To Love You Is To Know You

God is love and all knowing. How does love know?

I read an interesting passage shedding light on this recently. Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, noted that Americans are singularly un-philosophical. But how "does the philosophical ideal think? As the deity does. And how does the deity think?. . . When the deity thinks, says Tocqueville, he does not, for instance, view the human race collectively. Rather, he sees individuals, each separately, each in the resemblances that make him like his fellows and in the differences that make him unlike his fellows. The thinking of the deity, in other words, is the utterly articulated perception of the one and the many. The deity is not ever obliged to make unlike like, or to subsume the particular to the general in order to know it, but thinks emphatically only, so that in place of concepts there would effectively be proper names. . ." Robert Hullot-Kentor, "Right Listening and a New Type of Human Being," The Cambridge Companion to Adorno, at p. 185.

To really know someone is to let the person in her individuality, her "this-ness" - what makes her who she uniquely is - be seen. This requires self-less love - wanting to let the "good" of the other be seen, "be." God loves completely, and so knows all things. In the light of his love, our individuality is illuminated. And as the daybreak of His love awakens us, so can our participation in His love awaken others to their unique selves. Doesn't this describe Jesus' healing ministry? Jesus, in love, saw the wounded man as whole, as healed (Do you want to help me? Of course I do!), and with word or touch the crippled man picked up his pallet and walked; his leprosy was cleaned; our sins are forgiven. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Screwtape sees God's providence and advises Wormwood to work against it. In Ch. XIII, he observes, "[The Enemy] really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever. Hence, while He is delighted to see them sacrificing even their innocent wills to His, He hates to see them drifting away from their own nature for any other reason. And we should always encourage them to do so."

I often feel like Pinnochio, wanting so much to be a real boy! And I see others around me wanting the same. And so I remember the great commandment: to dwell completely in God's love so His love may dwell in me and my love in them. May we that way all become real boys and girls!