God is the territory
“The map is not the territory.” -Alfred Korzbyski
IF YOU looked up my house on Google Maps, you’d find out where it’s located. But, it wouldn’t tell you anything about what it’s like to actually live in my house. It wouldn’t tell you that there’s cherry blossoms in the spring; that I’m usually head-locking my brother because he Dutch-ovened or spin-farted me; that I’m neurotic about the ice on the front stairs because my 85-year-old grandmother once slipped and broke her leg on it. That’s because the map isn’t reality— it’s just a man-made abstraction and interpretation of it.
I think it’s crazy that people expect something as mysterious and huge as God or spirituality to be any different. We spend so much time arguing about words and symbols and images, as if they actually accurately represent and capture God. They don’t.
I believe God wants us to actually experience Him through life and reality, that He would rather us get to know the world He created, instead of trying to simplify everything into a box of rules or a string of words. Texts, like maps, are helpful guidelines, but they will never convey the full complexity and richness of the actual territory.
When you leave the safety of our preconceived notions and neat little opinions, though, like a settler in a foreign land, you will run into all sorts of strange, uncomfortable, confusing, wonderful and different things. You will also deal with a lot of challenges and difficulties. Unfortunately, most people take that as God punishing them for exploring, making mistakes, asking questions, and experimenting. I don’t think that’s true. In fact, I think He welcomes and encourages it as a necessary part of developing a healthy curiosity about Him.