Ignorance is not bliss.

Whilst training as a surgical resident in Birmingham, England, one of my peers, who was doing his orthopaedic rotation at the time, was told by his boss, “A man who knows what he doesn’t know, is a man of power.”

My friend, Nick, really didn’t know what to make of this statement at the time, and repeated it to me as a sort of ‘cool saying’ that really ought to mean something deep and profound - but he hadn’t worked it out yet.

It is rather similar to what I was taught when I started training in Aikido, and my sensei told me that there were four stages in learning the art.  First, you don’t know that you don’t know; then you know that you don’t know; then you don’t know that you know; and finally, you know that you know.

If you can follow that, you are doing well.  I’m not quite sure how far I got in the five years I practised the art.

I did realize, however, that ignorance - not knowing - is not a state of bliss.  Far from it; it is a state of profound frustration, for the most part - but occasionally it can be a place where you know to leave well alone.  For me, (for example), mathematics and astrophysics.

There are some things that I know I could learn - if I applied myself to them with some determination; and others, perhaps due to my numerical dyslexia, are best left undisturbed.

Scripture and theology are in the first category; we need to wrestle with our lack of understanding here, as best we can.  We owe it to ourselves and those who ask questions of us, to have at least tried to wrestle with the more difficult texts - those that make no sense to us, or offend us, or appear contradictory.

We owe it to ourselves, too, not to be naïve, complacent, gullible, or fundamentalist when exploring the basic tenets of our faith.  We are too ready, often, to accept what appears in print at face value, or as ‘truth’, without having tested it by any sort of in-depth study.  It is all right, however, to accept as true the words of someone you trust to have done the research for you - and I promise you, as your vicar, to have done the research on any statements I make in my sermons; and if I haven’t, I will tell you that too.

So knowledge is really not hard to come by - most of the time - but wisdom is a whole different matter entirely.  And that is why ‘a man who knows what he doesn’t know is a man of power.’  That’s wisdom.

Philip+

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