Imagine this scene. A man in his early 20’s comes home for a visit. He begins his homecoming with a surprising pronouncement. “I found the love of my life! I am going to marry her!” Mom and dad trying to support him ask some basic questions. “ Wonderful, what is her name?” “ I don’t know, but I know I love her and want to spend the rest of my life with her”. Mom and dad, a little startled by his last answer hesitatingly move forward with their probing questions. “Where does she live?” I don’t know, but she will live with me of course!” Exasperated they ask one more question. “ Well, what does she like?” “Me of course!” Comes the final most enthusiastic answer.
I think we could all acknowledge that this isn’t a realistic dialogue. That this isn’t how human relationships work. And at the very least, the odds were not great of this relationship getting off the ground, let alone lasting. It may even seem outrageous.
Why is it then that this is exactly how we seem to treat relationships with Jesus? We lift up things like experience and encounter over things like doctrine and orthodoxy. We tell people that it’s more important to know Jesus than it is to know ABOUT Jesus, as if that is somehow possible to know somebody without knowing about them. It seems like we in the church love false dichotomies, especially if they have some kind of fun alliteration; relationship and religion are not opposites, faith is both caught and taught.
When we teach that God is ultimately unknowable it isn’t the gospel of Jesus we are offering to others, in fact it’s quite antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The incarnation, God choosing to be Emanuel, God with us, God in the flesh, is the very act of God making himself knowable. Out of love for you and for me God comes to us in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A concern about things like orthodoxy and doctrine is that some people see it as about who is right and who is wrong. It’s not about human labels at all. The moment orthodoxy becomes simply another human category it ceases being orthodoxy. Orthodoxy (right praise) by it’s very nature honors and glorifies God, which I would say is our raison d’etre, our ultimate goal in life.
If you want to know who God is look to the Bible, the book that God has given to the church to hand down from generation to generation. The written Word of God is where we encounter the incarnate, living Word of God. And look to the three ecumenical creeds of the church; faithful expositions of scripture that the Body of Christ has always believed, taught, and confessed. In these places you will find a God who made you, loves you, dies for you, and ultimately rises from the dead FOR YOU. This is the God who is worthy of our praise and worship, who desires you and desires to be KNOWN by you.