Knowing God.

None of us is born with innate knowledge. In the beginning, we only can know. This capacity develops in our encounter with this world through the senses, through sensory expertise from which the mind selects and forms analytical knowledge in terms of judgments. This is also true of the knowledge of God through encounters and in the meeting with this world to which we belong. This does not mean that we know God as we know all the other things of the world. As the immediate object of knowledge. God is neither an object nor a part of this world. We know God against the background of all that exists. In every single act of learning, we are not only capturing a random concrete thing, but we are also capturing the absolute existence of God. Man does not stop in cognition, at any particular thing, but knows it as limited, not fulfilling all our capacity for understanding. We are open to the infinite, to the absolute. God is not the object of our knowledge. He is more. He is not immediately accessible to us. He is a mystery to us. He is near to us and yet far away. The man knows not only the particular objects which science reveals to us, but he also knows the limitlessness of his knowledge, which cannot stop, but aims ever onward and is directed towards the infinite Absolute. Why does a man keep asking, and why does he keep seeking. He who has once asked a question about transcendence cannot leave it unanswered. Everything of the visible world that we grasp in mind is understood by reason and expressed in words. The word then sounds the thing known to us and becomes a means of understanding. We have said that we do not know God immediately like a tree or the stars, yet we conceive God and express it in words, so everyone knows what we are talking about. Even the atheist uses the word God and cannot avoid it. We find the very mention of God in all peoples. We use God to denote the infinite mystery of the world, the secret consciously before which we stand as before the scent mystery of our own life. If the word God, by which we express the ultimate unity of the world, ceased to exist, man would cease to be a man. He would go back and become a wise animal. Man is man precisely because he has not remained standing on one step, neither by the fire nor by the wedge, but has developed, thought, pondered, and questioned the meaning of it all as a whole. Who knows, but perhaps it is conceivable that humanity would die a collective spiritual death. And we are transformed into some unheard of the wise animal. After all, man exists as man only by questioning the meaning of everything. Does modern man ask himself these questions? It’s terrible, but many people don’t. For them, it is essential to have the material necessities of life provided for. If they have these necessities, they are satisfied. If not, they are dissatisfied, and revolutions follow. Chesterton wrote. Trees believe in nothing. Camels have no articles of faith. Ants have no problems with the meaning of life. Don’t these words apply to modern man? Or am I wrong? Answer…