User:PitPat2/Relational Truth

Collection/Scratchpad
"I am the way, the truth and the life."


 * Truth is a person, not a concept. => "I know the truth" (!= "I know everything" : "I can trust my creator, he loves me, I am near him" -> "They will be many who prophesy in my name ... I do not know you.")
 * Truth is being/living in the right relationship, not believing the right concepts
 * "The truth will set you free"
 * "I have come to bring life"


 * "Knowledge is always personal and relational. Every fact we learn,
 * imperceptibly, sometimes dramatically, affects our inner world and the
 * universe of relationships. ... Ultimately, all knowledge is connected
 * to a covenantal relationship with God. I cannot truly know any fact
 * about the created world without being drawn into a deeper relationship
 * with the Creator whose being is interwoven in every multiplication
 * table, zoological classification, or psychological observation, let
 * alone my wife. ... I cannot learn or recall knowledge about my wife and
 * remain detached from the essence of her soul that I love and long to
 * embrace." (Allender&Longman: Bold Love, p. 266)

(This helped me to see knowledge less as "abstract truth", and more as "expression of the character of God")

how can I speak words that bring life? More often than not, when I share my knowledge, it ultimately shames the hearer of knowing "so little", which was definitly not intended! I need to learn not to transgress the boundary between "that fact may be interesting to you" and "oh look, how many facts are out there unknown by you!"


 * knowledge
 * wisdom = knowing what is right+doing it

Landa Cope: education (how to live+how to learn goes together. Schools are only delegated responsibility.)

"Good leaders cultivate honest speech / they love advisors who tell them the truth." (Pr 16,13 MSG)

Wayne/Jacobsen Authentic Relationships: Admonish one another, sharing the journey. "When you share a favorite recipe with a friend; tell someone about a favorite article, book or thought; or show a child how to use a fork, you are teaching." (p. 105) (informal learning) "The vast majority of teaching does not happen in lecture halls, but in conversations in which we share what he have discovered to help others." (p. 106)


 * "Tree-of-knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil": temptation to want to know without knowing God/for its own sake
 * Curiosity, as all human desires, must not become our God. But can serve if submitted to God (God is creative, so are we).
 * C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy: crazy professor dreaming of the survival of species, for the sake of science

Micha 6:8: "Do what is fair and just to your neighbor. Be compassionate and loyal in your love."

Postmodernism: Emphasize relationship, neglecting truth. D.A. Carson, Postmodern epistomology (p. 95-101) "However science has been discovering that we cannot be neutral observers because our observation actually changes the results. This is all the more true in relationships: you cannot truly understand another unless you enter into their lives. It is not possible to truly know another without loving them." "even though we were all wrong. (and again our wrongness biblically was fundamentally because we were estranged from relationship that was remedied through reconciliation" "In other worlds, truth must be the servant of love" (See also )

Allender, Tremper: "Bold Purpose", Part Five "Knowledge truly 'puffs up' unless it is used to serve others." (p. 167) IQ/EQ: high IQ does not lead to happiness (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence) Technical advances did not increase happiness "Biblical wisdom, on the other hand, is more like a skill. It is more a 'knowing how' than a 'knowing that'. At its height, wisdom is an ability to have insight as to the best way to live." (p. 169) Wisdom = "ability to know the right time for a thought, an action, or an emotion." (p. 170) ex. Daniel, neg. ex. Jonadab (2Samuel 13:3: shrewdness is wisdom gone bad)

Genesis: Temptation to know apart from God. Trust: God will tell me what I need to know. God conceals from me what I do not need to know. Curiosity: thirst of knowledge vs. getting to know each other closer (knowing ABOUT someone vs. knowing someone). When I get to know someone, trust is growing, I open up myself and let myself be known.

The more I seek You / the more I find You The more I find You / the more I love You (Song by Zach Nees)

Knowledge as power (I can do something with it, self-centered) vs. Knowledge as gift (I can use it to serve others: I received freely, I give freely) "All our knowledge or gain that takes us to greater self-suffiency is, in fact, rubbish." (bold purpose, p. 184) "I know now, Lord, why you utter no anser. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away." (C.S. Lewis, Till we have faces, p. 308)

Knowledge often used as power to harm. How can we react? Mt 10:16 Sheep: "we need to retain our innocence, our humility, and our dependance on one another." (p. 188) Snakes: "we should not be so predictable, but, rather, get people to consider truth in unexpected ways." (p. 188 -> Bold Love)

The Sin (in Eden) was not a "mistake", but a "violation of trust". (Andy Stanley, "The Grace of God", p.11f)

Not sure if this can be used as a basis of epistomolgy of heaven (v.8-10 - what does "perfect" mean?), but: "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known" (1Cor13:12) also strongly relates knowledge and relation.