The Utility of Misunderstanding

I have tried a thousand ways to work out an articulation of all God’s business. What crazed effort I have placed into this pretentious project—like it was some puzzle that demanded me to “solve” it! I am continually busted out on this, and maybe I am becoming able to laugh more readily at my own ignorance and the sheer grace of God for allowing me to see the damned hole that project digs. Everytime someone concisely cites my grand misunderstanding, I am once again thankful for the solid ground of Jesus. I always think about how I could have spent my whole life fighting the water and trying to show others how much (little?) I understand. The late John Howard Yoder is only the latest to remind me of my strained muscles:

The circle of conversation has brought me around to the problem with which I made a special point of not beginning, namely the fixation of contemporary “evangelical” identity on epistemology and reason. From where we stand today, under the claim of a liberating Lord calling us to be the servants of our neighbors, that preoccupation seems to represent a concession to Enlightenment and not a victory over it. It looks like an acceptance of the scholastic notion that we seek a truth system with which to defend ourselves as those who possess it, rather than being claimed by a Lord who calls us to join him in his condescension.

The text of Scripture itself demands that we are guided by its material preoccupations of servanthood rather than by our formal preoccupations with rationally sustainable credibility. It is if we wish to do his will that we shall know by whose authority he has spoken (John 7:17). (From To Hear the Word, 2nd ed, John Howard Yoder, 2009, p. 65)

On this second day of Christmas, I thank God again for his coming. Thank you for showing me more of my deep misunderstanding!

Mike C.