Epistemology is a philosophical term that refers to the nature of knowledge. It asks questions like: How can we actually know anything at all and what exactly is knowledge? And given any definition, we may ascribe to knowledge what exactly are its parameters or limits? These questions have been asked by curious minds in our world for thousands of years. And indeed, the jury is still out!
When we cross this notion of knowledge over into the personal or psychological realm, it takes on even a more nuanced curiosity. For example, how can or do we know someone else – another person? What are the limits there? And how much do personal expectations on the knower’s part play into how we know the other person? How much of a part do the aspects of familiarity grounded in personal patterns of personality and habits play into our endeavor to really know each other? These questions I believe have a very real impact on us personally, communally, religiously and otherwise.
Today’s scriptures seem to be drawing up some of these important questions about knowledge of each other and how it can play out in relationships. The reading from the book of Wisdom (WIS 2: 1a, 12-22) basically describes the reactions of the wicked to the “just one”:
“Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings…He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the LORD.
To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us,
Because his life is not like that of others, and different are his ways.”
Clearly, these “wicked” are accosted by this different person, whose very presence challenges them to the core. In fact, they want to ‘set him up’…
“Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him. For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience.”
In the Wisdom scriptures, there is malice going on. The wicked ones feel attacked and are feeding off of this knowledge based on comfortable familiarity, and they are holding onto it because it (the ‘knowledge’) safeguards their own self-image and justifies their reactions to the scathing challenge that the just one is presenting to them. So, what is the deterioration of this program of self-justification? Yes, it is a “set-up” for the just one to see if the narrow-minded expectations and insulated knowledge that the wicked ones have about this just one can be proven. Of course they can! This is because they are operating within a closed system that can only mass produce self-referring images!
I believe we do this to each other many times. The comfort level that we are afforded by the familiarity of the knowledge and way of understanding our lives and our world can turn on us, and the result can be malice. We cross the line of balance between the knowledge that we need to function in this world and the openness to be challenged by someone or something that could affect a change in our world – something that could bring us newness, i.e., that can transform how we can authentically relate to our world and each other.
In John’s Gospel (Jn 7:1-2, 10, 25-30) we have almost a mirror image of the Wisdom scripture, when during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, the people of Jerusalem, in seeing Jesus in public, say:
“ Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?
But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from. ”
Again, here is the self-reliance on personalized knowledge about someone, namely Jesus, who is perplexing and threatening not only because he is proclaiming something that is different, but because of the fact that they “know where he is from.” Jesus’ presence is flying in the face of all the familiar modes of religion and actually all of Jewish life and the effrontery is even more excruciating because the crowds know where he is from. How could this be the Christ? He must be arrested!
Isn’t that one of the consonant threads of any introductory conversation that you may have with someone you meet, or even in discussing someone with another person (oops, is that gossip?) – “Where are you from?” “Where is he/she from?” The answer that we receive seems to give a subconscious comfort level that arrests our idea of this person by placing him/her into an already formed category or framework within which we can “understand” this person. Although this could be totally benign, it runs the risk of cutting off or killing any newness or difference that we could experience within this relationship right from the start. And if we feel threatened, the labeling process is often immediate and can result in inappropriate and even violent reactions.
Jesus confronts their “knowledge” of Him:
“You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”
Can I allow myself to be challenged – to catch myself when I react to something new and foreign and let it sit with me long enough to really listen? Will I let myself experience the possibility of seeing through the blindness of comfortable patterns of seeing and, without trying to arrest it, receive that something is being given to me in this situation -in this person – and realize that this is not a loss of integrity but a great opportunity for growing in Truth – relationship with my brothers and sisters, with my God, with my world, with myself, with CHRIST!? I do believe that I want this “knowledge!”
Peace,
Thomas
(Originally published March 11, 2016)