The Dichotomy

A good friend and teacher of mine responded to my previous blog. I found it very useful and worthy of public...consumption?
The first part of the letter was about the three ways to know God:

There are at leat 3 ways of knowing God:
A. Deductively: looking up passages 
that refer to Him and His works. 
This is the method of systematic 
theology which you covered somtime
 in 9-10th grade. A pastor might use
 this method if he had a series based 
on some theme.


B. Inductively: Drawing conclusions
 based on seeing God in action in the 
scriptures. This is what "the chron" does.
 I think you would get it one of our Bible 
Institutes. A pastor would also teach
 inductively by doing a book study.

C. Personally/experientially:


  God takes what you have been 
putting into your brain through
 A or B study, plus devotions, sermons, 
etc. and lets you reflect on Himself
 and the truth of Who He is within 
the crucible of life; with the Holy Spirit 
coming alongside.


 I sometimes think of this a peeling an onion. 


I learn a new truth about God and/or myself. 
He brings experiences into my life that allow 
me to test and believe it. I succeed or fail, 
and experience the results, and grow thereby.


I conclude I have "learned" a new truth.
 Later God brings other data and experience 
into my life so that I "learn" it again, hopefully
 a bit deeper, at times with a sense of deja vou.
 It's like peeling an onion. Or having one's 
dragon skin removed. 

The letter writer then adds a warning:

I know you are trying to avoid converting the Bible's meanings to fit your theology. You ARE in some danger of doing just that. Remember that knowing God is more than academic. It HAS to be academic, Jesus is the Word, and words are powerful. But it was not enough for Peter to only know it was Jesus walking on water, bidding Him to come. He had to trust that Jesus would keep His word, and that His character was good - this is the essence of faith. Then he had to ACT like what God said was true, and step out of the boat.

The following is my response to his response. I'm not adding this for pride's sake-- though I am proud of some of my complex sentence structures. I was taught an essential truth, I think, a necessary one, and it must be shared. Plus, I am too tired to put it all into blog-form. Copying and pasting is ever so much easier.

This was my response:

Thank you for your warning on attempting to convert the Bible's meanings to fit my own theology. I feel like I have not emphasized my fears of this enough in my blog. I also feel like I did not emphasize my sentiments for the spiritual growth in Christ outside of the "academic" world.

Or perhaps, as you have pointed out, I have created the dichotomy in my mind of 1. God-glorifying, Spiritual Growth in Christ through deepening my faith, and 2. Understanding God through His Word. I think that in my mind I believed that a believer could not do both at the same time.

You've made it clear to me that God had never meant for a dichotomy between growing in Him and studying His word. I suppose this seems rather obvious, but subconsciously, I have always separated the two.

I suppose this has been my dilemma as of late: I am concerned fully with either one or the other, not both at the same time. One day, I put all of myself into the scriptures and apply myself "academically" to please and honor God, searching to know more about Him, yet completely avoid actual communion and communication with God on a sincere, shall I say "living" level.
Other days, I can be so caught up in "living for God," and focusing on Him with every action, that I exclude His Word from my life.

Thank you for showing me that the two must coexist, one just as important as the other, for a growing relationship with God to deepen my faith in Him.
I very much appreciate your outline of the three ways to know God, and I pray that I will be able to take part in each and every one of them in, dare I say, the same day. :)

I hope you have gotten something out of this (Ok, so not as complicated sentence structure as I thought...).

It does seem like elementary stuff, but to me, it was a massive revelation.