Here is the current culmination of my thoughts prompted by all the comments you've given and the posts I've read.  How do we know that we know anything?  I mean, how do I know that these graphic symbols we call letters convey any meaning whatsoever?  Here's what I think: we know that we know through relationship.  To know anything or anyone requires a relationship.  When I first meet a chair (I often meet chairs about town), I don't know if it is something I can sit on or not.  I don't know what it is made out of (all kinds of stuff can look like all kinds of other stuff).  All I know is that it is shaped like something that will accept my buttocks and support my weight so I can rest my feet for a while.  So I meet the chair, I get closer to the chair, and I might even pick the chair up.  Ultimately, I trust the chair.  I sit and it supports me.  Over time, my relationship with the chair grows.  I know that it will support me.  I know that it is useful for more than just sitting.  I know what it is made of.  If my relationship with the chair is especially good, I care for it, and even heal it if it is broken.  I know it because I have a relationship with it.

All this to make one simple point.  Knowing...without relationship isn't really knowing.  We can make all the best logical arguments about the origins of the universe, the history of mankind, theology, philosophy, medicine, architecture, science, or whatever else might strike our fancy.  But if those arguments are based on logic without relationship, then they really don't mean anything.  They may be great arguments, but for life, they are wortheless.  The human mind is capable of a great many things, but I do not think it can know, truly know something outside of a relationship.

It seems to me that the biggest difficulty that Christians have with being Christian is not loving God, nor is it loving others.  It is loving God and loving others.  Somewhere in the most simple of Christ's commands, we've lost the simplicity.  Somewhere we've made what is the simple essence of God's plan a complicated mess of bad orthodoxy and even worse orthopraxy.  So why is this so difficult?  Well, at the risk of oversimplifying (wait, I never oversimplify)...at the risk of extrememe verbosity (?), we find it easy to love a perfect, holy, loving God and the more we do so, we discover the imperfections, darkness, and evil of people and that makes it difficult to love them.  Or, we find it easy to love the imperfect, messed-up people around us and in doing so we wonder how a perfect, holy, loving God could love them, or us for that matter.  So we get ourselves stuck in this little dichotomy.

But maybe...just maybe, it really is so simple.  Maybe it is in the perfect embracing the imperfect that God's plan is revealed the best.  Maybe it is because we misunderstand God's holiness, his otherness, his set-apart-ness.  Maybe we think that holiness implies perfection.  But the way I see it, holiness implies perfection in one area, love.  If we love perfectly, the we are holy as God is holy.  2 John 6 - This is love, that we walk in obedience to his commands.  And as you have heard from the beginning his command is that we walk in love.  Holiness equals love.  When we misrepresent holiness, we fall victim to many fallacies.  And, being holy and loving completely means that we must embrace things, ideas, and people that we may often times find unholy...but that's holiness...ya follow?

So maybe we need to redefine our terms.  And maybe, if we do, we will find our journey, whether in the ruts, waves, cubes, or wilds a bit more supernatural.

I have this thing for adventures (check previous blog entry).  I try my best to get out and into the wilds of the world as often as I'm able.  And, I have this routine I go through in getting ready.  I lay out all the gear and tackle and trim I might need for the particular trip, the particular terrain, and the particular weather I might encounter.  I go through it all, check it three or four times to make sure I have everything so that I can get a good nights sleep.  Then, off to bed where I toss and turn in anticipation for most of the night.  It isn't necessarily the fact that I'll soon be further from civilization.  It is simply the adventure that awaits because no matter how well prepared you are, the adventure is always bigger than you're planning.

That's what God is profoundly (is that a word?) reminding me of right now.  I stand on the verge of the beginning of another chapter of this grand adventure that He has set before me.  I can't wait, and yet, I'm scared out of my mind.  I don't know what will happen next and that, I guess, is what I've come to love about it.  I'm excited because lately it has seemed that the adventure is far from me.  I've been in-the-little-cubicle-doi ng-my-nine-to-five-just-p rocessing-data rut that us Christian church-goers so often fall into.  But now, the adventure of the unknown calls again.

So, I get ready.  And toss and turn all night.