If God Knows Everything, What Does He Think About?

I was asked recently, "If God is omniscient, what does he think about?" I didn't have the presence of mind to ask, "What do you mean?" I'm not exactly sure what the inquirer had in mind, but let's speculate. If he meant, "He already knows everything; what more is there to learn or know if he already knows it all?" then he's just shown that he believes that the purpose of thought is strictly the pursuit of knowledge and nothing more. This seems to me a deficient view of the purpose of thought.

As a means to knowledge, Yes, thought is invaluable, indispensable, suitable, and constructive. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that knowledge is got by rational, and not irrational, methods. Whether, as Christians, we say that this rational pursuit of knowing things must necessarily remain subservient to the Scriptures, or, as Atheists, we say that this rational pursuit of knowing things is, itself, our criteria for discovering what "is" in the world, the point remains: irrational pursuit of what "is", of Truth, of Reality, is an oxymoron. So, in the end, discovery, learning, knowing, etc. require us to think.

But that's not the question. The question is, "Once you've learned all there is to learn, to what purpose now does one put one's thinking?" It brings to mind an image of an antique collector who's set out to acquire one of every original antique that's ever existed (I know, it's ridiculous; just stay with me), and now that they've succeeded, there they are, sitting, eternally looking at all their finds. Now what? This, I think, is not the situation in which we find our omniscient God. What, then, is he doing? It seems to me that he's rejoicing, delighting, loving, thrilling, exulting, basking, and any other suitable "-ing" that involves the divine affections. God knows everything, and he's not indifferent to what he knows; his affections are employed and engaged with respect to what he knows, both with respect to himself and with respect to creation.

When Jesus prays for his Father to restore him to the glory that he shared with his Father before the world began and the incarnation, I don't think he had in mind going back to heaven in order to share glory like you share peanut butter; I think he had in mind sharing glory like one shares joy: you participate in it as well as enjoy it. And this, I think, reveals an essential quality of the Triune God: he not only knows all things, but he's not indifferent to what he knows; his knowledge is not merely a rational acquisition of facts, data, info, etc. He knows things not merely intellectually, but affectively, emotionally, heartily, passionately. It's one thing to "know" algebra; it's another to "know" that as you're driving across the bridge constructed on the right calculation of algebra that you're not falling into a rubble heap below, and to like that fact. God, in his omniscience, knows things most fully, most penetratingly, most soundly, most usefully, which is to say that he knows nothing merely in its "abstractness" (i.e. like algebraic symbols on the page), but that everything he knows, he knows in relation to himself and to all things, and in these things he knows he rejoices (or rages, or laughs, as the case may be, Psalm 2).

Thought, whether human or divine, is necessary in the pursuit (or, as in the case of God, the act) of knowing things, but once we know this or that, the point is not "there, I've learned it, now I can put it down, forget it, never use it, etc." The point is, "What kind of response does this knowledge call for from me?" And if the point of the Bible is that we are meant to do everything in such a way as to display the glory and greatness of God, this would include the affective manner in which we regard what we know, whether of God or of anything else. Yes, in the eternal state, we will ever and always be encountering fresh discoveries of the glory of our Savior that were unknown to us before, but he will always be full of the knowledge of God and of all things: what will he be doing while we're learning? I think, among other things, he'll be smiling, and (similar to the way we delight in watching children make fresh discoveries) saying, "Nice" -and he'll mean it.

There Are Two Ways To Get You To Do What I Want

When it comes downt to it, there are two ways to get people to do things: by word or by deed.  Or, to put it another way, I can ask you to do something or I can make you do something. This lesson is particularly a good one to learn as a child (I have no particular age in mind here, but the sooner the better, for both parent and child). The first time this truth arose in our home was when one of my sons had been ignoring the verbal pleas of my other son to "please stop" whatever it was that he was doing. After an exasperating few minutes, the offended son approached me to settle the dispute.  When I confronted the offending son, our conversation quickly turned to what this kind of foolish negligence on his part will lead.  Today, his brother; tomorrow, his friend; the next day, someone not so friendly who won't ask you twice.  And there's the rub.

To be sure, this is only one side of the equation: other people ought neither to ask nor compell us to do things that are either wrong or against our conscience. However, that's for another post (well, series of posts really). Scripture says, "As far as it depend on you, be at peace with all men." Part of what this means is, "Don't ignore people when they speak to you," particularly if it's neither illegal nor immoral.  Of course, it goes without saying (or does it?) that we are always free to turn down a request, to acquiesce, to decline, etc. But the point is, "Don't ignore people."

Now, merely acknowledging people doesn't guarantee peace; the other person might not like the way you choose to acknowledge them. But what will ensure hostility is prolonged negligence: nothing infuriates people more than being ignored when it's clear to everyone, especially them, that they are being ignored.

And this brings us to my point to my son. My efforts to train him to acknowledge his brother at the age of 8 (whether 'yea' or 'nay') is to prevent him from being beaten to a pulp someday by someone he's chosen to ignore, whether by fear, indifference, malice, or ignorance. This is not necessarily the same as cowering through life in fear of offending people.  It is, on the other hand, at the heart of giving respect to other human beings made in the image of God. Whether we use speech and language rightly (as in, "Please pass the salt") or wrongly (as in, "Give me the salt, you blockhead!"), we are speaking; we are exercising part of our divine image-bearing essence. To communicate is to be like God. Whether we do it rightly or not is a function of our soul's relation to God: if we are born again, our speech may be holy speech; if we are not, it is fallen speech. Either way, though, we are imaging forth what God does: communicate himself to others.

In the end, I want my son to be trained in the habits of respect and dignity: answer people when they speak to you. Decline their offers or requests if you like and if it's right, but do not ignore them.

A Glimpse of Lost Humanity at the Pool

I was watching today at a pool in which middle and elementary school children were receiving swimming lessons, and noticed how unattractive children are when they won't trust adults.  It wasn't as though they were explicitly defiant or that rebellion was oozing from every corner of the pool. However, I notice that those who could tread water, or even perform a sophisticated doggy-paddle, rarely gave serious attention to the swimming instructors on how to improve their stroke, or even learn a new one. In fact, I'm not even sure that they realize there do in fact exist distinctions between these arm/leg movements and those, even though they will all move your body through the water.

This got me thinking what a well-suited parable this was for the mainstream Postmodern throw-off of authority so prevalent today. The "old" addage "question authority" has become so emblazoned on the modern psyche that to utter the slogan smacks of being a cliche.  What happens, though, when such chickens come home to roost? If we raise our children on the milk of "question authority", is it OK when they question the life-guard?  And this doesn't just go for the question of safety, but also aesthetics and beauty.  For instance, have you ever wondered why in the world the human race has devised more than one swim stroke? What's the point? If the breast stroke will get you there, why bother with another? If one is for "cruising" and another for "speed", then why not just two strokes (not to mention what possible 'pragmatic' purpose a stroke for "cruising" serves)? And does the butterfly serve ANY practical purpose that no other stroke serves? And is it a complete accident that it's named after a beautiful creature, rather than after something a little less pretty (like 'scorpion'?)?

It seems to me that there are multiple strokes that serve so many purposes, not just because there really are that many purposes but because human beings have a penchant for beauty, for aesthetics, for beholding things of glory to admire.  And this, after all, is what every sport has to offer by athletes who've given themselves to their sport.  They train, they eat, they sleep, they schedule, (and mark this) they listen to coaches, all for the sake of perfecting to the best of their ability their craft. And they choose the strokes and sports they choose, not just to win, but to win beautifully, admirably.

And here is what I saw today: kids who "know how to swim", according to their own testimony, simply because they can keep themselves afloat. And they've been trained to only do what they're told if the authority in question can justify it's usefulness.  Here, there is no sense of improvement for beauty's sake, for the sake of improving something; there is only "how does that help me?" and if it doesn't, then they want nothing to do with it. It was a profoundly sickening experience; I felt as though I had received yet another glimpse of a humanity lost.

BHT

Intersection: Urban African-American Youth, Mathematics, & Religion

Once in a while, something comes up in class that just begs for questions, discussion, and dialogue. Recently, the name Pascal came up (not unnaturally, since it’s a senior math class). This time, however, I mentioned the fact that he was not merely a mathematician, but a mathematician turned theologian and philosopher, whose departure from academia was greatly lamented and even resented by many of his 17th century contemporaries. They were particularly interested to hear me say that I thought his thoughts are more substantial and helpful than many of those published today.

This last claim piqued my students’ curiosity such that they demanded proof. So I went home that night and put a page and a half of my favorite quotes of his from his work, Pensees. The one that caught the greatest attention was the following:

Man’s greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness.

It must also account for such amazing contradiction.

Of the many observations that could be made after reading such a statement, I chose to note that Pascal is not making any explicit claim about God or religion, or even why those who disagree with him are wrong; rather, he’s making a claim about what the truth will do for people existentially. The truth, he says, will give an adequate explanation for why we see so much glory and so much blight, not on the world itself, but within man himself. The “true religion” will make sense of this paradox called man, and anything that doesn’t isn’t true.

Questions of how we determine truth are so unpopular in academia today (and are growing more and more out of favor even in pop culture) that criteria for truth are rarely discussed. But here I am, in a public institution filled with young black students, many of whom think that dead people know less than they do simply because the dead people came before them, who are intrigued, even captivated, by the truth-criteria of a 17th century European Catholic mathematician-turned-theologian. It’s enough to take my breath away. They are beginning to think existentially and reflectively about themselves as human beings.

We went through several other quotes over the next half hour, gaining their meaning before trying to decide whether or not Pascal had anything to say worth hearing, and in every case someone found what he said to be insightful, true, helpful, or corroborating their own experience. By the end of our time, they were wistfully lamenting that our school doesn’t offer a philosophy class.

Of course, I’m not so naïve as to think that if they took such a class that every moment would be so rewarding for them or their instructor; these kinds of discussions happen only infrequently, and usually only gain momentum on days when they’d rather find some reason not to do “work” (a pep-rally was scheduled for this particular day and had lightened the mood enough to make “work” optional and philosophy tolerable). However, it affirms again my convictions about them, as unlike myself as they are: if we are all, in fact, made in God’s image, then we ought to expect that such images wonder, even if only from time to time, who (or what) the Original is that they can’t help reflecting, and what's its all about.

A Christian Humanism

In my limited but earnest adventures into the history of philosophy, I've learned that the term humanism hasn't always (or even primarily) carried the secular and negative connotations it so often does today. For most Christians, humanism means "man-centered" and the climax of rational arrogance; for many non-Christians, it means the discovery and pursuit of everything in life that is within the human grasp. Historically for many thinkers, though, to be a humanist was to believe that there exists some answer to the question, "What is the essence of Humanity?" (this is very similar to what Christians rightly ask). How one answered the question, of course, varied from one philosopher or theologian to another; but that an answer existed was axiomatic.

Descartes proposed that "to think" was humanity's defining quality and by using one's reason and methodical doubt, all knowledge and meaning could be derived (how one arrives at certainty by way of systemic doubt didn't seem to bother him or his followers). Pascal began from a similar point, but rather than assume reason's sufficiency as an instrument by which we arrive at all knowledge, he used his reason to examine the nature and limitations of reason itself. Thus, due to reason's 'reasonable' limitations and fallibility, humanity was dependent upon revelation for a fuller, more reliable, knowledge of itself, and in the Bible's revelation, said Pascal, we find the "glory and refuse of man" explained in both the dignified image of God ("glory") that he bears, and the ignominious ruin of Adam's fall ("refuse"). And so, Pascal saw our essence as being made in God's image that is presently distorted but will one day be restored.

Since these two thinkers, many have come and gone, but the most remarkable thing to mention of most of them is that they have rejected the claim that humanity has any essence. Instead, they have proposed variants on what I'll call non-essential or non-idealistic philosophies: 1) that there is no essence or purpose to which we are beholden and we are thus free to will our own existence in our pursuit of the passions and accompanying expressions that we desire most (Friedrich Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols), or 2) that man has created God in man's own image, a God who then 'makes' man in his own (humanistic) image that then leads to man thinking of himself as the object of God's love, which is a love not unlike man's since everything of God is merely man's projection of himself onto God ( Ludwig Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity), or 3) that man creates his essence by virtue of his choices, but that what he chooses does, in fact, result in some human essence that did not previously exist (Jean Paul Sartre in Existentialism is a Humanism), or 4) the quest to either answer the question of humanity's existence or to justify not having to ask it are both non-sensical, and the sooner we get over asking the question, answering it, or even explaining why we don't have to, the better of we'll all be (Richard Rorty in Trotsky and the Wild Orchids).

Now maybe this post's title begins to make sense. If the biblical account of man is to be heard, we must begin to speak of A Christian Humanism - that is to say, a Christian account of humanity's essence. Clearly, this is to use the term humanism in a very different manner than in the phrase 'secular humanism'.

The main reason, I would argue (as have others more learned than myself), that so many un-biblical accounts of humanity have gotten a hearing throughout history is because such fallen accounts of human experience have been able to make sense of so much of human experience to fallen ears, and (and this is key!) in ways that do not depend on the Bible's account. Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that the human heart is neutral, just waiting for the most reasonable explanation of itself to come along. However, wrong ways of looking at situations appear more plausible as more and more facts and experiences can be explained by them. This is what false philosophies have done well: they give false accounts of reality in ways that sound compelling but that also do not require the Bible's input to make sense. It's actually very similar to good lying.

What we need is to find compelling ways, that accord with Scripture, to account for people's experience. This is no small task. Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and David Wells have each, in their own unique ways, expressed that our main difficulty in doing this is (and will continue to be) the fact that in our Western, Rational, Industrial age, the gospel of Jesus Christ appears more and more preposterous. We have created a modern world in which reality no longer looks or sounds real, and in which fancy and distraction are only too welcome.

Persons, Dignity, and Vindication

People are not just so many cattle. If cattle are mistreated, it is a shame to the abuser. My indignation, however, is not that this or that particular head of cattle was mistreated, but that cattle in general should not be so mistreated. If a human being is mistreated, my indignation is both with respect to human beings in general and that human being in particular. If every man and woman, boy and girl, has dignity, then their abuse (whether at home in private or in society and the public square) is an outrage not only because they are human, but because they are Robert or Cynthia, Bobby or Susie; their worth is personal and individual, not only collective.

I believe in heaven and hell and the final judgment of God on sin because human dignity is heavenly, human indignity is hellish and only God can judge. Someone may ask, "But if we stop racism or child abuse or genocide, won't that be enough to vindicate human dignity? Why bring God into it, not to mention heaven and hell?"

First, no one has ever stopped any of these abuses, they have only regulated them, and sins against human dignity are not OK just because I'm not suffering them. Second, suppose we could stop them: what's to prevent subsequent generations from resurrecting them again (especially since our present fight against them has been so difficult)? Third, my abhorance today of slavery or the Holocaust does nothing to affirm the worth and value of slaves or Jews to the dead and unrepentant slave owners or dead and unrepentant Nazis. There is a public vindication that is lacking without heaven and hell that we long for in all our calls for justice. We do not simply want to be vindicated in our own eyes of crimes and abuses against us, we also want the world to see that we are vindicated. And God promises such vindication (Luke 18:1-8, Matt. 25:31-46). Injustices that are righted are part of our joy, but not all of it. Those who are abused not only rejoice in the vindication of others (whether present or past), but they also long to participate in it by being vindicated of their own indignities as well.

The question I haven't addressed, though, is in what does human dignity consist? Why is human indignity so hellish? A worthy question to be handled later.