BitterSweetLife

Recently I’ve been wondering if one should ever “get over” a feeling of amazement at the simplest aspects of truth. After thinking about it for awhile, I’m convinced the answer is No—but that we do need to discover progressively better ways of voicing our appreciation for reality.

Consider: It would be tempting to feel condescension toward a man who is continually amazed that air travel “works,” or that it’s really “possible” to access the internet from home. Get over it, I’d be tempted to tell him, and start enjoying the benefits of technology.

It’s not that airplanes and connectivity aren’t wonderful. Rather, it’s that a childish level of appreciation does not remain appropriate. The first time I drank coffee, I was startled and pleased by the sensation of unusual getup. Now, years later, the extra dynamism supplied by caffeine + a delicious roast is hardly less wonderful—but my modes of enjoyment are more refined. Likewise, and here’s what I’m really getting at, the depth of our appreciation for God should not remain the same.

I am a child of God, and he loves me like a son—but if, after five years, all I can muster in response to this truth is “Wow,” I am doing a disservice to both myself and my Father.

The feeling I’m trying to articulate is that we need to get beyond a mere Wow mentality in our enjoyment of Christ. This is not a disavowal of wonder, it’s an endeavor to seize on better words, to discover more nuanced feelings to offer God in response to his goodness. And these verbal expressions should point back to a life that has become spiritually aware, well-seasoned, mature. A greater depth of praise, I think, is the natural result of a fully savored spiritual journey.

When I first met my wife, she was flattered if I smiled intently in her direction. Now, four years later, I’m finding I need to phrase my compliments more carefully. And it makes sense. After four years of enlightening Lindsay-experience, my accolades have progressed accordingly. God-experience, I’m convinced, should be similar.

Why does any of this matter?

My tendency, sometimes, is to gloss over the inexpressible beauty of God’s person and actions with a childish How cool. Is God astonishing? Yes—beyond words, in fact. But paradoxically, our thanks to God often takes verbal form. And there, I think, is where we often reveal our silliness.

When I first encounter the goodness of Christ, Wow! is a perfectly fitting response. But decades later, if Wow still conveys the sum total of my spiritual experience, my theology is revealing its cracks. I should have seen more by now! I should have tasted more by now! Fundamentally, I should know God better by now! And if I have done these things, I should learn to voice them—or my original sense of wonder may atrophy. As Paul, the theologian wrote:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways (I Corinthians 13:11, The Bible).

Perhaps I’m off the mark here. But I suspect that our shallow rhetoric about God often reveals our superficial understanding of his greatness. And if our understanding is in fact deeper, we are jeopardizing it by short-selling it with our language. Our own words affect us.

God’s excellence is something that calls to be explored aggressively, wrestled with mentally, embraced trustingly, and intuitively lived out. After a few years, an uninterrupted succession of mere Wows may reveal that the depth of our relationship with Christ is suspect.

I can almost see God showing up and questioning me some day…

“ARIEL.”
“Yes?”
“SO—AM I COOL?”
“Well…yes, God.”
“WOULD YOU LIKE TO ELABORATE?”

There would be no question of my wanting to. The question would be: Would I have the words? And would I have the thoughts to underpin them? Maybe so…if my knowledge of God today transcends the level of juvenile Wow.