Knowing God
One evening a grandfather took his little son fishing. The little boy started asking all the questions that a young child will ask. Where does the sun go when it goes down? Do the fish feel the hook when they are caught? Why do they eat worms when they could eat something much nicer? His grandfather did his best to answer all his questions and then told him that he could only ask one more question. The little boy thought for a long while and at last he said, “Did you ever see God?” The old man looked up at the evening sky as the sun melted away into crimson, yellow and orange and he looked at his little grandchild whom he loved so very much and he said, “Nowadays son, it seems as though I see nothing else but God.”
To know God is the perennial quest of all the major world religions. Judaism honours the God who is One, who cannot be seen and whose back only Moses was blessed to glimpse. Islam worships the God who is great, who is uniquely God and whose prophet is Muhammad. Christians seek to know the God who has made himself known to the world in a unique way in Jesus Christ. There are those too, who though they do not belong to a particular faith tradition, strive to know God after their own fashion. It is the ultimate question all of us ask at some stage – “Is there a God and how can I come to know this God?”
In the tradition of Christianity theologians and mystics have sought to explore and express the implications of such questions. Holy people of great mind and intellect have struggled to show that it is possible for us to have knowledge of God albeit that we ‘see through a glass’ darkly, as St. Paul
In recent times a rediscovery of the lives and insights of the mystics has been taking place. We hear and read about courses such as ‘the way of the mystic’ or ‘the mystical journey’. Some of these men and women are familiar to us – St. Teresa of Avila , St. John
There are other mystics, lesser known to popular devotion, who nonetheless have had an enormous effect on western mysticism and the effort to acquire knowledge of God. Pseudo-Dionysius is one such figure. Writings by this mysterious contemplative have shaped and formed the Christian mystical understanding in a manner unsurpassed by any other of the great mystics. Leaving questions of his identity aside, it was Pseudo Dionysius that introduced the idea of ‘dark knowledge’ of God or more commonly, the apophatic way. Also known as negative theology or the way of unknowing, this approach teaches that knowledge and experience of God is to be sought by putting aside all images, ideas, concepts and systems of theological explanation so that one can come to God in a state of greatest poverty and openness to the Mystery that is God. The English author of The Cloud of Unknowing, the German Dominican Meister Eckhart and the Spanish mystic St. John
On the other hand there are mystics such as Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila and Walter Hilton who represent the kataphatic approach. This entails an active pursuit of knowledge of God through structured prayer and a sense of the familiarity and nearness of God. Walter Hilton wrote, “Do you want to find your Lord and God? Then go down to the hospitals, to the sick and bedridden and there you will find him.”
People today have become more open to the possibility of religious experience. There is even a ‘laboratory’ or study centre for religious experience in Wales
The ability to see God in all things as the grandfather in the opening story had acquired, is something we can grow into with the passing of the years. It is what often convinces people that there must be a God – “…that all of this could not have come about simply by chance”. Others prefer to express the intimacy and the inextricable loving presence of God in all creation as “God seeing all things through us.” This can help us to remember that there is a knowledge that comes from love which opens up all kinds of new horizons to us and beckons us ever deeper into the mystery that is God.
