From The Divine Conspiracy, Willard notes in chapter 4, concerning the beatitudes, that the Kingdom of heaven (the things God is most about) is centered in hearing leading to heart change leading to action resulting in love of God and love of neighbor.
Nothing can be substituted for love of neighbor, Willard asserts, because it is precisely in loving people that we love God and receive God’s love most tangibly. The question is not “Who is my neighbor?” but instead “To whom will I be a neighbor?”.
Jesus and the Beatitudes are about a third way that I am still learning to enjoy and practice.
Beyond pure rule following and doing out of obligation or rote religious compulsion. Beyond doing something to earn the star or check the box. This is elementary but it seems that I am, time and time again, drawn back into unconscious legalism and pride because of what I’m not doing or what I am doing in comparison to what others are or are not doing. This will not do.
On the other hand I cannot merely memorize or theorize or know what I ought to do or what is noble and good. I’ve become obsessed with information accumulation and storage. Fascinated with history and context and theory and more disconnected from experience and knowing from doing. This is a pendulum swing. I, once, was more apt to pay attention to the latter while ignoring or even criticizing the former. I’m learning how to become a person of nuance. Where I can undedvidedly follow Jesus by actually doing what he calls me to without taking too literally what Jesus says. Where I can understand the message beyond the metaphor as more than literally true while still moving my feet and not just reading with my eyes or praying with my mouth.
I want to be about more than information transference. I want to care more about experiencing God’s real love than I do about being too religious or filled with post-Christian pride that “doesn’t do that anymore”. If something from my past experiences in following Jesus has been helpful, encouraging or made me a better person, would I continue to practice those things without pride and arrogance? Will I allow my mental ascent and progressive spirituality get the best of me, allowing it to hold me back from truly moving forward?
There is a myth that dates as far back to babel that asserts “more knowledge, more power”. This is true in some ways, and in many ways continues to act as an illusory trap. Knowledge does equal power. We are more responsible for acting in certain ways that line up to the current knowledge of present data. For example, we know now that climate change is responsible for the depletion of many of our precious resources, killing ourselves and our planet. This knowledge has come with a cost because now we are more responsible to do something with this knowledge. However, the Enlightenment, industrial revolution and present day tech revolution have all made us automatons that believe we own the universe and have become more evolved simply because we have more knowledge. The perception of great wealth of knowledge (the fact that, if I want to I could google anything and find anything out) has deceived us into thinking we really know more than we do.
We are a generation that knows more with our heads in theory than we do in reality with our hearts.
True knowing is deep. It’s rich and expansive. It traverses the boundary lines of books and mere information searches on the internet. It transcends encyclopedias and IQ. Knowing looks more like what we would call wisdom today than a high SAT score. Knowing is a muscle that grows in depth as it rises in height. It engulfs all spheres of life. It originates from Spirit and it’s destination circles back to it’s source. It cannot be quantified or calculated. It looks foolish sometimes and cannot fit on a spreadsheet. It is not always “up and to the right” in our business meetings. Knowing looks small but it packs a punch. It is simple enough for a kindergartner to comprehend and it confounds the greatest thinkers of modern philosophy and science. It is always growing yet never popularized. It hides discreetly waiting to be asked in, yet is ever present at the slightest invitation to be received again and again.
Knowing is a journey and path, an ocean that appears as a puddle.
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