Not My Own

“My teaching is not my own, it comes from the One who sent me. If anyone wants to do his will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or I speak on my own. A person who speaks on his own is trying to win praise for himself; but a person who tries to win praise for the one who sent him is honest, there is nothing false about him.”

“…we know where this man comes from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he comes from.”

“Where is this man about to go, that we won’t find him?...”

“…And when he says, ‘You will look for me and not find me; indeed, where I am, you cannot come’ — what does he mean?”

What’s the point of praising God? Is it because God is vain, and likes to be flattered? Many people seem to think that.

—"Butter God up and we’ll get lots of goodies!”— Do we really want to go there?

There is a built-in litmus test in this text: “If anyone wants to do (God’s) will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or I speak on my own.”

Why on earth would that make a difference? How could the desire to do God’s will rather than our own give us such a penetrating power of discernment? So I tried to figure it out, but I just kept coming back to my instinctive sense that self-involvement is a huge no-no.

Then Old Man Zen stuck his head through the window and said, “Leaving now; coming with?” and disappeared.

I dilly-dallied around, typing the next few sentences and (of course) when I went outside Old Man Zen was nowhere in sight.   Here they are, anyway, for what they’re worth….

What are we praising when we praise God? If we try to win praise for God, what are we trying to accomplish?

All I could come up with was this:  When we really look at God, we can’t help it —we burst out in praise. To be able to see God, we have to look away from ourselves. But then, the next thing that happens is that we want other people to have a chance to see what we see, so we start jumping up and down, saying, “Look! Look!”  We want to share it. Why do you think that is?

I’ll just go look for the Old Man now, maybe he knows the answer to that question…….