A couple of weeks ago I taught a class at church on relationships. It centered on the scripture from Matthew 7:7 – 11, “Ask, Seek, and Knock.” Those who are raised in church, or even attend church regularly, will hopefully see this passage as familiar. We instinctively go to the thought of something like, “if I ask God for it, He will give it. If I am TRULY sincere in my request, and CONTINUALLY ask, He will provide it.” However, recently I heard a different take on this passage. That’s what the class about.
My problem with saying this passage is JUST about “ask God for it, and he will give it” is that it makes God out to be some type of spiritual vending machine. I guess another way of putting it, is it makes Him out to be nothing more than a “facilitator for our narcissistic desires” (I wish I could take the credit for that phrase, but alas, I can’t! Thanks Rob Bell for that description....). Because the truth is, what happens to us when God DOESN’T answer our prayers the way we want Him to? At the most, we try to convince ourselves that He knows what is best (because He does), and we try move on with our lives. At the worst, we say that there is no God, because He didn’t answer our prayers….
I think that there is something else we can get out of this passage. I think in some ways, Jesus is saying this is how we should be with each other. We should “ask” for help. We should “seek” each others’ friendships. We should “knock” for opportunities to be with each other. Look, this isn’t blasphemy or “misinterpreting the bible”, so don’t even go there. I really think that there is something to comparing this passage to how we are to interact with each other. Let me clarify:
I think one has to look at chapter 6 and 7 almost in the same breath. Take a look at Chapter 6 out of Matthew. It’s about entrusting our lives to God. Specifically, vs. 25 – do not worry about your life…. By the end of chapter 6, Jesus is trying to show how much of a waste it is to worry. Just look at how many calories you burn worrying about trivial things that you have no control over in the first place! It is such a waste of energy! When you put all of your life (what you eat, what you will wear, how long you will live, etc.) before God, you become a non-anxious presence with yourself. You have entrusted yourself to God.
Now, take a look at chapter 7. It’s about our relationship with others. “Don’t judge, lest you be judged.” When we are NOT a calm presence in peoples’ lives we are trying to control them. In this way, we see people for their value in what they can do for us. We shouldn’t control people. We shouldn’t judge. We shouldn’t condemn. We shouldn’t look at the spec in the other person’s eye. These are how we control others through negative means. In the same way, we shouldn’t manipulate others. Throwing something valuable (pearl) to someone who can not appreciate it, is only one way we control people (give gifts to those to change their habits). This is done through “positive means”. Pushing gifts on people CAN be a form of controlling others. We get what we want by controlling people through negative things (judging and condemning) and positive things (gifts and sacred things).
So, if I am reading these passages together, and God is trying to teach me how to have a relationship with Him (chapter 6), and He is also teaching me how to have a relationship with others (chapter 7), it seems it would be obvious that the next train of thought would be how to do these things. If I turn EVERYTHING over to God, how do I interact with Him? If I no longer want to control or manipulate people, what would be a healthy way to interact with them? Could it be to ask? Seek? Knock?
Let’s look at the “relationship with others” part. When we ask, we are honoring the free will of the other person. We respect them. We are not coercing them (throwing pearls). It’s not manipulation, because they can always say NO. Having the right to say “no” is key.
Here is an example. You are at home. It’s the middle of the night. Your spouse starts having chest pains. They are so bad; you know you should take them to the emergency room. But what do you do with your kids? Do you call someone? Do you take them with you? And if you do call, who do you call and what do you say? Those you are most close to will be the first you think of. You HOPE you won’t “bother them” by waking them at 4 in the morning. You also “trust them” with your children as you go to take care of your spouse. And if you are like me, you almost inadvertently say something like, “sorry to bother you so late, but….”
Now, let’s say you don’t call. Let’s say you decide to NOT “bother them”. You take the kids to the emergency room, and they sit (sleep) in the waiting room. Turns out, after the tests, your spouse is ok. You and your family go home and start your day. You get to the office, go for a cup of coffee, meet your buddy and begin telling your story from the previous night. What do you think the first thing out of his mouth is going be? “Dude, you could have called me.” And don’t we think that? “If he had gone to the emergency room with his wife, he could have called me. Why did he think he couldn’t call me? We are bros!” And if we are honest with ourselves, there would be a part of us that is actually hurt when we find out they didn’t ask us, even if it is at 4 in the morning.
Our problem is independence. Our culture in America today dictates that if we are not on a path that leads to independence as soon as possible, then there is something wrong with us. We can pick it out of conversation that we have with each other:
“Sorry to bother you. Sorry for calling so late. I hate to ask this of you….”
If we take these phrases apart, could we not respond to a close friend like, “So, I guess what I am hearing is, our friendship is such that you actually feel sorrow in the core of your body when you ask me to do something? That is the existent of our relationship? Asking me for help hurts you that badly?” Is this what friendship is really about? Asking someone for help strengthens a relationship. Doing it without the tag lines (“I’m sorry to….) makes it even stronger. And one more thing: we shouldn’t feel obligated to pay them back when they actually do help us! We should feel comfortable asking for help, and they should feel like they are not owed anything. Think about it: when you help a friend in need, do you continually bring it back up, subconsciously expecting some type of payment? So why feel obligated to pay them back? I’m not saying you don’t do good things for your friend. I am just saying we shouldn’t feel obligated to do something good, because they did something good for us. That sounds like a blog for another day....
Jesus definitely gets a little confusing about what relationship He is referring to in this passage. If you look at the rest of the verses, Jesus tells a parable in verses 9 and 10 about fathers and their children. He then is rather clear in vs. 11 about our relationship with God. But then he ends the passage in vs. 12 about dealing with others. All I am saying is, I don’t believe the “ask, seek, and knock”, is JUST about dealing with God. It’s also about dealing with each other as well.
This isn’t the only passage where the lines between our relationships with each other are also blurred with our relationship with God. Just look at Matthew 6: 14 and 15, Matthew 22:37 – 40, or James 3:10. These are just a few of the passage that show how we interact with each other reflects our relationship with God. It is IMPOSSIBLE to praise God and slander someone else. It can’t be done. I mean, we might physical sing praises to God, and then cuss the guy who cut us off as we were going to Sunday lunch. But in our hearts, these actions cannot be done. When we worship God, we gain a respect for other people. How we deal with others helps us to deal with God. The way we interact with each other is deeply reflective of how we interact with God. And, how we understand God is transformed into our relationships with others.
So, we need to learn how to ask. It will make the relationship stronger.
