Definitively Mistaken
Examine me, O Lord, and try me; Test my mind and my heart.Psalm 26:2 NASB
Examine– I don’t have to tell you that life is complicated. If you think it isn’t, then you are probably less than twenty-five. I also don’t have to remind you that life is messy. We plan; God laughs. So say the sages. And most of us know this to be very true. But somehow we are seduced by the Greek notion that we really can predict and control through rational investigation. In fact, the entire scientific method, so absolutely crucial to our Western worldview, is based on this simply dictum: we can know! We are confronted daily by claims of definitive understanding, as if having the correct rational insights ensures predictable outcomes. We ignore the accuracy of the weatherman and plan anyway.
David wrestled with this same problem three thousand years ago. He asked God to do a thorough examination of his condition. I appreciate the sentiment, but the request is simply outrageously dangerous.
“Judah’s descendant, David, confronts the genetic dilemma of beḥina, of empirical testing and its inadequacy as a way of knowledge of human beings. He presents himself to God, in one of his Psalms, as an object of testing, or training: “Probe me [beḥaneni], O Lord, and try me, test my heart and mind’ (26:2). In a classical passage, the Talmud shows David’s realization that no human being should invite such an ‘investigation’ of himself; immediately after inviting God to ‘probe’ him, he sins with Batsheva.
This is, apparently, a statement about human fallibility. It also, however, expresses the radical ‘wrongness’ of the language of beḥina, of empirical research as a way of knowing human beings. David comes to recognize the central role of what Sefat Emet simply calls ‘the help of heaven’ in his life. The project of knowing oneself or other human beings is so complex and entangled that an empirical rationality, a search for ‘a final vocabulary,’ will not do.”[1]
“Who are you?” is a question that does not lend itself to rational analysis. To think otherwise is to make a serious mistake about the nature of being human. As Abraham’s life journey suggests, who we are is in constant rearrangement, perhaps even after we have departed this world. If we are truly in God’s image, then we should take a clue from His own name, “I shall be who I shall be.” “Project incomplete” is a more accurate designation of what it means to become. There is a basic indeterminateness to life that defies definition. “This reading of God’s words may not be precisely comforting; rather it reaffirms a tragic sense of the unintelligibility of life, to human eyes.”[2] Maybe you needed to hear that becoming is who you are, and that’s enough.
Topical Index: beḥina, testing, becoming, human being, Psalm 26:2
[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p. 343.
“Maybe you needed to hear that becoming is who you are, and that’s enough.”
Amen
We esteem theologians and look to them to guide us spiritually. Yet, YHVH was pretty clear that He and HIs ways can’t be known by us. We are not satisfied with being fruitful and caring for our planet. We are obsessed with knowledge and mastery of what cannot be known or mastered by us, including our own hearts. I often ask YHVH to search me and show me my heart. You’re right to point out that is a dangerous prayer. I also pray that He will open my eyes so I can behold wonderful things in His Word and in His world. If we don’t keep grounded in who He is and in what he has made while we are searching out who we are, life truly is tragic. I think that’s why His world contains flowers and babies and puppies and watermelon and seashores and mountains and forests etc. We are invited to explore in order to serve. We are not equipped to analyze so we can grasp for equality with God. Thank you for clearly pointing out that becoming is what it means to be human. Mystery not mastery.
Theresa, I really like this!
As always, love love love the truths you unravel from the Word. I would like some feedback however because on January 19th, 2010 I finally figured out “who I am” and have been saying the following “truth” to myself and others and even just wrote it in my book, “I am a daughter of the Most High God. I am holy, righteous, blameless and pure; perfectly provided for; perfectly secure. Can’t you see the crown on my head?” Point being, I have come to believe that “who I am” is a child of God. It’s like the song “Who You Say I Am” by Hillsong Worship. In fact, it is because I embraced what you call “a basic indeterminateness to life that defies definition” that I was able to add finite words to “who I am.”
I say all of this because this clarity on my identity has made all the difference for me and has quelled what you say is “a tragic sense of the unintelligibility of life” insofar as I no longer need to define anything more. As such, are we on the same wavelength or am I missing your point? Are we not able to claim an identity as “Children of The Great I Am?” Does my desire to claim something for an identity highlight your point that I, a Westerner trained in Greco-Roman, scientific methodology of reason and logic, struggle to accept a definition that defies words? In my mind, it is because I embraced your definition of who i am as “becoming” that I was able to land on the Truths that I am a created being who exists at the behest of the Great I Am. As such, I do not exist to fulfill my pleasures and purposes but rather those of The Great I Am. Hineni. I am available.
Again, am I in sync with your perspective or someone still off?
If I am created to be a sum total of more than ‘me’, then my dilemma is that that ‘me’ cannot hold more than my end of those sums: I cannot know more than my perspective of the union, which leaves me unable to fully grasp what is still beyond me with anything other than faith.
On the same note, how can a human, from a human’s isolated perspective, ‘know’ God when God, in the process of designing humans to be a part of Himself (which He adopted us back into through Yeshua), became a part of us? There is no ‘us’ over here looking at God over there! Now our realities intertwine; we define each other together.
Such empirical, surgical, analytical ‘knowledge’; pickled as all knowledge is IN THE PAST TENSE, can never grasp the cusp of the present which is where God and man now interface in a mutual, continual ‘defining’ (very poor way to NOT describe it!) of each other. We are designed to choose together: wills seamless; outcomes all to the glory of God, which is our reasonable service. If I can still say I can ‘see’ God OVER THERE, then I am still not where I belong, which is OVER THERE, too. When I am over there, of course, no such nonsense is necessary.
The knowledge ABOUT God becomes a moot subject because we are too busy experiencing (“knowing”) Him directly. All words fail that. Ezekiel, when he tried, said, in Ez. 1:26,28 “and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness of the appearance of a man upon it… This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.” What did he do then? Say “I know what God is like, now!” Hardly. He says he “fell upon his face”, of course. Those who really “know the LORD”, tend to be doing that: they know that they don’t know, but now is not the time to find out!
Who am I? That question is completely caught up in “who is God?”. I suspect when I truly ‘know’ who I am, I will find myself as wordless as the moments when I find myself before His throne. I was created to be so much more than just ‘me’.
We we are the sum total of all our past mistakes and in differences. That was goal of a Deliverance Ministry. Years ago. Maybe they had some truth in that. We have to deal with the things that we’ve done. I am beginning to have a negative slant toward any Ministry the underlining cause being they desire to make a name for themselves. A work of God. Might be more accurate. Then they need to really search who’s doing the work? God needs to get all the glory for everything in our lives. As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.
Brett, we cannot escape the new understandings even the secular world can see about the relationship of all past choices and the present as manifested in all life, including our own bodies and minds and spirits. To come to terms with who we are, we have to take all the choices of the past, including the past of our ancestors, into consideration.
I have noticed that the people who Yeshua healed also got their sins forgiven: the past slate that caused the problems got cleared so the problems would not come back. That is true deliverance! The body does bear the burden until we get to a better choice point. (That is grace in action, by the way.)
Just because people try to take credit where it is not due should not keep us from the truths they are trying to make a name for themselves on. Nobody ‘owns’ the truth: God delivers all who ask. May we ask Him today! Halleluah!
Whose definition of “me” do we use?
Ours? Or His?
Do we lean on our own understanding?
Or do we, as Yeshua said, “Come . . . learn from me.”?
Thank you Skip for those words and insights! Extremely helpful. Worthy of massive amounts of contemplation. I needed the adjustment. So easy to get out of alignment. And then what happens!? I will be pondering these thoughts throughout my day as I work and asking the Holy Spirit to help me to process what you have written. As time passes and there is an ongoing interchange with God I seem to be going further and further off the beaten path. I guess once again it would be called the road less traveled. Maybe, the “few there be”
who find it! They Who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled!
David was not trying to do a “rational investigation” or gain a “definitive understanding” of himself. It was not a “thorough examination of his condition” or a “rational analysis” in which he was seeking to be engaged. David knew that was not “the way”, “the truth”, or “the life” for any man. That’s why he asked YHVH, Himself, to search and to examine his heart, to try him, and to test him. He knew he couldn’t do that for himself or even with YHVH’s help, not in a complete sense. He undoubtedly knew, like Shaul, that he could only “know in part” his true condition,
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” [1Co 13:12]
And to the extent that he could know himself, in part, he would deal with it, whether that meant confession and repentance, or standing firm in this life against any adversary or adversity, having confidence before YHVH, to whatever extent his conscience was clear, ultimately knowing that his faith, hope, and trust was in YHVH, alone, and not in himself. David humbly trusted in YHVH knowing him and in His tender mercies and faithfulness to guide, protect, and provide for him. He trusted YHVH to examine him, to know him, to know his heart, his anxious thoughts, his needs, and even as much as how to perfect him in righteousness for His name’s sake.
David knew that he could not reliably know himself in some complete fashion. His trust was that YHVH knew him, as thoroughly, completely, and perfectly as he needed to be known. David was not asking YHVH to help him engage in some thorough, rational investigation and analysis of his condition, and gain a definitive knowledge and understanding himself. No. David was engaged in the only activity that we, too, can hope to be our help, the act of faith and confident prayer, of humbly surrendering and entrusting ourselves with all our frailties, weaknesses, shortcomings, limitations, mistakes, sins, and ignorance to the One who Shaul declared in his doxology at the end of his letter to the Romans as, “THE ONLY WISE GOD”!
Our trust, our security, our confidence, our peace, our hope is not in our intellect, not in our efforts, not in our self-knowledge, nor in our insights nor wisdom, but it is in HIM who created us, who has given us breath, who has revealed Himself to us through a myriad of witnesses, the utmost being His written word and the premier witness of His son, Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel, all through the witness of the Ruach haKodesh, who Messiah gives to whomever asks.
“Trust in Adonai with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear Adonai and turn away from evil.” [Pro 3:5-7]
A PSALM OF DAVID:
“Adonai, You searched me and know me.
Whenever I sit down or stand up, You know it. You discern my thinking from afar.
You observe my journeying and my resting and You are familiar with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, Adonai, You know all about it.
You hemmed me in behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from Your Ruach? Where can I flee from Your presence?
Search me, O God, and know my heart. Examine me, and know my anxious thoughts,
and see if there be any offensive way within me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
[Psa 139:1-7, 23-24]
“I am sure of this very thing—that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the Day of Messiah Yeshua.” [Php 1:6]
When I parse my emotions and how I perceive what I think or feel into scripture does it sometimes verge on idolatry? Am I implanting my own thoughts about God instead of allowing him to explain himself to me by how he parses emotions ,or even sometimes the fact he does not dwell on emotions like we do? Do we ever go to far when we say the bible is just a emotional journey?
I mentioned in my last post a sweet simple little book by Bill Thrall,Bruce McNicol and John Lynch. “True Faced” is subtitled ” Trust God and others with who you really are.” Based on W. Shakespeare ‘s line “God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another”. Chapter two is the heart of the book. It Introduces a brilliantly composed analogy with these words “As we’re walking down lifes’s road, we all arive at a tall pole with signs pointing in two different directions. The marker leading to the left simply says “Pleasing God”. The one leading to the right reads” Trusting God”. Most of us head left. When we live out of the motivation of pleasing God or others we end up with a lot of disconections between how we behave and how we intend to behave. Being human and therefore complicated often confused and largely incapable of controlling those things that chalenge or scare us we have truble keeping our feelings in line with our intents. We all profess to be loving but then we feel angry hurt or offended about something or someone; then our carefully crafted personas break down. The book suggests we put on masks to hide our true selves behind. It further suggests we trust God with who we are and how we feel at any given moment. We can then live not out of our own ideas of ourseves but out of who God sayes we are in his word. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” ” a nation of priests and kings” a “holy nation” “the apple of God’s eye” we “have the mind of Christ” and we have “his rightiousness ” etc etc etc. While we might not feel like these things are true for us all the time it doesn’t make them any less true. If we begin to live (act or behave) out of what God sayes of us rather than how we feel or think we, we might just become who we where ment to be…
That reminds me of how, back in the day, in my little hometown, some scoundrels would occasionally go around in the dark of night and change the direction of some of the route signs.
Sounds like that’s what’s happened here.
Fortunately, for those of us who knew the landscape like the backs of our hands, we weren’t misdirected and didn’t get lost.
Same here. The route signs, “TRUSTING YHVH” and “PLEASING YHVH”, of course, should be pointing in the same direction.
It’s like where I live now. You can only get to the food market in the next town over by going on Route 10/32. They’re the same road!
When in doubt, don’t listen to the scoundrels. Christianity is just about full of people believing they are “the righteousness of God in Christ” while living like hell, not following YHVH’s directions. Above all, we must consult the original map book.
Scoundrels are always trying to be clever and sell us on a shortcut, even when there isn’t one. We may enjoy the scenery, but we’ll never get to the food market. We’ll only end up misdirected and lost.
Trust AND obey, for there’s no other way!
Where I live, if you’re hungry and you wanna buy some groceries to feed your family and eat yourself, you’d better trust the map book, and you’d better follow its directions and take Route 10/32. If you try to take a shortcut, you just might end up at the garbage dump.
The scriptures actually suggest you can’t please YeHoVaH if you do not trust him.
That’s absolutely correct. However, the presupposition that life’s road leads us to a sign post where we then have to make a choice between two roads that go in opposite directions, one to the left, pleasing YHVH, and the other to the right, trusting YHVH, is incorrect. That is false teaching. The faith (trust) that pleases YHVH, is to believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, which means to faithfully follow His directions, not just “trust” Him.
Dear brother, I suggested it was a analogy not a teaching. (albeit as you suggest an in-correct one) It is effective to make a point not as a foundational tenant of the way things always and absolutely are. The implication being that it is a dysfunctional perspective, a tendency that leads to error. I am sure you flawless and faithfully follow his directions, never miss a turn in the road and therefore are in a position to correct everyone else on the road. I unfortunately on occasion realize I need to go back and retrace my steps to where I missed the signs, read them incorrectly or have to take a closer look at the map to see if the signs have been mistakenly placed or changed. This is just nuts. Trying to relate in 10 sentences about complex idea’s.
I guess the truth is that we are all a work in progress. Perhaps before we ask the Almighty One to search us we should search our own hearts and minds, also a dangerous exercise if we are honest about what we see. Then we can ask God to accept us, help us to change what we don’t find acceptable and pray for transformation because we can’t do this without His help. Can you judge yourself? You may find this very eye opening. Maybe David was trying to but couldn’t be totally honest or happy about what he saw and then sought the LORD’s evaluation. Ouch. Perhaps Jack Nicholson said it best, “YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH”. I still believe that God has a plan and purpose for our lives and we need to keep seeking, knocking and praying and loving. Blessings!
Can I judge myself? Probably not very well. Since God has changed my life, I attempt to do the best I can, but I am a product of my environment and past still to some degree. And even before God changed me I at least attempted to be honest with those I cared about. I’ve been around people who could wax eloquent about spiritual matters but didn’t seem to be living it out very well. But for all the time I have been around people in the church or even in 12 step programs, I have yet for one of them to acknowledge their sin or harm they caused me directly to me. Maybe to God, but not to me. Actually an organization I worked for had people that exemplified more Godly behavior to me than people I know in church or 12 step groups. I think I am aware of most of my faults, but can I really see myself clearly? Can I see myself as God sees me? At least I am aware that I am a sinner.
I made an amends to my wife for the affairs I had and she made an amends for the affairs she had on me. But we have yet to acknowledge the harm we caused to those we had affairs with. We have a covenant with each other but not with them. I don’t see the need.