Elijah
House
Austria
Elijah
House
Austria
Advent is coming up soon and I would like to say more about a topic we talked about at our last Friends Meeting in August. It was about the trend of wanting to understand all things and all people. The title here is different, but it has something to do with it: “Understanding unleashed!” Do we need to consider that our desire to understand everything becomes an unleashed/unbridled force?
I would like to emphasize at the outset that I am not trying to be naively simple-minded or to despise understanding. Rather, it is a loving call to appreciate God’s wonderful gift of understanding as well as its siblings, knowledge and wisdom, instead of being dominated by an idol of “having to understand everything”.
“Understanding” is difficult to define due to its diverse contexts and the difference to knowledge. Let me try: understanding is the desire to grasp the reason for things, to ask why something was created or done. It means examining the motivation behind actions or interpreting the behavior and spirituality (or lack thereof) in people’s lives.
…has something possibly gone wrong?
Over the last century, efforts to understand human behavior have increased enormously. Based on ancient philosophy, psychology emerged in the middle of the 19th century, which then developed further through various schools of psychotherapy. These disciplines have done a lot of good and have given us, among other things, many terms to describe problems in life or personality disorders. But can this development go too far? Who can fathom the thoughts of our heart?
Jeremiah 17:9 says that no one can understand the heart of another. That “God knows the heart and judges the thoughts of men”. In Hebrews 4:12-13 or Luke 12:2 we read that God reveals everything and calls everything to account. So how much can we understand about another person? And is there something problematic about this “innocent” desire to understand?
Where this pursuit serves our personal protection, it becomes our refuge. If our desire to understand others becomes the basis for whether we trust, love, appreciate or respect them, then something may have gone wrong. We are even beginning to do this with God: If I don’t understand Him, I can’t trust Him! There are other fruits that result from this pursuit (which I cannot go into here).
As psychology has become more and more popular, we have unconsciously adopted this popular psychology and use it in our need to understand others. We are quick to give names to the behavior of others. With empathy we understand (claim to understand) why others do what they do, and my experiences with them could possibly be explained by this. In doing so, we turn others into victims of their past.
Otherwise, we have an opinion about the motives of others, which one attaches with understandable reason. These “neighbors” may even become a kind of “monster” in our hearts and we increasingly avoid meeting them.
Both the understanding and the disregard amount to one thing: we judge/assert! We judge by “understanding” the heart of the other person, which we cannot understand in depth. Could it be that we struggle with hasty judgments because our hunger for understanding demands satisfaction? Unconsciously, we look for security, explanations and protection.
…This experience helps to accept the world around you,…
We are confronted with this issue every day in our work. Children have a desire to understand things. They love to ask “why” and need age-appropriate answers. They also have to learn that there are things that are difficult and cannot be understood. Help, how will the children survive this? We might ask ourselves that. These are special occasions that prepare the child’s heart for life. Show them how you as a parent or guardian deal with the confusing things that happen to you or around you without explaining everything and yet keeping the peace. The big question of pain is asked and an answer is given. This experience helps them to accept the world around them without analyzing it or losing hope.
What happens when this loving caregiver is not there? Then the child looks for ways to survive. It develops strategies in its heart to feel safe, to know how to behave and to prepare itself for its environment. If the child is not able to do this, great things happen in his heart – an implosion of resignation or an explosion of aggression.
…It causes a lot of turmoil in relationships,…
You may recognize some of the concepts we cover in our teachings here. The unconscious interpretation of the motives of others leads to “bitter” roots. When we hear about all sorts of popular psychology or spiritual principles of cause and effect, such as “sowing and reaping”, we are given a large repertoire of arguments to “understand” others. I believe that this desire has taken on a problematic dimension. It causes a lot of turmoil in relationships, there is little room for gradual revelation of hearts through growing relationships and conflict resolution. It is as if a part of us is reaching for the (claimed) truth without waiting for it to be given to us. We see our interpretation as our protection. We fail to give the Holy Spirit space to hold and comfort us in times of confusion and uncertainty. We miss His correction or His warnings. We try in vain to find peace in our understanding.
Paul admonishes us:
Be anxious for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus! Phil. 4,6-7
…The goal is not understanding, but encounter…
Understanding is a gift. In Proverbs we are encouraged to gain understanding, but always in connection with the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. If we allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit in our temptation to understand everything, we have the best companion at our side. He tames this tendency to think and understand – if we allow him to. We need to actively withdraw from this unleashed force and embrace our vulnerable insecurity and ambiguity in many areas, and receive the comfort of Christ. The aim is not to understand, but to meet.
There is a lot to say on this subject. We need to be freed from our own “reason” in order to find this peace. Much of this is covered in the schools and training courses that we offer at Elijah House. But first, I pray that with the coming Advent season, you may increasingly experience peace through the presence of God, the peace that a child experiences in the loving arms of its parents.
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Advent is coming up soon and I would like to say more about a topic we talked about at our...
