Seeing & Hearing = Knowing. Really?

I ran across this fascinating image today.

It's a telling look at the intersection of our ability to see and hear, and it's shocking how little we can detect of the radiant energy that surrounds us when unaided.

Just a sliver, really.

I think there's a profound spiritual lesson here. We live in a culture that for hundreds of years has told us that what we can know is limited to what we can observe—what we can see and hear. Granted, our technology has let us expand the boundaries of what we can see and hear. The graph tells us that much, otherwise we'd never know about the area outside our sliver of "knowing".

But what if there's a way of knowing that transcends the bounds of the graph? What if there's a way to relationally know something or someone with a faculty that perceives beyond seeing and hearing? The Christian Scriptures use a curious word for this kind of knowing: yada. It is used to indicate a uniquely deep relational intimacy, including coitus for example.

In the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, God talks about His relationship with His people in graphic terms that embraces the idea of yada. In this passage, and throughout the rest of the writing prophets, idolatry is curiously regarded as adultery. God wants to know and be known with a degree of relational intimacy that can best be illustrated by the bond a husband and wife share.

This bridegroom-bride imagery is picked up in the New Testament as well. In Jesus' parables, the letters of Paul and John, and especially in Ephesians chapter five, we see marriage and wedding imagery used to illustrate God's relationship with those who love Him.

This contrasts sharply with the kind of knowing that comes through the skepticism of Modernity, where we doubt everything that isn't empirically and observably verified to our satisfaction. There is value in the skepticism that drives scientists towards discoveries of mutual benefit—that also motivates juries to avoid convicting the innocent—however imperfectly these things happen. But skepticism as a way of knowing has serious limits.

It fails to admit the metaphysical without physical proof—a curious dichotomy. Imagine requiring your wife, husband, or significant other to empirically "prove" their love for you. Imagine remaining entirely skeptical of their love, withholding any relational intercourse absent such proof. See the problem? The proof lies beyond the skepticism. It lies within the relationship.

You have to give yourself and your love to another in order to experience the "proof", because that kind of proof is relational. You feel it. It's squishy, warm, and entirely subjective. But we know it when we experience it. Tell me you can look at an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand and not smile in acknowledgment of their obvious love. Or that you can resist the same relational proof thrown off by a cooing mother and her baby. Think of the one you love the most and tell me you can be skeptical of the love they freely give you. No quid pro quo, but their deepest affection given without reserve.

That is how God approaches us in Christ. He offers Himself freely.

A skeptical might ask: Can Christians not point to anything objective then? Yes, of course we can. There are convincing proofs etched in rock or memorialized in fragmentary ancient texts. These offer a historical witness to the faith's truth claims. And for the intellectually honest, they are compelling, but God offers something more. He offers Himself in Christ, and as unbelievable as it sounds, one can really know Him.

I know. I had coffee with Him this morning.