Wondering Our Way Into Truth

From before our first steps, we are constantly trying to figure out how the world works.

We make associations and assumptions. Red means hot. Blue means cold. Fire is hot. Fire is usually red, but sometimes it is blue. Blue fire is hot. What?

As our brains form ideas about the world around us, our bodies put them to the test.

Our hand touches flame and it burns, but sometimes when our hand touches ice for too long, it also burns. Does hot burn or does cold burn? 

Growing up is a series of questions answered by experiences, leading to more questions answered by more experiences. Our mental maps of reality are charted by every question and answer.

This process does not stop with age. It just becomes more complex.

Knowledge of physical pain, relief, and pleasure is joined by knowledge of emotional, pain, relief, and happiness.

Ideas about colors, smells, and objects are paired with ideas about people, relationships, and identity.

Language gives shape to the nebulous understanding in our head, which helps us further form our beliefs. 

Our beliefs grow in complexity and eventually come with consequences that are not always easy to understand.

As a kid, when we touched the fire, the feedback was instant. Our biology knew how to read it clearly.

But as adults, it can be harder to tell when our beliefs aren’t working. We learn to cope with the difficulties of life somehow, and without someone to show us otherwise, it’s hard to believe there could be another way.

As we grow up...
our ideas about relationships,
our ideas about money,
our ideas about food,
our ideas about work,
...can wound and trap or heal and set us free.

When cycles of gossip, lying, and backstabbing or greed, lust, and workaholism are how we have learned to survive, we can grow accustomed to the pain they cause. 

We have seen it in us and around us for so long, we don’t even know how to hope for a different way.

Jesus’ early disciples, like the rest of us, had spent their lifetimes conjuring up their own ways to survive based on experience, so when Jesus found them and said, “Follow me,” they did not yet think like him, act like him, believe like him, or probably agree with him.

But something about the way he lived was attractive--confusing but compelling, difficult but carried with ease.

The love in eyes and the peace in his heart did not seem compatible with the worries of life, and yet there he was--living this very different way in the very same world they were living in.

I imagine they must have thought, what does this guy know that we don’t?

Here we find a major theme of Jesus’ invitation into God’s Kingdom: I know a different way to live and you can have this life too. It will not make sense to you at first, but if you keep following me, I’ll show you a bigger and truer life than you imagined possible.

He invited people to rethink all the ways they have made up about how the world works and consider his instead. Trust that he knows how the world works better than them because it was created through him.

The early Christians were known as followers of “The Way.” The name is fitting because that is exactly what Jesus offered: a different way of navigating reality. Not a mere set of ideas to subscribe to, but a whole new framework of existence.

Once, when his disciples started arguing with each other about who was the best, Jesus humbled them by explaining children are the greatest in the Kingdom of God.

They are unafraid to look like the unabashed baby whose eyes are wide with awe, soaking in the world. They are constantly looking and learning and seeking the right way, a better way.

They are unafraid to question and wonder and are quick to realize when what they’re doing is causing themselves or others pain.

It is only from this place of humility that we can look up and find a Father leading us into a way of living filled with peace, adventure, and incredible joy.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1–5 ESV)