If Jesus had a habit of giving us unexpected answers, we would expect the same to be true of His Father. We could also expect that to be challenging. As we said last time, the unexpected answers are the hallmark of the Socratic teaching style: Make every answer indirect. The point of that teaching style is all about the “Teacher” vanishing from the picture to force the student to face the question on his own. But how can an infinite God take Himself “out of the picture”?
Let me begin by explaining this idea first from Socrates’ viewpoint, as he described his life’s mission as a teacher of Truth:
My art of midwifery is in general like theirs; the only difference is that my patients are men, not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the soul that is in travail of birth. And the highest point of my art is the power to prove by every test whether the offspring of a young man’s thought is a false phantom or instinct with life and truth. I am so far like the midwife that I cannot myself give birth to wisdom, and the common reproach is true, that, though I question others, I can myself bring nothing to light because there is no wisdom in me.
The reason is this: Heaven constrains me to serve as a midwife, but has debarred me from giving birth. So of myself I have no sort of wisdom, nor has any discovery ever been born to me as the child of my soul. Those who frequent my company, at first appear – some of them – quite unintelligent, but, as we go further with our discussions, all who are favored by heaven make progress at a rate that seems surprising to others as well as to themselves, although it is clear that they have never learned anything from me. The many admirable truths they bring to birth have been discovered by themselves from within. But the delivery is heaven’s work and mine.
(Cited in Søren Kierkegaard’s, Practice in Christianity; translated by Hong and Hong)
Thus, Socrates’ method was never to give an answer but rather to ask his listener question after question to get them to discover the wisdom that he claimed was already inside them.
Kierkegaard deeply explored this ideal of indirect communication.
From Training in Christianity (translated by Walter Lowrie):
Indirect communication can be produced by the art of reduplicating the communication. This art consists in reducing oneself, the communicator, to nobody, something purely objective, and then incessantly composing qualitative opposites into unity…
An example of such indirect communication is, so to compose jest and earnest that the composition is a dialectical knot –and with this to be nobody. If anyone is to profit by this sort of communication, he must himself undo the knot for himself.
Another example is, to bring defence and attack in such a unity that none can say directly whether one is attacking or defending, so that both the most zealous partisans of the cause and its bitterest enemies can regard one as an ally – and with this to be nobody, an absentee, an objective something, not a personal man.
Thus Kierkegaard’s version of the Socratic method was to present to the student both sides of the question equally well; so well that the student cannot tell which side is being commended… so well that the teacher’s presence there is irrelevant: He gives no hint of what “the right answer” is; because he does not matter: What matters is the question… and how I, the student, answer it. Because it is only when I answer the question in my own words that I know what I truly believe about it.
The more important the question is – the more crucial it is going to be for my future – the more important it is that I know and trust the answer that is truly deep in my heart and mind. On the day when everything depends on how I answer that question, on that day, my teacher will not be there – should not be there – and I’d better be able to stand on my own two feet.
Do you see the paradox? To be true to my mission as a Teacher, I have to bring pure Truth to my students: Truth that is utterly uncontaminated by me. I must eventually, somehow, vanish out of the picture.
If this is true in general, it must be infinitely more true with the greatest question of all:
Matthew 16:13-17 (NASB) Now when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you yourselves say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
And this is the wonderful, encouraging, truth about the greatest question of all: We do not have to believe with Socrates that all true knowledge is “hidden” by instinct in the human soul. And we do not have to worry about whether or not we have the acumen, the “smarts”, to undo Kierkegaard’s dialectic knots. Because we have a promise spelled out throughout the Bible and especially the gospel: Seek and you will find. Ask and it will be given unto you.
God, our Heavenly Father wants to be known by His children. We take one step in His direction, and He travels the other million miles to meet us, right where we are.
God speaking to Moses at the burning bush
Exodus 3:10-12 And now come, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?”
And He said, “Assuredly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.”
When was the last time you read the Exodus story? Maybe the last time was watching again the movie the Ten Commandments or The Prince of Egypt. Great movies but… sometimes those stories that we are most familiar with, are the ones where we miss little nuggets with deep consequences.
You probably remember this conversation between Moses and God, which extends to many more verses than the ones I cited above. Moses sees a fire on a desert bush, on the side of the mountain: a fire that blazes but never consumes the bush… and he goes to investigate. And it turns out to be God, come to talk to Moses because He wants to send him back to Egypt – where he fled from – to his people, the Israelites, to set them free.
Moses doesn’t want to go. As Dwight L. Moody once said: “Moses spent 40 years in Egypt thinking he was somebody, 40 years on the back side of the desert learning he was nobody, and 40 years discovering what God can do with a nobody.” Moses, by this time 80 years old, has resigned himself to live a life of anonymity, as a simple shepherd, and never seeing his people again. He has no confidence in having any strength to contribute to this calling. And he clearly says so: “Who am I?”
And we know, from the repeated objections that are going to follow, that he thinks he needs validation right now. He thinks this is too much to ask, too high a risk, without any guarantee of success. He wants that guarantee, he wants a sign, something powerful, undeniable on which he can base his confidence… he wants to know he will succeed. And God, who sees the hearts of men, understands that. So, God says:
“Here, I will give you a sign: This is how you can be fully convinced that I will be with you through this whole thing: When you have done it all, this is how you will know that I was with you: we will meet back here again.”
Stop there and think for a second. Put yourself in Moses’ sandals and imagine hearing that promise. Here you were hoping God would do some great sign, some great miracle right in front of you, some incredible display of power that your trembling heart would see and say, ‘Wow, with that God behind me, I cannot fail!’ Maybe not just one burning bush that does not get consumed… maybe the whole mountain on fire… something huge, undeniable… that everyone else could see and know that God is with me… something to prove that I am the man!
But instead, God’s sign is this: After I, in my trembling insecurity, in my anonymity, in my powerlessness… I, the nobody, go ahead and obey Him, then He will meet me here again and I will be able to worship Him.
Interesting, isn’t it? My human flesh – my honest weakness – wants strength, wants assurance, wants validation. And God says, “I know, I know… but what I want is obedience.”
That’s not what Moses wanted to hear but it was what he needed to hear. Moses wanted strength in the present because the present is all we humans know we can control. But God’s power is timeless. His promise is of a future assured (we will meet here again), so assured, so certain, that He certifies that at that future time, when I look back at what I have gone through to get there, I will have in my past the proof that He was with me all along.
Only a God who owns Time can make such a promise.
Jeremiah, in the face of opposition
Jeremiah was called to be the prophet that witnessed the fall of the Kingdom of Judah. God chose him for this unenviable mission before he was born:
Jeremiah 1:4-9 And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I hallowed thee, I appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.
And I said, Alas, Lord Jehovah! behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child.
But Jehovah said unto me, Say not, I am a child; for thou shalt go to whomsoever I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of them; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith Jehovah. And Jehovah put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and Jehovah said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.
Jeremiah carried out his mission: to proclaim to his people that they had finally rejected God so thoroughly, so brazenly, that He was going to send them into exile and give all the blessing of their promised land to their enemies.
Now, there is a point that is easy to miss when we read the writings of these prophets of old from our own vantage point in the future, secure in our own homes: In identifying with the prophet, we can get into a “them” versus “us” frame of mind and forget that the evildoers that that prophet was prophesying against were not faceless foreigners, they were not strangers; they were his own people!
And the awful penalty they were about to reap for their offenses was not just the loss of their homes, the loss of their blessings, the destruction of their country… it was also the destruction of Jeremiah’s own beloved country.
That is what he was called to do: to prophesy the loss of everything he held dear in this world. Could I have carried out that mission? Could you?
How did he handle it?
Probably about as well as you and I would…
He was upset.
By Chapter 11, as he is concluding one of God’s accusations against the people…
Jeremiah 11:17 For Jehovah of hosts, that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee, for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done for themselves, to provoke me to anger in burning incense unto Baal.
…Jeremiah then starts speaking in his own voice. In the middle of that revelation about the faithlessness of the people, he got another revelation, that came much closer to home:
Jeremiah 11:18-19 And Jehovah hath given me knowledge, and I know [it]; then Thou shewedst me their doings. And I was like a tame lamb [that] is led to the slaughter; and I knew not that they devised devices against me, [saying,] Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.
The people did not like what God had to say, and therefore they chose to blame the messenger. Jeremiah just got the revelation that his life was in danger… from people of his own hometown. Small wonder that when God called him, He told him up front: Be not afraid of them; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith Jehovah.
And this is Jeremiah’s reaction:
Jeremiah 11:20 But thou, Jehovah of hosts, who judgest righteously, who triest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I revealed my cause.
Jeremiah is angry. We would be too, wouldn’t we?
He knows God is a righteous God. And more than that, even if his own people have forgotten, he knows full well that God is a powerful God that acts on behalf of his beloved. So. Jeremiah asks God to punish those people, to give them what they deserve, now, right in front of him.
That would teach them! Wouldn’t it? That would be a lesson to anybody else watching, not to mess with God… or His messenger. But this is God’s reply:
Jeremiah 11:21-23 Therefore thus saith Jehovah concerning the men of Anathoth, that seek thy life, saying, Prophesy not in the name of Jehovah, that thou die not by our hand, —therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Behold, I punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine; and there shall be no remnant of them; for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, in the year of their visitation.
If it is not clear from these words, all we need to do is go back to the previous chapters to realize that this is the language that God has been using all along as He warns His people of the punishment they will reap eventually (unless they repent). In other words: God’s reply to Jeremiah is: “Yes, I will punish them… in due time.”
How do you think Jeremiah took it? How would we have?
“Wait, wait, wait, God… What do you mean in due time? They are threatening me now! They are making their plans right now. They want to shut me up, now. What are you waiting for?
“Look, God… I think you are missing the point… This is not the way to do it. I know you heard me, and I thank you for that, but let me explain why this is the wrong approach…”
Jeremiah 12:1-4 Righteous art thou, Jehovah, when I plead with thee; yet will I speak with thee of [thy] judgments. Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? [wherefore] are all they at ease that deal very treacherously? Thou hast planted them, they also have taken root: they advance, yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, but far from their reins.
But thou, Jehovah, knowest me; thou hast seen me, and proved my heart toward thee. Drag them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter. How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of all the fields wither? Because of the wickedness of them that dwell therein, the beasts and the birds perish; for they say, He will not see our end.
“By delaying your judgment, God, aren’t you being complicit with them? I mean, You gave them all their blessings and all their prosperity and yet they did not deserve it! With their mouths they say they love you, but they do not obey you in any way…
“And then, what about me? My heart has been true all along, and you know it! Why then am I the lamb ready to be led to slaughter? No. That is what they deserve, and now.
“The longer you delay justice, the more their wickedness spreads, to the very land, even to the animals, and the birds, for they all will learn that they can say with impunity: ‘God cannot see us.’”
Have you ever felt like telling God how to do His job?
That is what Jeremiah just did.
And here is God’s response:
Jeremiah 12:5 If thou hast run with footmen, and they have wearied thee, how wilt thou then contend with horses? And if in a land of peace thou thinkest thyself in security, how wilt thou then do in the swelling of the Jordan?
Jeremiah wants God to comfort him, to protect him, to tell him that He is on his side. But God’s reply to Jeremiah is a rebuke:
“If you are already tired in a race against other people like you… what is going to happen when I tell you to race against horses?
“And If you are only going to feel comfortable when I call you to proclaim my message while there is still peace in the land, what is going to happen when I call you to do it in the middle of the chaos of war?”
In other words, Jeremiah: Who’s the boss?
Does that sound harsh?
Maybe… but we should never forget that it is never about God being on our side but rather us being on His side… doing whatever He has called us to do, regardless of how we feel about it; and regardless of how many enemies we think are gathering against us.
The bottom line is that it is our job to do the job;
and God does not have to justify Himself to us.
But He might. He does in this case. After rebuking Jeremiah for whining, God reveals to him who the enemies in his hometown really are:
Jeremiah 12:6 For even thy brethren, and the house of thy father, even they have dealt treacherously with thee, even they have cried aloud after thee. Believe them not, though they speak good [words] unto thee.
“You see, Jeremiah, you are whining because you want security, here and now. But, believe me, if that is what you strive for, you are going to look for it in all the familiar places. And when the chaos and the tribulation come, you are going to be tempted to find your own peace, your own way… and you won’t see the traps that the enemy has set for you.”
So, the question is: Who do you trust? Who can you trust in every situation? Who has never failed you?
That is what Jesus told His disciples:
John 16:33 (NIV) “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
How can an infinite God take Himself “out of the picture”?
That is the question I asked at the beginning of this post. How does God use the technique of Indirect Communication to get us to deeply accept the Truth?
The answer is: By being the True God, and not the god we often want him to be.
Moses wanted a god who would use his overwhelming supernatural power to give him the credentials and the courage that would enable him to carry out the mission. A false god, a god using direct communication, would be more than happy to say, “Sure, here you go: you are now super Moses!”
But if God did that, where would Moses’ obedience be? Where would that obedience have come from? Would it have come from deep in his heart? From trust in God? From faith? Or would that obedience just have been artificially propped up by the “power” that Moses’ physical senses had measured?
If it had been the latter, what would have happened when Moses saw the Egyptian magicians also able to turn staffs into snakes, also turn water into blood, also make frogs come rushing out of the Nile? What would have happened when he saw with his own eyes the immense power of Pharaoh’s army chasing his people as they were helplessly trapped before the Red Sea?
A “direct god” would offer us everything we think we want. And that is precisely the problem… because as Jeremiah says later in his book: The heart is deceitful above all things, and incurable; who can know it? We think we know what we want, what we need… but most of the time we are deceiving ourselves. And as a result we ask the wrong question and then are upset when God does not give us the answer we already decided was right.
But the True God, the One Who made us, knows what we really need: I Jehovah search the heart, I try the reins, even to give each one according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. And therefore, the True God will not be like a “direct god” to us.
As a result, His answers will often shock us, at least make us scratch our heads, maybe even seem mean to us… or even seem completely wrong to the point that we are tempted (like Jeremiah) to try to correct Him. And even then, more often than not, His answer will be the same one He gave to Jeremiah: “Who is the boss here?”
And that might be all the answer He gives me.
And that’s OK. Because that will force me to sit there and ponder that answer, until I can decide from the bottom of my heart whether or not I trust Him.