Knowing by Unknowing: The Grace of Holy Subtraction
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
One of our 2HC cohort members, when applying to 2HC, admitted, “I have a lot of ‘I don’t know’s.’” In our 2nd half of life, many certainties unravel, and we are invited by God into a more deeply relational place and a simpler faith. The following blog is by Alan Fadling and republished by permission. Alan is a founding partner with his wife Gem of “Unhurried Living” and is a writer, frequent speaker, consultant and coach. See the end of this blog for ways to connect with Alan.
by Alan Fadling
I love books. I don’t imagine that surprises you. I’m writing this little article in my home office, where most of the wall space is taken up with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. I’ve enjoyed reading for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I used to hang out for hours at our local library in Carmichael, California. My parents put books in my stocking in hopes that I’d read instead of pestering them too early on Christmas morning.
As a young pastor in the fall of 1994, I remember one of many bookstore visits. It was a Barnes & Noble in Pasadena, California, and I was browsing the faith section. There I saw a book by an author I’d heard of but never read. That author was Thomas Merton and the title was New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions Books, 1961). I’ve enjoyed reading portions of it many times since.
I’d been on a fresh spiritual formation journey for a few years by then, and Merton’s book felt like a divine appointment. For a long time, my way of engaging a meaningful book that meets me at just the right time has been to capture quotations from it and reflect on them in my journal. I’m drawing today’s article from a journal passage from that first reading of New Seeds over thirty years ago.
In his first chapter Merton posed a question I had found myself asking at the time: “What is contemplation?” There weren’t many among my fellow college pastors who were using that sort of language when talking about their spiritual lives, but I was finding it increasingly inviting in my own life with God. (I had been labeled a mystic in my previous college pastor role, and it wasn’t meant as an affirmation.)
One of Merton’s insights that spoke to me then was that “in contemplation...we know by ‘unknowing.’” Up until then, my experience of growing in Christian knowledge had mostly involved learning more and more about God and God’s ways and God’s counsel. But I was coming to a place in which God was inviting me to unlearn a few things. I would grow by subtraction rather than addition.
I had some less than helpful assumptions about who God was and what God expected. I had some expectations about the nature of my ministry that weren’t serving me well. And I had some perspectives about myself that were doing more harm than good.
These ideas and perspectives that I needed to unlearn about God and myself weren’t nurturing my soul. I held expectations about my ministry that were subtly wearing me down rather than enabling me to live and serve sustainably. And the views I held about myself, though familiar, weren’t reflecting the truth of who I am in God’s eyes. These were the things God was inviting me to unlearn.
I had been reading other spiritual writers at the time who were speaking to the same places in my soul. It wasn’t so much that I needed to unlearn one set of ideas and replace them with another more accurate set of ideas. It was that I needed to unlearn my habit of settling for knowing about God rather than knowing God relationally in love.
God wasn’t inviting me to be an expert in God ideas. He was inviting me to grow deeper in communion.
“God wasn’t inviting me to be an expert in God ideas. He was inviting me to grow deeper in communion.”
God invites us into the knowledge of experiencing him rather than just knowing and reading about him. It is a knowing that encompasses not only my God-given mind but also my God-given heart, soul, and strength.
My experience of God through Jesus Christ that was growing in me at that time seemed to be increasingly hard to describe. There was an element of mystery in my experience of Christ in me. Knowing Christ more deeply was about more than just fine-tuning my doctrines, my devotions, or my theology. These had been important and valuable to me up until then. I was being invited into an encounter with God in Christ, experiencing his presence in me by his Holy Spirit. I was being drawn to gaze on him as David describes in Psalm 27:4:
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
Seeking. Dwelling. Gazing. These are a little different from talking about, thinking about, believing about. And it is this contemplative vision that has refined my knowledge of God, grown wisdom in me, and deepened my confidence in God. It has been the engine of necessary and holy unlearning for me.
For Reflection:
What might God be inviting you to unlearn about him, yourself, or your life today?
How might your spiritual life deepen if you focused less on knowing about God and more on encountering and experiencing God?
What does it look like for you to seek, dwell, and gaze on the beauty of the Lord in this season of your life?
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