Could much of the point of God’s not explaining be that even had He, would Job had any clue to understanding? Could it it be also that Job still needed to trust rather than having to have proof? And again, the main takeaway is the relationship between God and Job. God is with Job and is Himself the answer beyond any of the explanations Job had sought.
That's SO unsatisfying to human pride. But is there another solution to life's hardships? As the old hymn says, "For there's no other way/To be happy in Jesus/Than to trust and obey."
(FWIW, my Substack starts on Job on April 3, chapter by chapter. NB: It is NOT commentary on the main story, but notes on its symbolism—the theme song playing in the background, rather than the focal point of the scene. https://km678.substack.com )
Your final statement Andrew, "....take away our flesh, our heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and you take away the map of the territory through which we make the journey to our souls." This week as I stepped out bravely into something new, only to recoil in terror at the exposure of my weak soul and crazy dreams to trusted friends. How I would love to abandon the unknowing and hide in oblivion for a while, away from the flesh and its 'shocks' except I would hate it. The map of a territory, I think, is a map we are creating as a journey to our Father, or a journey away and one that others will follow through our words and actions. I want to roll the idea of this around in my head a while.
And I would add to this difficulty of between-ness and unknowing the painful necessity of waiting to know and understand. Wait to understand the big truths of God, wait to know what He is actually saying to me personally, wait, wait, wait. Wait to even speak words to my trusted friends because I know they are heavy and will likely create a chasm or bury someone if they come carelessly from my mouth.
I must be honest. I no longer concern myself with the burden of unknowing. Of unknowing many things, of unknowing such things, of God’s thoughts, His ways. There was a time, I did, but all I found myself doing was chasing my own tail down rabbit holes and stutter-stepping along hopeless corridors that grew dimmer and dimmer with each passing step. So, I have come to understand that there will always be a greater weight of things I will not and even cannot know compared to the scant few things I can and will. And I’m okay with that.
I ask myself, when has God ever demanded or even suggested that I could understand His ways or His thoughts? No way, no how, nowhere, not once. Paul dissuaded us in 1 Corinthians 2:11. And if that wasn’t enough God Himself makes it extensively (and a bit overwhelmingly) clear that we just cannot. Re-read Job 38-41, no greater Scripture exists that unabashedly reveals the awesome power, wonder and magnificence of God. For the mind that can conceive the depth and breadth and height of all Creation and then in six short days establish it, is as far from mine as the east is from the west.
“What is truth?” Pilate asked Jesus.
But Jesus had already answered the question while it was yet in Pilate’s mind. Not by answering, “What” but rather by answering, “Who.” Who could know that Truth that stood divine in front of the Roman Governor that fateful day, as the spotless Lamb of God. We all can. And knowing Him, “the Way, the Truth and the Life” is enough for me. The rest of it, is just icing.
“…but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” Luke 10:20
Once, long ago, I proposed the blasphemy of this: Maybe God doesn’t know what is going to happen. I say blasphemy because that is the reaction I typically receive from everyone—everyone, but my daughter, who knows me well enough to know there had to be more to my thought.
So, the Almighty is just that, and certainly God, being all-powerful, has the power to choose what to know, and what not to know. It is as if He is both author of time and reader. As the author, He wrote the code that leads time away from the Beginning, but as reader, He has peeked ahead at the last page to ensure His ultimate plans succeed, but reads along with us, page by page in between. He can look ahead whenever He chooses, but maybe He doesn’t.
Just read the Bible, the Old Testement. The books are filled, right from the start, with God telling us what we should do, and then being angered when we failed to obey. Why would He be angry, if He knew what was coming? Eve failed to obey, and then Adam. And it doesn’t improve after that. The Israelites had to wander for 40 years for their transgressions, before getting to the promised land. How many kings of Israel disappointed Him, also right from the start? Saul tried to kill David multiple times. David had Uriah killed, even Solomon, with his Moabite (and other pagan) concubines. Let’s not even discuss the Northern Kingdoms.
I’ve pondered why God might not want to know the future, and the best answer I’ve ever come up with is: Maybe God just wants to be surprised; maybe not knowing gives Him a little adventure. Like any parent, He has guided us as a race, given us rules to live by, and set us on the straight and narrow, hoping we will veer neither left, nor right. And, while gets disappointed with us, even angry, maybe He is that much prouder of us, when we succeed.
Also, maybe knowing everything is just too boring, even for God. 🤷🏼♂️
"We torment ourselves with wondering" - Didn't God put this longing in us, to see as he sees? How do we ponder in peace without striving or suffering; wrestle, but not hand-wring?
"Surely, this transformation occurs through the embodied individual’s struggle to connect with the living Truth across the gap that separates us, across "the space between.”"
How does faith fit into this? Is it an unseeable bridge over the gap? Or is it a compass orienting us in the right direction?
The word, "unknowing" triggered the memory of Pseudo-Dionysius, a completely crazed (and perhaps saintly) anonymous Christian mystic. His path to worship more deeply was to "unknow" the things that we know - and learn to sit in the unknowing - which he argued was perhaps our deepest connection to God. It's not lost on anyone that he expressed this in beautiful, crazy, train-wreck 120 word run-on sentences, using language to (try to) express this particular slice of unknowing. Part of his point, which I think you're talking about here... was to not even let our good ideas about God become idols... but rather to love God Himself, Who "through a glass darkly" is not completely seen. It isn't that we can't know things (scripture super helpful here btw) or that we shouldn't try to talk / sing / write about them... but rather that God's love and goodness are even bigger and better than our ideas of love and goodness. This is scary and great all at the same time.
Did God put this burden on us or is this the result of Adam and Eve's transgression? We struggle with the burden of unknowing and the result has been the way of life we have built. Yet knowledge and its pursuit is both a blessing and a curse. God gave us the knowledge to forge the ax and our nature let us to use it against each other.
“But these concerns are beyond us. God lives in eternity where all time exists at once. There is no “pre” in such a consciousness.”
THIS.
The most severe of my crises of faith was this question, “Would God the Father create a being whom he would predestine for damnation, and do I want to serve a God like that?”
The conclusion I arrived at was that the usage of the prefix “pre-“ in “predestination” appears to become nonsensical when you realize God isn’t experiencing a linear timeline, He’s experiencing every Present at all times, eternally - or at least that may be as best as my caveman brain can describe it, and as good a guess as I can make at the way the Logos Himself experiences time, good grief.
It’s one of the reasons I loved Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. My sincerest apologies Andrew, parasocial grandfather, I’ve heard your criticisms of it - it may be the one subject I’ve ever heard you say anything about that I disagree with, but maybe this will change your mind some? There’s a scene with Matthew McConaughey towards the end of the movie that better illustrates this concept visually than anything I’ve ever seen - the idea of someone being in everything everywhere, all at once.
If God is like that, there’s no premise for ascribing premeditated malice to His character. The concepts of Pre and Post are tools too rudimentary to describe the perspective of God - “through a glass darkly” indeed. In the end, it turns out the suggestion that God creates people to predestine them for hell is belied by the very language we use to try and talk about it.
Anyhow, wrapping up this novel now - this topic was a particular struggle for me, so I thought it may be helpful to some to elaborate on my experience with what you encapsulated so succinctly and poetically here, Andrew. Appreciate you and Spencer dearly, thank you for putting these wonderful discussions into the world.
So what I hear you saying is: "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past..." and thinking that through is impossible. In other words, "Human kind cannot bear very much reality."
Copied. Every time I read a post, I copy and save. “We want more knowledge. We want more health. We want more pills and gizmos to give us comfort and joy and maybe even wisdom. No one wants to suffer. No one wants to die. But take away our flesh and the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and you take away the map of the territory through which we make the journey to our souls.” Brilliant.
Mr. Klavan, Are not getting your money? You indicated that on your show. They are charging me. If they aren’t giving it to you that is theft. Please let me know that you and your son are getting paid.
Having heard Drew quote Keats previously, I really resonate with the phrase, “vale of soul-making.”
We do not have a soul; we are souls.
“Of course — of course — there are stark and obvious spiritual truths. But there are small-minded pieties too that masquerade as truths, and harden our hearts against pity and forgiveness. At the crisis point, we can only strive in love toward the source of love through this present darkness.
But here’s the thing. This has to be what flesh is made for, this very odyssey of body and mind. John Keats, in one of his brilliant speculative letters, said that this world is a “vale of soul-making,” where “sparks which are God… have identity given to them.” Surely, this transformation occurs through the embodied individual’s struggle to connect with the living Truth across the gap that separates us, across “the space between.”
"Do we even have such a choice, or is everything determined from the start?"
And the Bible answers: YES.
Both are affirmed, in the same passage, or about the same event. We just don't have a paradigm.
Or the Book of Job: "Why?!"
God never explains.
KAM
Could much of the point of God’s not explaining be that even had He, would Job had any clue to understanding? Could it it be also that Job still needed to trust rather than having to have proof? And again, the main takeaway is the relationship between God and Job. God is with Job and is Himself the answer beyond any of the explanations Job had sought.
Yes, I agree.
That's SO unsatisfying to human pride. But is there another solution to life's hardships? As the old hymn says, "For there's no other way/To be happy in Jesus/Than to trust and obey."
(FWIW, my Substack starts on Job on April 3, chapter by chapter. NB: It is NOT commentary on the main story, but notes on its symbolism—the theme song playing in the background, rather than the focal point of the scene. https://km678.substack.com )
God shows up and is present with Job. God himself is the answer.
“I know that my Redeemer lives.”
He is that Advocate who can lay a hand on us both, bringing “the space between” the Creator and Hus human creature.
Oh my, these letters are good.
Your final statement Andrew, "....take away our flesh, our heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and you take away the map of the territory through which we make the journey to our souls." This week as I stepped out bravely into something new, only to recoil in terror at the exposure of my weak soul and crazy dreams to trusted friends. How I would love to abandon the unknowing and hide in oblivion for a while, away from the flesh and its 'shocks' except I would hate it. The map of a territory, I think, is a map we are creating as a journey to our Father, or a journey away and one that others will follow through our words and actions. I want to roll the idea of this around in my head a while.
And I would add to this difficulty of between-ness and unknowing the painful necessity of waiting to know and understand. Wait to understand the big truths of God, wait to know what He is actually saying to me personally, wait, wait, wait. Wait to even speak words to my trusted friends because I know they are heavy and will likely create a chasm or bury someone if they come carelessly from my mouth.
I must be honest. I no longer concern myself with the burden of unknowing. Of unknowing many things, of unknowing such things, of God’s thoughts, His ways. There was a time, I did, but all I found myself doing was chasing my own tail down rabbit holes and stutter-stepping along hopeless corridors that grew dimmer and dimmer with each passing step. So, I have come to understand that there will always be a greater weight of things I will not and even cannot know compared to the scant few things I can and will. And I’m okay with that.
I ask myself, when has God ever demanded or even suggested that I could understand His ways or His thoughts? No way, no how, nowhere, not once. Paul dissuaded us in 1 Corinthians 2:11. And if that wasn’t enough God Himself makes it extensively (and a bit overwhelmingly) clear that we just cannot. Re-read Job 38-41, no greater Scripture exists that unabashedly reveals the awesome power, wonder and magnificence of God. For the mind that can conceive the depth and breadth and height of all Creation and then in six short days establish it, is as far from mine as the east is from the west.
“What is truth?” Pilate asked Jesus.
But Jesus had already answered the question while it was yet in Pilate’s mind. Not by answering, “What” but rather by answering, “Who.” Who could know that Truth that stood divine in front of the Roman Governor that fateful day, as the spotless Lamb of God. We all can. And knowing Him, “the Way, the Truth and the Life” is enough for me. The rest of it, is just icing.
“…but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” Luke 10:20
Once, long ago, I proposed the blasphemy of this: Maybe God doesn’t know what is going to happen. I say blasphemy because that is the reaction I typically receive from everyone—everyone, but my daughter, who knows me well enough to know there had to be more to my thought.
So, the Almighty is just that, and certainly God, being all-powerful, has the power to choose what to know, and what not to know. It is as if He is both author of time and reader. As the author, He wrote the code that leads time away from the Beginning, but as reader, He has peeked ahead at the last page to ensure His ultimate plans succeed, but reads along with us, page by page in between. He can look ahead whenever He chooses, but maybe He doesn’t.
Just read the Bible, the Old Testement. The books are filled, right from the start, with God telling us what we should do, and then being angered when we failed to obey. Why would He be angry, if He knew what was coming? Eve failed to obey, and then Adam. And it doesn’t improve after that. The Israelites had to wander for 40 years for their transgressions, before getting to the promised land. How many kings of Israel disappointed Him, also right from the start? Saul tried to kill David multiple times. David had Uriah killed, even Solomon, with his Moabite (and other pagan) concubines. Let’s not even discuss the Northern Kingdoms.
I’ve pondered why God might not want to know the future, and the best answer I’ve ever come up with is: Maybe God just wants to be surprised; maybe not knowing gives Him a little adventure. Like any parent, He has guided us as a race, given us rules to live by, and set us on the straight and narrow, hoping we will veer neither left, nor right. And, while gets disappointed with us, even angry, maybe He is that much prouder of us, when we succeed.
Also, maybe knowing everything is just too boring, even for God. 🤷🏼♂️
"We torment ourselves with wondering" - Didn't God put this longing in us, to see as he sees? How do we ponder in peace without striving or suffering; wrestle, but not hand-wring?
I say something along those lines all the time: how would anyone ever know happiness, if they didn’t know sadness?
"Surely, this transformation occurs through the embodied individual’s struggle to connect with the living Truth across the gap that separates us, across "the space between.”"
How does faith fit into this? Is it an unseeable bridge over the gap? Or is it a compass orienting us in the right direction?
The word, "unknowing" triggered the memory of Pseudo-Dionysius, a completely crazed (and perhaps saintly) anonymous Christian mystic. His path to worship more deeply was to "unknow" the things that we know - and learn to sit in the unknowing - which he argued was perhaps our deepest connection to God. It's not lost on anyone that he expressed this in beautiful, crazy, train-wreck 120 word run-on sentences, using language to (try to) express this particular slice of unknowing. Part of his point, which I think you're talking about here... was to not even let our good ideas about God become idols... but rather to love God Himself, Who "through a glass darkly" is not completely seen. It isn't that we can't know things (scripture super helpful here btw) or that we shouldn't try to talk / sing / write about them... but rather that God's love and goodness are even bigger and better than our ideas of love and goodness. This is scary and great all at the same time.
Did God put this burden on us or is this the result of Adam and Eve's transgression? We struggle with the burden of unknowing and the result has been the way of life we have built. Yet knowledge and its pursuit is both a blessing and a curse. God gave us the knowledge to forge the ax and our nature let us to use it against each other.
“But these concerns are beyond us. God lives in eternity where all time exists at once. There is no “pre” in such a consciousness.”
THIS.
The most severe of my crises of faith was this question, “Would God the Father create a being whom he would predestine for damnation, and do I want to serve a God like that?”
The conclusion I arrived at was that the usage of the prefix “pre-“ in “predestination” appears to become nonsensical when you realize God isn’t experiencing a linear timeline, He’s experiencing every Present at all times, eternally - or at least that may be as best as my caveman brain can describe it, and as good a guess as I can make at the way the Logos Himself experiences time, good grief.
It’s one of the reasons I loved Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. My sincerest apologies Andrew, parasocial grandfather, I’ve heard your criticisms of it - it may be the one subject I’ve ever heard you say anything about that I disagree with, but maybe this will change your mind some? There’s a scene with Matthew McConaughey towards the end of the movie that better illustrates this concept visually than anything I’ve ever seen - the idea of someone being in everything everywhere, all at once.
If God is like that, there’s no premise for ascribing premeditated malice to His character. The concepts of Pre and Post are tools too rudimentary to describe the perspective of God - “through a glass darkly” indeed. In the end, it turns out the suggestion that God creates people to predestine them for hell is belied by the very language we use to try and talk about it.
Anyhow, wrapping up this novel now - this topic was a particular struggle for me, so I thought it may be helpful to some to elaborate on my experience with what you encapsulated so succinctly and poetically here, Andrew. Appreciate you and Spencer dearly, thank you for putting these wonderful discussions into the world.
God bless.
The middle mysterious space is Sacrament
So what I hear you saying is: "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past..." and thinking that through is impossible. In other words, "Human kind cannot bear very much reality."
Copied. Every time I read a post, I copy and save. “We want more knowledge. We want more health. We want more pills and gizmos to give us comfort and joy and maybe even wisdom. No one wants to suffer. No one wants to die. But take away our flesh and the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and you take away the map of the territory through which we make the journey to our souls.” Brilliant.
We choke on no in a sea of yes.
I do badly when I run at God for keeping secrets. I do better when I walk with the knowable lives he gives to bless.
Mr. Klavan, Are not getting your money? You indicated that on your show. They are charging me. If they aren’t giving it to you that is theft. Please let me know that you and your son are getting paid.
First comment!!
Having heard Drew quote Keats previously, I really resonate with the phrase, “vale of soul-making.”
We do not have a soul; we are souls.
“Of course — of course — there are stark and obvious spiritual truths. But there are small-minded pieties too that masquerade as truths, and harden our hearts against pity and forgiveness. At the crisis point, we can only strive in love toward the source of love through this present darkness.
But here’s the thing. This has to be what flesh is made for, this very odyssey of body and mind. John Keats, in one of his brilliant speculative letters, said that this world is a “vale of soul-making,” where “sparks which are God… have identity given to them.” Surely, this transformation occurs through the embodied individual’s struggle to connect with the living Truth across the gap that separates us, across “the space between.”