Today at church, the music director stopped in between songs to talk about the knowledge of God. He talked about how important it is to know God. I was very happy about this because I believe it is something that isn't emphasized enough by the modern church. This post comes from my thoughts about what he said.
I should start by saying that what I'm about to talk about is a purely philosophical idea. I am not attempting to establish any kind of doctrine or claiming to make an absolutely unbreakable point. This is based on my opinion. If anyone can poke holes in my argument or demonstrate that I am wrong in any way, let those holes be poked and let me be shown wrong so that we all can grow.
My argument is that there are two kinds of knowledge of God: head knowledge and intimate knowledge. One can have at least some degree of head knowledge without intimate knowledge, but one cannot have true intimate knowledge without true head knowledge.
First off, I'll define the terms. Head knowledge is exactly what it sounds like: it is what we know about God. This includes his character, his works, his words, things distinguishing the Father from the Son and the Son from the Holy Spirit, etc. These are things we learn about God from the Bible, his revealed Word about himself. I actually hesitate to use the term "head knowledge" because I believe that term has such negative connotations in the church today, but I'll discuss that more later.
Intimate knowledge is the love of God, the passion and desire for God, the worship of God, the earnest desire to follow God and treat him as the Lord of one's life. This idea comes from several Biblical stories where a man "knows" his wife. The Bible uses this term as more than simply knowing things about her. This is talking about the deep intimacy of marriage. The Bible also talks about God "knowing" his church. This is obviously different from a man "knowing" his wife, but it's a similar idea; it is deep, true love.
Now, like I stated previously, I think you can have head knowledge without intimate knowledge, but not intimate knowledge without head knowledge. Note that I am not saying that purely head knowledge is a good thing; I'm only saying it is a possibility.
So, why can't we have intimate knowledge without head knowledge? Because intimate knowledge -- real, honest intimate knowledge -- requires that we know things about the person or thing we are intimately loving. If you are worshiping a God that you know nothing about from the Bible, a God who only comes from your ideas or your preferences, are you actually worshiping the God of the Bible? I would seriously question that you were. A God formed from your ideas or preferences is not the God of the Bible; he is the God of your ideas and preferences. In other words, he is the wrong God.
On the other hand, it is definitely possible to have at least mostly accurate head knowledge without any form of intimate knowledge of God. I say "mostly" because, in my opinion, truly accurate head knowledge necessitates worship of God. I would say the person with a lot of head knowledge and no desire to worship has come to the wrong conclusions about God. That's human nature. Right conclusions about God would mean acknowledging that we are sinful and fallen and God is absolutely good and holy. Man by nature does not want to do that.
So why am I even making this argument? Because I believe that everyone tends towards one of these extremes, and both are extremely dangerous. I think my personal bent is to seek head knowledge. This is probably because I have been on the other side, trying to worship a God I barely knew. Having had that experience and realizing its danger, I now tend to flee in the other direction. But there's a middle ground. We need both head and intimate knowledge of God.
For the past few decades the modern church's tendency has been to worship the God of our ideas rather than the God of the Bible. It would worship without really studying the Bible to know anything about the God it was trying to worship. The idea is that studying the Bible is different from spending time with God. "Head knowledge" is too academic, it's not intimate enough. "Stop studying the Bible and seek experiences and a word from the Lord." As if, when we read God's Word, we aren't in fact seeking words from the Lord. What sense does that make? If we are reading the very words of God, we are seeking his words! That is why we are reading the Bible: it is his Word! My opinion is that this is born out of a desire for spirituality on one's own terms, whether or not this is the conscious case.
Thankfully, in more recent times there has been an resurgence of interest in the actual God of the actual Bible and the study of his Word. But man is fallen. I worry that we'll start to fall towards the opposite extreme: head knowledge without intimate knowledge. Such knowledge makes one no different from secular professors of religion, who study the Bible like it is just another mythology. We cannot do that. But at the same time, we can't simply invent a God from our preferences or ideas or even our experiences.
In order to truly worship the God of the Bible, we need to read the Bible to know what God has said about himself. Nothing else can define God. We cannot define God. God must define himself, we must know what he has said about himself, and we must praise him in response.
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