Get your own Free Home PageTo Know God
by: Richard S. Clifton
Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 2, No. 17 (August 28, 1999)
My friend tells me, "I do not need your theology. I have found God while standing under the lonely vault of starry black night." Again he says, "Keep your religion. All I need to know of God is what I find as He lays a thin blanket of warm Spring air over a late Winter afternoon."
I agree with my friend to a point. God can be and is found in nature. I have had the experience and I know that many others have as well. To stop at this point, however, would be as C. S. Lewis once observed: we think we know the ocean because we have stood on the beach.
Certainly, we can know God through His works as we can get some idea of the ocean by walking the beach. But to know the ocean completely, we need a nautical map. It would be foolhardy to plunge in and expect to navigate without one. That is what theology and religion provide for us: a map to navigate through this ocean of life.
Like the sea itself, life gives us many choices in direction. On the ocean you can sail to any one of 360 points on the compass. You can also drift aimlessly, letting tides and currents take you where they will. But to navigate a true course, to have purpose in your voyage, you need a map and the knowledge of how to set your course for your final destination.
The knowledgeable person, the informed person has the opportunity not only to learn the tools of navigation towards final glory with God, but has a better opportunity to know God Himself as He has revealed himself through Holy Scripture, the prophets and saints and the teachings of the Church.
If we are to become true sons and daughters of God, we need to know the way. He has given evidence of Himself in His creation, but that evidence is primarily of His existence. To know Him, to become like His Son, we need to follow the many maps and directions He has given us.
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