him, and worship him, but some of them, some of the eleven closest, most knowledgeable, best-informed friends and followers doubted. They weren’t really sure He was who He said He was. They really weren’t positive that everything He said was the Divine, Final, Absolute word of God. The original disciples who had face-to-face contact with Jesus Christ for three years had reservations and uncertainties. 

And how did Jesus respond to the lack of absolute faith? He looked past the dilemma. He told them “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” I know everything. I know everything. I have all the answers to every question. I hold all truth.  There is nothing beyond the scope of my awareness. Therefore, have confidence! Go. Tell yourself, remind yourself, and go tell others everything you learned from me. Tell them, teach them my message. Refresh the learning in your own mind. Look to me, trust, me know me as the final word and authority and don’t fret or worry about what you don’t know or cannot yet comprehend. I’m the authority. Just point to me and say, “This is what I know so far. Beyond this, I’m not sure, but I trust the Son and the Son’s word.” 

Notice. Notice, Jesus did not pass all the authority, all the knowledge, all the expertise on to the disciples. And, if Jesus didn’t pass all knowledge and authority, they don’t know everything. Furthermore, if Jesus didn’t pass all authority on to the original 12 followers, he certainly did not pass all truth, certainty and knowledge on to those who came after- not the Pope, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, not Michel Curry, or Sarah Hollar or Deacon Jane.

And, because none of us is the ultimate authority, we are allowed to question and doubt. Our charge, what God expects from us is to recognize and appreciate what he has already put inside of us. God only requires that we live into our original natures. We were built to love learning and desire God. We were created to strive to understand the nature and will of God, to try to make sense of the world and God’s plan for it and for us. We were made to follow the desire our creator put into our very being to want relationship with Him.

Our call is to just be ourselves. We can wonder, question and doubt and then we just move on trusting God to sort all things out.

What good, good news for us. All authority stays in best hands and we are free to wonder and to be awed. What a marvelous gift, a gift for which we say, Thanks be to God and Amen.