What Does God Know?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what God “knows.” I suppose it has somewhat to do with, among other things, a Sunday School lesson that we had recently.

It was pretty much the same boring weekly drivel regularly produced by the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board. Its design is to inoculate us laymen against contracting any viruses of actual profundity that might be, in their minds, mistaken for the Truth. (What they might diagnose as a virus, others would correctly identify as the actual Truth.)

The purpose of any inoculation is to give one a weakened strain of a virus to prevent his or her contracting the real thing. SBC propaganda has been successfully achieving this “inoculation” for some decades now.

Anyway, the writer was discussing what it means to actually know something. He defined “knowing” as “ranging from knowing something intellectually to the idea of having a relationship with a person, extending even to the most intimate of physical relations.” While the latter two parts of his distinction were, to me, cogent and accurate, the first does not agree with the scriptures’ evident clarification of the word.

In the Holy Bible, perhaps without exception, to know someone only means to know him or her intimately. For example, Adam knew Eve and begat Cain. Abraham knew Sarah and begat Isaac. (On the obverse, an example of not knowing someone is when the Lord told the workers of iniquity, “I never knew you.”) Therefore, it must be manifestly evident that knowing is not simple acquiescence to a conglomerate of ideas or merely assuming that a particular event or concept is factual, based on second hand evidence. No, to know something is to experience it!

I spent some time in the military and therefore, can relate to other veterans. However, I never experienced war, so I don’t really know what that’s like. My father and I would occasionally discuss our military careers, but when he began talking about German bullets whizzing past his head, I knew I didn’t know, because that was completely unfamiliar territory to me. I hadn’t been where he had been.

Davy Roever, a Vietnam Veteran and evangelist, came home with terrible third degree burns over most of his body. I once heard him explain that he doesn’t know how to council divorcees, because he’s never been one. Yet, when he walks into a hospital burn ward full of wounded soldiers, with just one look, they know he’s been where they’ve been.

Before Christ’s incarnation, He loved us, cared for us, understood the workings of our hearts and minds, but didn’t know us. He didn’t know how it felt to stub your toe, sweat in the heat of the day or be so bone-tired that you didn’t know, (yes, “know,”) if you could take one more step up that hill.

Until God became flesh and dwelt among us, we could have looked Him in the eye and sincerely said, “Don’t judge me! You’ve never found yourself hungry, tired and lying face down in the mud. You haven‘t been where I‘ve been!” Now, He knows everything we’ve experienced. Even death!

The Bible says that we don’t have a High Priest who “cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” He is not guessing or imagining how we feel. How so? Because He has experienced our infirmities! Yes, now, He knows! Before our Lord Jesus walked this earth, God could surely sympathize with our weaknesses, but now he can empathize with them. He has walked in the very dust that He made us from and worn it on his own feet. He has been where we have been.

Been abandoned by friends? He knows. Been hungry? He knows. Been in unbearable, unstoppable pain? He knows. Been divorced? He knows. Been abused and abandoned by the father you thought would never leave? He knows! Why? He’s been where we’ve been.

Finally, be afraid of people who “know” things! So many think that their faith is knowledge. Not so! We have faith. We have hope. One day, though, “we will know even as also we are known.” The faith that keeps us going will end in sight. Our hope will end in fruition. One day, we will know the Love of God as we never could’ve imagined and we will, finally, absolutely, undeniably, unquestioningly KNOW!

Why? Because then, we will be where He is!