The quest for knowledge (Genesis 2:16-17) has been fed by pride since the very beginning…THE Beginning. For something that is so desperately desired, knowledge, particularly in search of truth, is something that people are equally incapable of recognizing or handling. I am reminded of the famous courtroom scene with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise in the movie A Few Good Men: “You want the truth, you can’t handle the truth.” No one can. No one has ever been able to.
A significant part of the problem is that knowledge is always wrong to varying degrees. We’ve sought it because of the power we believe it gives us. It makes us…God. We hold various classes of people up for honor based on some special knowledge we perceive them to have – artistic, scientific, philosophical, business, ability to run/catch/throw and many more examples. Everyone seems to want a bite of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, so the human race has sought knowledge with (a sometimes blind) passion. We have search engines, Wikipedia, artificial intelligence, big data, ad nauseum, yet we also have states saying a high school student only needs to breathe to graduate – no grades. And buried among the bits and bytes is pride, not knowledge. Sources of information, being human, are wrong. It would be closer to say that people seek opinion that makes them comfortable more than truth that truly informs and enlightens.
We can’t handle THE truth, but we can become wiser. When the truth was revealed to Thomas Aquinas in a revelation, he famously said that all he had written was straw, including his incredible Summa Theologica. It would serve us well to seek wisdom more than to seek knowledge, though they go hand in hand. There is greater constancy in wisdom than knowledge.
Proverbs 8 reminds us that wisdom is knowledge and discretion. Learn all you can, with humility, and use discretion by using your “good brain.” We can learn every moment of every day, which inspired me to write my first book, Listen to Life: Wisdom in Life’s Stories, by paying attention, listening humbly and being open to perspectives.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) famously said “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” A humble perspective of reality would reveal that for any human being, no matter how much has been learned and achieved, it is all, on the scale of things, very little. Very, very little. We are all sophomores, i.e. wise and foolish, sophos and moros.
What is knowledge today is foolish tomorrow. Flat earth. Leeches for disease treatment. Earth the center of the universe. Pick a topic: the current “truth” will be modified, debunked, proven wrong in the future. We need knowledge, but we also need to keep in perspective whether that knowledge is truth. Only one human being has ever walked the face of the Earth and spoken the Truth. One. It isn’t you.
Years ago, I read that nothing we learn is true: some of what we read or hear are outright lies, some are facts mis-remembered by the one sharing them or by the one shared with, and some are well-intended ignorance presented as knowledge. Nothing is truly true…except…John 14:6.
Seek wisdom. Knowledge will always let you down.