{"id":18358,"date":"2019-10-16T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18358"},"modified":"2019-10-16T09:07:14","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T13:07:14","slug":"to-know-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18358","title":{"rendered":"To Know God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1NEP0GE0SY0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong><br><\/strong>Wednesday, October 16, 2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Today, we continue with Robert McAfee Brown, who uses an excerpt from the Book of Jeremiah to describe knowing God:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does it mean to \u201cknow God\u201d? Who are the ones who know God?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The questions seem simple and answers come immediately to mind. Those who know God are the ones who have had some experience of God about which they are able to tell us\u2014sometimes a little too easily and glibly to be fully convincing, but sometimes in halting and fumbling ways that are themselves authentic pointers to the magnitude and awesomeness of the encounter they are trying to describe. Such people will tell us that they have found God in the face of another person, or in a sunset, or in a compulsion to obey a moral demand, or in a sense of the immensity of space and their own smallness, or by reading the Bible, or through meditating on the life of Jesus. The ones we call the \u201csaints\u201d are often those from whom we get our clearest picture of what it must be like to know God; their lives of prayer and meditation and good works have a transparent goodness that makes their appeal to the name and will of God convincing and compelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In contrast to such people, we know other people who make no such claims whatever. . . . For some of them, God is simply not an issue, and they live good, decent lives apparently unruffled by concern about God\u2019s reality or nonreality. . . . For still others, God is something or someone they have consciously discarded. . . . They may live exemplary lives, exhibit concern for the neighbor, even make sacrifices for the cause of the poor and the destitute. But they no longer claim to \u201cknow God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The above description is fairly commonplace . . . but we will be doing serious violation to the Bible\u2019s understanding of what it means to \u201cknow God\u201d if we leave it at that. There is a short\u2014and startling\u2014episode in the book of Jeremiah [22:13-17] that poses the question of \u201cknowing God\u201d in quite another way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,<br>and his upper rooms by injustice;<br>who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing,<br>and does not give him his wages;<br>who says, \u201cI will build myself a great house<br>with spacious upper rooms,\u201d<br>and cuts out windows for it,<br>paneling it with cedar,<br>and painting it with vermilion.<br>Do you think you are a king<br>because you compete in cedar?<br>Did not your father eat and drink<br>and do justice and righteousness?<br>Then it was well with him.<br>He judged the cause of the poor and needy;<br>then it was well.<br>Is not this to know me?<br>says the Lord.<br>But you have eyes and heart<br>only for your dishonest gain,<br>for shedding innocent blood,<br>and for practicing oppression and violence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I, Richard, would ask, if a \u201cbeliever\u201d does not practice some level of nonviolent justice and compassionate action, do they really know God?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Today, we continue with Robert McAfee Brown, who uses an excerpt from the Book of Jeremiah to describe knowing God: What does it mean to \u201cknow God\u201d? Who are the ones who know God? The questions seem simple and answers come immediately to mind. Those who know God are the ones [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18358"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18360,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18358\/revisions\/18360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}