Truth: Right Knowing or Knowing Rightly?

This summer I'm teaching a small group of college students on the topic of God's nature and character. Recently when I asked these students how their view of God has changed in the past 6 months, one of the young men said something to this effect: "I used to see God more as a construct of certain beliefs that were given to me; now I'm beginning to see Him as a real Person with whom to relate."

I believe he articulated a major problem that has developed over time within Christianity: we think that being a "Christian" means that we believe (mentally assent to) a certain set of doctrines about God in Christ that we have put together from the Bible. Our churches and Bible institutes and seminaries reinforce this idea that our life in God as Christians is mainly about "right knowing" or "right information".

Jesus confronted this problem with the Pharisees, saying to them, "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life..."  Or as Eugene Peterson aptly puts it in The Message: “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want."

Having a neatly constructed set of beliefs (truths) about Jesus isn't the same as knowing Truth as a Person (John 14:6). To relate to Truth as a Person is dramatically different than relating to a package of beliefs about that person. A person is very dynamic, not black and white. Relating with a person entails love and listening, hard and painful work, along with continual new discoveries; it's an ever expanding growth experience (which means change).

In an article entitled "Christians: It's NOT a Sin to Change Your Beliefs", Stephen Mattson from Northwestern College (St.Paul, MN) says:

"American Christianity has created a culture of theological permanence, where individuals are expected to learn a set of beliefs and latch onto them for the rest of their lives. Many of our first theological beliefs were probably taught to us in Sunday school, which was part of a church, which was represented by a denomination, which had its own parochial schools and Bible colleges...

But theology — our study and beliefs about God — should be a natural process involving change instead of avoiding it. Our God is too big and too wonderful to completely understand by the time we graduate high school, or college, or get married, or have children, or retire. Our life experiences, relationships, education, exposure to different cultures and perspectives continually affect the way we look at God. Our faith is a journey, a Pilgrim’s Progress, and our theology will change. And while we may not agree with a person’s new theological belief, we need to stop seeing the inherent nature of change as something negative..."
(See the entire article here...)

Right knowing is static and flat; knowing rightly (learning in and from Jesus, the Truth) is dynamic. Perhaps our focus in discipling both children and adults should be more about how to know than about what to know. Then we may not find it so scary to be on a continual course of change but instead see it with anticipation and joy.