I am going to take you into some argument later and I don’t want it to bumfuzzle you and I don’t want it to make you feel like you have to master these arguments. I want you to understand that knowledge is a sociological phenomenon, and we ought to know that because that’s how it works. Sometimes, whether it is knowledge has to be a matter of how it lives in society. The Copernican teaching about the earth moving around the sun—Helios centrism—came into a world that had a different sociology and it was not knowledge for the pubic until leaders presented it in that way. Now, of course, school children know it. They know that the earth goes around the sun. They know that. They don’t just believe it. They know it. It’s like the multiplication tables. Now, I want to try to transfer that the best I can to what we are talking about here—namely, knowledge of God, the Kingdom of God and the spiritual life. That has to be represented by institutions before it is knowledge in the social situation. It was so represented for most of the history of what we call the western world. Of course, that’s where it mainly flourished, and it was accepted as knowledge. [1:50]
Here are some words from the Harvard student handbook. “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well what the main end of his life and studies is.” They didn’t leave you in any question about that. Here it is. The main end of their studies is “to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life” okay, and continuing to quote, “and therefore to lay Christ as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” That represents a different world. Now, of course, merely the fact that it was accepted does not make it knowledge because it has to be true, also—not just accepted. Acceptance does not make knowledge. That’s one of the follies of what we call sociology of knowledge, which is also the sociology of stupidity, ignorance and perversity. The year on that was 1646.
Yale and William & Mary and Princeton and Brown—all but one school started before the American Revolution was begun to serve the Jesus movement. Now, I want to ask you a question. Has it been found out that this statement of what life is about is false? Did someone discover it? Well, of course, the answer is no. No one discovered that the main end of studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life. That’s the legitimate end of studies. Now, when you drop that, what is put in its place? It’s something to think about. What is the end of studies? See, this is a reflection of a world in which it was assumed that the content of Christian teaching was a body of knowledge. Now then, the displacement has occurred, and this is where I want to spend just a little more time on this.
The pastors must be teachers of the nations. Why? [5:04] Because they are the only ones who have the knowledge content, the social position, and the power of God to bring it to pass. Now, the problem is that most people in positions of speaking for Christ—let us say pastors generally—they don’t accept this. So, one of the most remarkable things in our culture is to see how the pastor has receded in social prominence within the last forty years. That’s a reflection of the retreat from the content of Christian teaching as a body of knowledge about reality that is vital to human existence—because if that’s not what pastor’s do, what do they do? That is a deep problem in the minds of many pastors and in the families of pastors that have suffered terribly in the social declination that has come about through the displacement of the Christian teaching out of the body of knowledge into this other thing where the job of the pastor is to get people to do things. Well, who needs that? [6:42]
Now, I am very glad to say that the quotation I gave you is a part of a sermon that John Ortberg preached at Menlo Park Presbyterian, and I hope you will talk to John about this because John, as you know, he’s just an incredible speaker, pastor, leader, writer and he has taken up the challenge to do this. Now, he’s sitting there on the border of Stanford University. You couldn’t be better placed. You could give guided tours of Stanford University and show them all the pictures and so on and say where did I come from? What did the Stanford’s believe? What was the money following at that point in time? But it’s a huge challenge and we need to band together and know this and see this and say, “This is what we do.” We need to say it to ourselves and to our congregations first. We are the ones that need to believe it and then, we don’t need to worry about the university. Let’s deal with our congregations. If we reach the people who are there, they will reach the people who aren’t there because the public square—as we call it—shows up every Sunday at church. Those people live in the public square. They don’t have a private square that they live in. They live in the public square and the public square is trying to get them to privatize their faith and not bring it into the public square. I think this will happen if just a few people-not a large number—just a few people—will step forward and take the challenge to carry out the great commission in terms of bringing knowledge to the world that needs it. Now, the big issue is, of course, “Do we know?” [9:26]
Now, I want to harass you a bit on that and in your notebooks, this is called Lecture Five: Knowing Christ Today II and we are going to look at this question: Can we know that God exists? And is there knowledge of the spiritual life? And what I mean by that is when we—just to go back for convenience of reference to that passage in 2 Peter that I read for you. Is this a portrayal of knowledge of the reality of life in Christ? Is that what we talk about when we do spiritual formation conferences and is there anything there of knowledge? [10:38]
Now, there is a middle section here which I am leaving out and actually there are subparts but if you’re willing to read the book Knowing Christ Today, you will pick up on all of it. But the most important subpart that I am not going to try to deal with today is knowledge of the resurrection of Christ and the reality of His people through the ages—call it the church—knowledge of the resurrection of Christ and of the church. If it’s treated at all—you might think that historians would imagine that the most important question in their field would be whether or not Christ rose from the dead and how that affected the actual historical realities of the church. But, of course, they are by in large totally immunized against that by the presupposition that is faith, not knowledge and of course, many Christian teachers reinforce that as one of the tricks that the church learned when it was trying to struggle with the rise of modern thought and science was to say, “Well, we are not in that area. We don’t do knowledge; we do faith.” So, if you believe in the resurrection, that can’t be refuted by scientific evidence because it’s a matter of faith. That’s a part of the dynamics back of this dispossession and displacement that we are talking about and then see that enters into the system of knowledge as a social reality and you can’t question it then. You can’t raise the issue but, of course, that doesn’t have anything to do with what is actually the case. [12:44]
So, let’s begin with the question: Can we know that God exists? Now, as far as the body of Christian people, we need to say at the outset, the knowledge of most people will depend upon the knowledge of a few just as it is true in astronomy, in mathematics, in any field where there is knowledge, most of the people even involved in the field are practicing something that they don’t have a full understanding of and couldn’t be said to know but they know people who do know and that’s how this works. So, the heliocentric theory becomes accepted at the point where people—they don’t even understand it but they know people who do know and so they know. That’s one way of knowing is to know people who do know. Now, having said that, you can see why it is so important that the people out front—the spokes people—the pastors, but not all of them will be able to work through this but they need to know someone who does. And the ideal would be that the educational institutions would put anyone who went through them in touch with people who did know. I say that to you because it is an obvious fact that not everyone can work through the material on their own, and historically if you go back before the first World War and you find outstanding people of all kinds who wrote big heavy books in which they presented the truths of Christianity as knowledge. Those exist—very few people know anything about them or the people who wrote them but it’s easy to find them. They need to be updated. And there are people who are doing that work now and they write books and if you are willing to read them, you can come to know what they know or at least you can know that they know it. That means that you are able to see this is a body of knowledge and we should present it as such. That’s extremely important. [15:35]
So, now let’s just look at these two points in your outline. Can we know that God exists? Well, if someone knows that God exists, then we can know that God exists. If someone knows it—so, when someone says you cannot know, they are making a very serious claim. And it’s not enough to just say, “Well lots of people don’t know because there are lots of things that are in fields of knowledge that most people don’t know.” So, the task of the person who wanted to say, “we can’t know that God exists” would be intimidating if they understood it. That’s where you need to understand that agnosticism is a serious claim also. It’s not treated that way. It’s treated now as “I’m out of this discussion.” You raise a question, and they say well,” I’m agnostic.” That’s a way of saying, “We’re not going to talk about this any further.” And if you are trying to help people, you need to learn how to respond to them. You might respond to them by saying, “Do you mean you are ignorant?” Well, ignoramus is pretty close—kind of Latin derivative—pretty close to agnosticism, which is Greek. Now, that can give them something to—“No, no, I’m not ignorant.” Because if they were ignorant, you would say to them, “Well, now why don’t you go find out?” If someone is in the airport and they are going to fly away and the question comes up, “Which gate?” And they say, “Well, you know, I don’t know.”
Then, you say, “Well, you better find out.” Knowledge as I mentioned is like that. It requires that you take care with it—that you try to find out and so, you learn various ways of getting people to move towards responsibility for that question. And, for example, one response is well, Mr. Dawkins, who has already been mentioned, doesn’t believe in God so then what does that mean? That might lead into an interesting discussion about Mr. Dawkins. One of the questions that I ask people who are serious about wanting to know is, “Would you like for there to be a God? And what kind of God would you like for there to be?” And if they say, “I don’t want there to be any kind of God,” then that requires a lot of patience and sometimes you have to walk off and leave them with it. But now, suppose they say, “I would really like to know whether or not there is a God; is there anything that can be said on that point?” Well, there are a lot of things that can be said. But they will have to take the responsibility of finding out. You cannot make people know. They have to want to know. And then if they want to know, you can begin to suggest things. Individuals vary and, in some cases, you might be able to take them immediately to the gospels and say, “Why don’t you try putting into practice some of the things that Jesus said and see whether or not they are true.” Some people can do that; others couldn’t begin there. Very often, our people in church can begin there. And you can start them moving on a path of discovery and they can discover the reality of the Kingdom of God and of the risen Christ and of spirituality as a life. They can discover that. They can come to know it. Many people have done that. I suspect that though you may not have put it in just those terms, I suspect that many of you, if you just start working on it, you might be able to say with assurance in the light of what I have already said that you know there is a spiritual life because of your experiences. Because of what you have learned by looking into it. But, of course, if you are on the outside and you are confirmed in your agnosticism or atheism, sometimes you can start there but sometimes you have to start elsewhere. [21:26]
Now, I want to just take the statement of Paul here in Romans 1 that I read to you earlier where he claims that the problem is not a lack of knowledge but of a willingness to suppress the truth. And he is saying that what can be known about God is evident to them for God made it evident to them. Now, you would have to, I think, put some restrictions on that because of how he is going to develop this because you wouldn’t be able –in the way he is going to go—to know that God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son. That was not something that was known from nature and that’s what he is going to be referring to. He says, “For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.” What is he referring to here? [22:42] Paul was a well-educated man. He was not a hayseed that wondered in out of the brush with a straw in his mouth uttering wise observations. Paul knew the thought and literature of his world. He knew that Plato and Aristotle had said exactly what he says. They both knew that God existed, and they give their arguments—and I give the references in the book if you want to follow it up to their literature—Plato’s book, The Laws and some other passages and Aristotle’s meta-physics. So, you see, he was not just vaporing here; he is talking to a world—in this case, the Roman world—and it had its intelligentsia, and that intelligentsia understood what had been argued for and knew that this was there in the literature and in the thought of the past. So, William Ramsey made this statement—he was one of the greatest scholars of the ancient world in the 1800’s—that in Paul, for the first time since Aristotle, Greek thought made a step forward. You see, you need to think about Paul that way. OK? Paul was as well-educated as you could get. Jerusalem was not a backwater in his day or in Jesus’ day. It was a bustling metropolis that had several times a year, all kinds of people from all over the world—civilized world as we might call it—coming to Jerusalem and what did they do when they came? Well, they did a lot of things but among the most important things they did was talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And they were hungry for knowledge and the temple was not just a place where they killed lambs. It was in affect a university in its own right and that’s why what happens with Jesus when He was twelve years old and goes up there and is talking with those people is so important. So, see, these things are not done in a corner. They are public realities, and Paul is referring to that and what he is saying is, “Look, the most thoughtful people in your culture have known that God exists, and they have known that on the basis of their reflections about creation.” Now of course if he had been talking to a bunch of Jews, he wouldn’t have talked exactly that way but it’s also in the Jewish teaching. [26:08]
Look at Psalms 19 for a moment—and this is the—kind of the Jewish version of what the Greeks came out with—“The Heavens are telling the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech; night to night reveals faith”[—oops, huh?] What did it reveal? It revealed knowledge. Right? Their line, their voice—there is no speech where there is not—nor are there words where their voice is not heard. In other words, it cuts across all languages. “Their line has gone out through all the earth; their utterance to the ends of the world.” Right?
Now when you look at Romans 9, you see that this, in Paul’s mind, amounted to the Gospel. I’m sorry; I said the wrong chapter…Romans 10. He is talking about the Gospel here and talking about how there is a need for a preacher and how can they preach unless they are sent and how beautiful are the feet and then he says, “wait a minute,” verse 16, “did not all heed the glad tidings for Isaiah says, Lord who has believed our report. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, but I say, surely, they have never heard, have they? Indeed, they have.” What had they heard? And he quotes Psalms 19, “Their voice has gone out into all the earth and their words to all the ends of the earth.” Hmmmm….everyone has heard the gospel. That’s what Paul is saying. And he goes on to develop that theme. So, what Paul is talking about here is evident knowledge of God. [29:07]
Now, let’s just sketch out how the thinking on this point goes. What is it about creation that announces God? And he’s talking about the physical world; he is not raising the question, how does everything come to exist? He is talking about the physical world. Looking at the physical world and what he notices in the physical world is everything physical comes from something else. Have you ever seen anything physical that didn’t come from something else? Do you know of anything that didn’t? Everything physical comes—that’s something you can observe—and that, by the way, is present in the Hebrew writings and the prophets and the Psalms. So, everything passes away. There is nothing permanent in the physical world. And that then leads to the question about the physical world itself—where did it come from? It’s physical, isn’t it? If its physical, it had to come from something else because that’s what the physical does. But there is one catch here and that is, it couldn’t come from something physical because we are talking about the physical, right? I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t want to discourage you. See? The mind is a lot like the body and when you start thinking at this level, it’s like being thrown into the middle of a game between the Denver Nuggets and the Los Angeles Lakers. You are just thrown in there; now, what’s going to happen? You are going to be laying on the sidelines pretty quick unless you are in shape. The mind has muscles, and you have to exercise the muscles for them to work and that’s not for everyone. OK? And you should never feel—I don’t feel personally inadequate because I would die if they threw me in the middle of a basketball game—I don’t feel inferior because that’s not my life and for many people—but now you need to know that there is someone that has thought this out. Right? [32:27]
So, the tricky move here is well, the physical world is physical. If everything physical comes from something else, it’s got to come from something. What does it come from? It can’t come from anything physical because that’s what we are talking about. Where did it come from? Have I lost you? Do I need to go over that again? You see how that works? Now, when you read Plato and you read Aristotle, you will see them working that line of thought in a more elaborate language, but this is the simple reality and the truth is—when people are able to put nature in front of them, they have this impression—there is something bigger here than rocks. That’s why we love to go into nature because nature—actually, regardless of how we think of it becomes an experience of the Kingdom of God. That’s why you will see many people get lost in evolutionary theory because it’s such a marvelous world of life just to look at it. And if you have the idea that somehow it comes without God, you will wind up worshipping it and many people do that. Other people wind up worshipping art because they are looking for something that is big enough to explain what they have in front of them. So, let’s just move slowly here if you are okay there. Everything physical comes from something else. [34:15]
Next move is the physical world is physical and the next move is the physical world comes from something else. The “something else” is not physical. You see how that works?
[Question about matter that could not be heard] There was, of course a period of time and there are ways of handling that and Plato and Aristotle have interesting things to say on the assumption that matter is eternal, but matter turns out not to be anything you can identify. See, matter is a kind of theoretical projection. Everything you can identify in the physical world is not matter. It’s a bottle. It’s a tree. It’s a rock, a clod, or if you wish, an atom or something of that sort. Now, in our world today, of course, we have the science of saying that matter has not always existed. In many ways, we have made a step in the right direction by discovering that the physical universes as they say something between 13 and 14 billion years old. See, once you identify matter, it becomes as something definite—then you are in the presence of something that came from something else. So, matter is not something you are to meet with in the physical. It’s an abstraction but now those are the kinds of points that we have to work through, see? And if you are going to present the teachings of Christ—and of course, Christ taught that there is a God—didn’t He? Right? Then you have to work through all of these issues. Now, today, the general assumption is that there was a point—awkward way of talking—there was a point where there was no physical reality and then there was—now, for sophisticated audiences—you have to go through come stuff of how you can’t speak of time until creation is already here so there was no before and I’m happy to go into that with anyone who wants to talk about it and say what I can, but probably not drag all of you through it unless you want to do that. [37:29]
So, then, now then your option is—the physical world came into existence from nothing or from something non-physical. It is surprising how many times—like Hawkings has just published another book in which he has discovered that physical reality bubbled up out of nothing, and so you have to work through—it turns out that what it bubbled up was not nothing, but it was something. Actually, it was—there are various ways of trying to describe it—often is a vacuum but of course, a vacuum is something. And now how you are going to describe—well, you have to work through all of that—as I said, I don’t want to try to drag you all through that, I would like you to see the main line of argument here that Paul is referring to when he says, “Knowledge of God is evident.”—Well, if you think about it. So, nothing or something non-physical—what might it be? And there is a great tendency here to simplify too much—I hope I don’t do that but just say, this is the way the line goes and if you are going to say, “Look, you can know that God exists,” you need to be able to work through things like this. Now, if you can’t, you need to know someone who does. If your pastor doesn’t know how to do that and present it to young people in his or her church in such a way that when they go to the university, they will be prepared to have an opinion about what’s going to be handed to them and thinking through issues like, can the physical world have come into being from nothing? Can anything come into being from nothing? Anything that comes into being, can it just “boop,” there it is? You have to work through a lot of issues around that. But causation in the physical world is very difficult to treat if you think that things come into existence without a cause. [40:13] If it’s not nothing, it’s something. If it’s not physical, it’s non-physical. Now then, you have at least got a haunted universe. And that’s the first minimal move that you make in this line of thinking. Now, once you establish this, then of course you keep your exploration going. Right? That allows you to think about, for example, what kind of a non-physical thing could bring about the physical universe? What could do that? You work your way towards a very great something non-physical because the physical universe itself is just astonishing beyond description when you think of the billions and billions of galaxies and planets and all of that sort of thing and how difficult it is to get your mind around it just as a physical entity. Then you start thinking about life and what life is like and how did it develop and so on. You don’t have a sort of plug that says, “Well, it all evolved.” [41:39]
Now, that’s a point that—though it’s a little picky—it’s so important, I just need to say something about. Evolution does not respond to the issue of creation. It’s not an answer to the same question. You can’t have evolution unless you already have creation. It presupposes a very complicated creation already in existence and all you have to do is to think about evolution and you know that and yet, many people today—I’ve heard people say and they were supposed to be scientists—well, you know, the universe just evolved out of nothing. Well, evolved out of nothing is a piece of total nonsense. It doesn’t mean anything and that’s not an empirical point. It’s not like you could discover that it did because it’s simply an absurd notion. Evolution requires something already here—development, which is a vaguer notion than evolution. So, then you think about, for example, this non-physical reality that produced the physical universe can be present in physical universe. Right? So, now, if you are going to talk about resurrection in a context where everything is physical, that’s one job. If you are going to talk about resurrection in a context where you have something that produced the physical universe that was not physical, that’s another job. And, I have watched this for years and if you try to approach things at the level of resurrection, well, you sometimes you can get somewhere with that but a confirmed person in naturalism will just say, “Well you know all sorts of strange things happen and we don’t know. Maybe someone did rise from the dead.” And it won’t touch this issue if you know that there is a realm of non-physical reality big enough to produce the physical universe and with enough ability to make it what it is, well, then resurrection would be a walk in the park. That’s why this argument is so important. Now, in the language of the schools, this is called the cosmological argument—I know some of you have suffered through that in your studies and actually, cosmological argument is a whole bunch of arguments run together and they often lose the track of the argument in the way they state it. This one is very simple. It just says the physical universe is something that must have originated from something other than itself because that’s the nature of the physical. Someone says, “Oh, no”—well, then you say, “Show me something physical that doesn’t originate from something else.” That will be quite an assignment, and it will be several days before they come back. So, you work in a discussion mode; you help people explore things. One of the bad things about these kinds of things is, in the past, the church has often tried to stuff things down people’s throats, especially young people. You can’t do that. You help people think it through and it’s best if you approach it in the attitude, “I’m learning too!” and sincerely, if there are objections, deal with them carefully and thoroughly. Don’t try to pretend anything. Now, it will help you as a follower of Christ to believe that He is in favor of truth. If you could show me a better way or if you could find a better way, Christ would be the last person to tell you, “Well, don’t take that because that’s not Christian.” He is one who even greater than Socrates believes you should follow the argument. Seek the truth. Now, we have to build confidence within our fellowships that that’s the right thing to do because we may have been brought up to believe that we should dodge issues. We should pretend to know where we don’t and brand people as wrong where we haven’t even thought about what they are saying. Now, this is where love comes in because love would tell you, “That’s the way you do that.” Love and truth go together. “Speaking the truth in love,” as Paul says, “we grow up together into the full stature of the man in Christ.” [47:03]
So now then, this is a big deal, and it doesn’t settle a lot of issues, but it opens up the feel for knowledge, for discovery, for learning and it ends the automatic dismissal of a lot of things that are dismissed on the basis that the physical universe is all there is. So, let me stop at that on this point but now, let me say. We should assume that people who go through our churches and our Christian schools come out knowing that God exists but, in many cases, they don’t even get a chance to deal with it. And it’s especially difficult on academics n the Christian schools because they need to be accepted by secular education. If this is true, secular education is radically deficient—radically deficient. Of course, in one meaning a secular university just means that they are not tied to some religious organization. So, on that sense, Notre Dame, would not be a secular university. Some other protestant schools are close enough aligned that they wouldn’t be secular, but they tend to present knowledge as secular because now, the ideal of knowledge is to be secular. That means that God has nothing to do with any topic that is taught. That means, in other words, you could be the best-educated engineer, mathematician, French literature and know nothing about God. So, if this is true, secular education, in that sense, is radically out of step with reality because if reality is not secular, education had better not be secular. It’s a major “oops!” Oops! So, now all of that has to be presented very soberly—Christian scholars and teachers and thinkers and writers but above all, pastors have to, in appropriate ways, step into this gap and present knowledge of God. This is only a part of it.
Now, let me move on to my second point in my shortened outline here. [49:53] Knowledge of Christ in the spiritual life—You don’t just wind up with a first cause, even a very big one and a very smart one. That will not carry you very far in life though it’s good to have that in place and to allow people to proceed as if somehow, they did not know that God exists, or no one did or if indeed they themselves don’t know; they’ve never worked through it. They’ve never been able to come to the Knowledge of God and God’s existence. We want to move on from that. Jesus says, “You believe in God, believe also in me.” If God is left out, then Christ has nothing to say.
But, He has much more to say than just there is a God and a God of a certain kind. So, the knowledge of Christ in the spiritual life comes from our experience of the kingdom of God…what He calls the Kingdom of God. That is our current experience. When we talk about disciplines and so forth; when we talk about using the word of God, the Bible, and so on, we are talking about a present reality. That’s the part of the meaning of “repent for the Kingdom of the Heavens is at hand” is that it is a present, available reality. That is something you test with experience. Now, one reason why personal testimony and telling our stories—if we do it honestly and thoroughly and in conjunction with the Christ we are talking about—is so effective. You see, there are so many people; they don’t want to go with the God argument. They want to know, “Is there something real that I can get in touch with now?” So, if we are wise and we are working with God, we can often bring a person to that right now. They are ready to receive, and we shouldn’t go back there unless they want to go back there. We should say, “God is here; Christ is here. Now then, if you will turn your life over to that reality, you will experience the Kingdom of God. You will experience Christ. The Holy Spirit will come into your life.” I know that happened to me when I was a nine-year-old boy. It was an experience; it marked me; it changed my world. Now for many people, that’s what they want to know but they don’t want a bunch of words. They want knowledge. They want to be able to represent things as they are on an appropriate basis of thought and experience and so we, knowing what we know, we tell them what to do. [53:24] If we are not operating on the basis of knowledge, it will be very shaky and very hard to do. That is why I believe you should never try to get someone to witness unless you know they have something to give—they have knowledge to share. Normally, if they have the knowledge, they will be talking their heads off anyway; that’s human. You find out where there is a great washing machine, and you talk to all your friends about that washing machine because now you know something, and you want to share that knowledge. It’s natural for human beings to want to share knowledge and then of course, we should share it, as it is appropriate and stay out of the business of trying to get them to do things. Say, here’s what you can do, and this is what you will experience and then you will know. We have to believe that before we can say it and we need to base that belief upon our knowledge of how things work in the spiritual life. Of course, we need to be not trying to control it because now we are putting things beyond our control. We are putting it out where it’s between the individual and God. There is a wonderful story in the Old Testament about Abraham and his servant. Abraham grew old and he wanted to get a wife for Isaac and so he can’t go, and he says to his servant, “I want you to go to my kinspeople and find a wife for Isaac.” And this guy had lived all of his life with Abraham, and he said, “I don’t know; I can’t do this.” And Abraham says, “Oh, go. God’s angel will be with you.” That’s really the position we are in often when we are helping someone come to know is we are putting them in a position to find something out as the servant did. The servant actually did pretty well but he had to put himself out and you remember the story how he went, and he came to the place where the kinspeople lived and he was at the well and he’s cooked up this little plan. A woman comes out to get water and I say, “Give me to drink” and they will say, “Sure, I will give you to drink, and I’ll water your camels.” That’s the one. So, see, that’s all in the realm of experience. We have to free people up when we are communicating with them to approach their knowledge of God In that way with confidence that God will meet them. I’m often in that situation where someone is seeking God and I am in a position of saying, “Well, just give yourself to God, pray to Him and say, “Lord, here’s my life. I trust you to meet me; come into my heart” and all of that language that we are so familiar with” and I do that knowing that it will happen. And then later on, when I am trying to help people grow in their understanding, I do the same thing experientially and say, “Well you know, maybe you should try some solitude and silence.” Often you have a person who would like to know God and like to have Him involved in their life but they‘ve had some bitter experiences and they can’t do much but just think about those bitter experiences. “Well, you know, silence is a wonderful thing. Why don’t you try some silence and see what happens?” I almost never have anyone come back empty handed. It’s amazing and I am amazed at it. And, of course, you might say, “Well, if they were empty handed, they wouldn’t come back. “History is written by the winners” as they say. But it’s remarkable how this works. I do a two-week retreat in a Monastery in Southern California and one part of it is 24 hours of silence and these are red neck protestants, you understand, and most of them are approaching this with great hesitation because they are already in a Monastery, but you know, they write papers on their experiences and it’s just amazing what they find in 24 hours of silence. The Kingdom is there. The spiritual life is real. We are spiritual beings meant to live in that world. That’s how we grow spiritually, and it will work for anyone. They don’t have to be right about everything; they do have to be willing to put themselves on the path to see what will happen. Scripture memorization, fasting, all of the disciplines are like that. The disciplines are the kinds of things where you can talk yourself blue in the face and you will not convince anyone. The most you can do is to get them to inch into it and then watch them come back shouting because they have had the experience of reality. It’s like that woman at the well again, you know. She gets to everyone out of town to say, “Well, we came out because of what you said but now we’ve heard him. Now we know.” See, that’s the ordinary path of knowledge. Actually, they tie together because if you get a person who is hung up at this level, it’s going to be very hard to get them to venture in the spiritual life. Since the word is out on me talking about hearing god, you know, a lot of people just think, “Well, that’s just crazy.” So, then you have to ask them, “Well, do you believe in God?” “Oh, no, I don’t believe in God.” Well, it’s a small wonder that you…[laughter]] small wonder. So, you kind of have to find where the particular individual is and try to locate them and get them moving on this second level. [1:00:39] It is so important that we as witnesses and as teachers and writers’ approach what we do in the context of knowledge and not simply wild leaps in one direction or another. There are things that we have to be careful about. Like, we don’t say we know something when we don’t know it. And one of the great freedoms of the person who has learned to follow Christ is, don’t answer questions if you don’t know the answer. You don’t have to know the answer. You don’t have to know everything to know something. We are freed up to be open and exploratory. The last person in the world who should be closed minded and dogmatic is a Christian. The last person in the world who should be closed minded and dogmatic is a Christian. Now, you need to be cautious. You need to be cautious because you are dealing with stuff that is really important for life. It is not a small thing to believe what is false about the kinds of things we are talking about or to get the wrong impression. You have to be very sensitive because for every person who doesn’t believe in God, there is a kind of God that they don’t believe in, and you may not believe in the one they don’t’ believe in when you get down into the details. You have to be quite careful and thoughtful, and you can be because you are not trusting yourself. You are not trusting yourself. You have knowledge of the reality of God, and you are trusting that. That frees you up to say, “OK, I am happy to learn. I am here to learn.” A very famous writer of another period came to the University of Wisconsin when I was a student, and she came to give a lecture. Her name was Ian Rand, and she gave her lecture and one of our philosophy professors corrected her on a point and her reply was, “Sir, I did not come here to learn.” Well, actually, she really hurt herself with that statement. We are here to learn….always. We are here to be fair. We are here to give a hearing. We have time. We have patience. We have confidence that we can do that. We don’t shut anyone down. That’s our part. That’s how we love the people we are with and only knowledge and faith based in knowledge can give us that kind of freedom. That’s another reason why it’s so important for us to approach this matter of the spiritual life in terms of knowledge.