Knowing the way, is not where to, but rather with whom we are travelling
John 14:5-6: Thomas
said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how do we know the
way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the
way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
I can see exactly
where Thomas is coming from. It’s natural enough to want a clearly defined path
in front of us, upon which we can walk in order to reach an already revealed
destination. This type of journeying is very easy to understand as it involves
us making life-plans/maps, as it is sometimes called, which we then can follow. That is, based on the reasonable
assumption that ‘the way’, ‘the truth’ and our ‘life’ can be seen before the event in some form (via knowledge, wisdom, insight, and so on) – with our job
being to simply walk the path ahead, through our observation which shows
us where we are going.
Jesus, on the
other hand, invites us to embrace a much more difficult and incomprehensible
notion. It is not for us to find a way,
but rather to be accompanied with him as
our way, truth and life. In other words, we can go anywhere, provided we are with the source of all love, joy and liberation
in the person of Jesus Christ, who,
bizarrely, we have to now claim is God made a person! The point being that if
we don’t accept the last utterly
stupendous notion we cannot make any sense of John 14:5-6. Instead, we are
left with a completely self-deluded man called Jesus who foolishly thinks he is the way, the truth and the life! So, we
either assume the utter stupendous character of this claim about himself and
accept him in our lives as God made a person, or we reject him as a crazy-person or
fool. The choice is very stark but needs
to be put this way, whether we are a Christian or not, to understand properly the
radical character of what is being suggested by him.
Click on book cover image on this blog's home page for information on my book Nine Steps to Well-Being: A Spiritual Guide for Disconnected Christians and Other Questioning Journeyers - first three chapters are FREE!!
Click on book cover image on this blog's home page for information on my book Nine Steps to Well-Being: A Spiritual Guide for Disconnected Christians and Other Questioning Journeyers - first three chapters are FREE!!
I really like your thinking here Steve.
ReplyDeleteThanks really appreciate it - God bless
ReplyDeleteLife is a journey. When we are children we have no idea where we might end up. Our early education consists of stories and incomplete knowledge and information. As we get older we start making decisions based on some of that incomplete knowledge. We subsequently realise we have made mistakes - and sometimes we learn from them and move on. The starting point of the next stage of the journey is always from where we are NOW without any knowledge of where we will be in one day, one month or one years time. Only at those points will we be able to make decisions based on our knowledge at that point.
ReplyDeleteAs I look back on over 65 years of questioning the Christian RELIGION I realise something of how my beliefs (or understanding) have changed over the years - in ways that I could never have anticipated! And that is probably as true of the last five years since I finally stopped attending church, as the traumatic church experiences of 1995/6 (but that's another story).
All of that to emphasise that I am in a place now that I could not have visualised five years ago, knowing that I don't have any answers for others, but that the story of my journey might be encouraging and supportive of others who are or who have been on a similar journey
Great comment outside the goldfish bowl - I can see exactly where you are coming from. I know have spent too much of life trying to understand things when really I just need to trust in a God who is loving and has my best interest at heart. I often quote Proverbs 3:5-6 to myself and to others, so here goes: 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight'.
ReplyDelete