Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:4–5)
When you look at a tree, what do you see? That might seem like an absurd question. Don’t we all see a tree? Bark, leaves, branches, height, breadth, shade, fruit, beauty, potential for use. But is that all? And once we’ve seen those aspects, have we seen the tree? I mean, really seen it?
When we study the world, we come to that which has been created by God. If we’re content to stop at observable facts, have we really learned to study? Have we really learned to see? Don’t stop with trees. Turn your gaze upon the world. Note the wonders you observe — a bird on the wing, the drifting descent of a snowflake, the coordinated movements of ants. What do these mean? Do we really understand?
Psalm 25:4–5 tells us that we are not so all-discerning as we may think. No, we depend on the Lord, not only for the regular, daily bread-like aspects of life, but also for the ability to discern truth and grow in understanding. The Lord has used Psalm 25 to challenge me to pursue studies with humility, acknowledging that unless he works to shed abroad his light and guide my mind, I study in vain.
Wanderers in a Far Country
When Adam and Eve ate what God had forbidden, they plunged the world into darkness. Though their eyes were opened, they became like those described by the prophet Isaiah who see and hear but neither perceive nor understand (Isaiah 6:9). Created by God for intimate fellowship, they were instead cast away from his presence, their foolish hearts darkened, their thinking futile (Romans 1:21). Reflecting on this theme, which serves as the background to Psalm 25:5, Augustine confesses, “Turned out of paradise by you and wandering to a far-off country, I cannot return by my own strength unless you come to meet me in my wandering” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, 7:194).
We can be tempted to forget the darkened nature of our minds when it comes to the pursuit of knowledge. Catechized by the post-Enlightenment deification of reason, we tend to think of learning and studying as independent of our spiritual state. We recognize that spiritual matters are spiritually discerned, and so, when we open God’s word, we (hopefully) ask him to open our eyes that we might behold his wonders (Psalm 119:18). But other learning we relegate to the realm of pure reason. Sure, the walls of paradise are unscalable and well-guarded, but can we not construct towers east of Eden?
I want to propose that the darkness in which we wander is more pervasive than we typically believe.
‘Make Me to Know Your Ways’
The small planet we live on — tilted at just the right angle, spinning at just the right speed, set at just the right distance from the sun — is, like the vast cosmos of which it is a part, created by God. This home God designed for us with a singular purpose: that we might glorify him by dwelling in happy fellowship with him. All his works in all his ways are, to borrow C.S. Lewis’s metaphor, beams of light intended to draw our gaze toward him (see James 1:17).
When we look at the sky, when we see the sun, the moon, the stars, we are supposed to be drawn to worship God. Perhaps that is easy for us to understand. But what about when we gaze at the complexity of a single cell? Or the wonder of the water cycle? Or the rapidity of a woodpecker’s perfectly timed drumming? Or the majesty of a mature oak tree? Or the power of magnetic polarity?
Just as much as sun and moon, all the infinitesimal details of the created world are designed to lead us to worship our Creator. “From him and through him and to him,” writes the apostle, “are all things” (Romans 11:36). Reflecting on these words, Jonathan Edwards writes,
All the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation, is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory. . . . [He] is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 8:550–51)
Because creation comes from and is sustained by God, we miss the fundamental truth of whatever we study when we fail to see how it should lead us to worship him. The darkness in which we walk shrouds us from more than just our spiritual salvation; it blinds us to the nature of the very ground on which we walk, the very air we breathe.
Man Ascendent vs. Man Dependent
All God-honoring study — whether of the word of God or the world he created — must be undertaken in dependence. Unless the Lord directs the mind, the student studies in vain.
Contemporary thought does not model this dependence well. The spirit of the modern world denied any such need. Given the right tools, the right set of data, anyone could arrive at a right understanding by using independent reason. Man ascendent. Will anything he proposes to do be impossible for him?
The contemporary spirit of postmodernism is perhaps more chastened but hardly less idolatrous. Perhaps scientific reasoning is more flawed, truth less attainable. But the world given coherency or meaning from without? Hardly. No, we follow in the footsteps of our forebears, making ourselves the measure of all things, desiring to take knowledge as our right and in our way instead of seeking it from him who “by wisdom founded the earth” and who “established the heavens” by understanding, “by [whose] knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew” (Proverbs 3:19–20). We are, like Cain, wanderers upon the earth.
So, we must ask for help. We acknowledge that we are man dependent. True, we’ve been given stewardship over the earth as God’s vice-regents. But stewards and vice-regents are those under authority who receive their commission and their tasks from another. We work hard to apply our God-given faculties as we seek to learn about the world over which God has given us dominion. We make discoveries and constantly seek to apply what we learn in fresh ways. We do so as creatures in creation, recognizing that we, and it, are from and through and to God.
God is gracious to give us help. He does so in the person of the Holy Spirit, who brings us out of darkness into his marvelous light. The Spirit gives us new life in Christ and opens our eyes that we may gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. In his light, we begin to see everything in new hues. Facts we learn along the way about history, science, or math are no longer simply new information about a world we happen to live in. For those whose eyes have been opened by the Spirit of truth, facts are little windows into the creativity and providence of God. Learning about how people function in society or reading works of literature become opportunities to grow in appreciation for the seemingly endless complexity of those made in the image of God.
Once made citizens of God’s kingdom, we recognize ourselves no longer as wanderers in the wilderness but inhabitants of his well-ordered and good creation.
What Is a Tree?
All this struck me afresh several years ago when a friend and I were discussing a tree. We recognized that we could learn a lot about that tree by studying it. Its leaves and bark, the seeds and sap it produced, its height and breadth would, given enough careful study, yield fountains of knowledge about how it grew and reproduced, how old it was, to what family it belonged, whether it was healthy or diseased, the strength of its roots, and more. But without the work of the Spirit in our hearts to open our eyes, it would only ever be a mere tree. Interesting, pretty, useful. And that is all.
What would we miss? Well, we would not see that it was designed by the Creator to reveal something about him and his works. We wouldn’t see that its natural strength points to God’s strong arms. We wouldn’t see that the wind-rustled leaves reveal the way the Spirit moves. We wouldn’t see that the life-giving death of every seed proclaims the salvific work of the Son. We wouldn’t see that the shelter of its broad branches bids us to take refuge in the one who made all things. In short, while we might know much about the tree, we would fail to understand.
We depend on God to open our eyes. “Make me to know your ways” (Psalm 25:4). Without his help, we might fumble along in the dark. We might increase in information and be able to discern great mysteries in the world. We might gain scholarships, win prizes, and receive the accolades of the learned. To many, such fumbling along appears as great wisdom. But wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. And without the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, all study is empty vanity.
