I had a scary thought the other day. A question that rattled around in my mind. One that was, at first, only passing but then settled.
Is knowledge evil?
That’s a dangerous question. Especially for us living right here and now in the “Age of Information.” We are currently living in a time where knowledge couldn’t be more accessible. I’ll prove it:
If you don’t know how to start a camp fire, what do you do?
...Google it.
If you’ve always wanted to read a Hemingway novel but never had the time?
...find the summary on Wikipedia.
If you want to know the quickest route from here to New York City?
...ask a friend on Facebook.
Knowledge is easy to come by these days.
And not only is it easy, but we have more of it now then we’ve ever had before. We now know, after thousands of years of being alive, that the earth is not flat but round, that matter is made up of microscopic atoms, and (recently) that pluto is not a planet but an orbiting rock. It’s amazing. We can never know less tomorrow than we know today. We are always learning, always growing, always collecting new information.
On the other hand, you may have also noticed that our morality as a human race is swiftly declining. We are becoming more selfish, more murderous, more violent, more deceptive than ever before.
I had a recent conversation with a co-worker who shared memories from her childhood (it was a while ago), traipsing around the neighborhood unattended and alone. At seven years old, she would walk a mile to the local pool and be home before dark. Today’s parent wouldn’t dream of letting their seven year old do the same. Clearly, the times have changed.
So how is knowledge to blame? Why would you connect the moral decline of civilization to the rise of information and knowledge?
Think back to the beginning. It was the Tree of KNOWLEDGE that caused the downfall of mankind. The Fall came as a result of Adam and Eve’s pursuit, not of evil, but of knowledge.
So is knowledge sinful? Is it inherently evil? Did God create us to be dumb, blind, and mindless?
Absolutely not!
Knowledge is too beautiful a gift to not have come from God. We are designed to love God fully. Not just with our hearts, and our souls, and our strength, but with our minds as well (Luke 10:27). Knowledge is a part of his design!
I believe that it was always in God’s plan to let us in on what He knows. He created us for conversation. He created us with a desire to know. Even Aristotle writes, “All men by nature desire knowledge.”
But where Adam & Eve messed up is not that they desired knowledge, but that they went to the wrong place to get it. Adam & Eve stole knowledge, instead of gleaning it naturally and in due time from the Creator himself.
Think about it like this... Every one of us should have had “the talk” with our parents at some point in our lives. You know the one I’m talking about... The one about the birds and the bees? Yea... that one.
And before this talk, we were totally naive to this part of life--just as it should be.
Not that sex is bad. Sex is anything but bad. Sex is good, brilliant, beautiful! But we have to reach a certain point of maturity first before receiving this information. And we should have received it, if we were lucky enough, from a reliable source.
Unfortunately, most of us can probably say that the “birds and the bees” chat came too late or not at all. You may have learned about sex from a TV show, a song you heard on the radio, or the gross (and usually wildly inaccurate) accounts from our friends on the school bus.
So what happens when the source is not trustworthy? When the information, along with its distributor, is corrupt, broken, imperfect, and twisted? The result is a corrupt, broken, and twisted set of ideas in our minds.
That’s why God has to be the source.
Information is not bad in itself. Neither is the pursuit of information. But that pursuit should lead us to Christ. And when it does, we should pursue Him over everything else, gaining more of everything as we gain more of Him.
There are too many people in this world who pursue knowledge for all the wrong reasons. For power. For money. Even for self-worth and pride. But knowledge is essential. The last thing a Christian should do is fear knowledge, avoid it, or deem it sinful. It is a gift, and actually a very necessary part of our worship.
In C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity he boldly claims that God is not a fan of intellectual slackers, and that engaging your intelligence is an essential part of Christianity! “Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian,” he says, “will soon find his intelligence being sharpened.” If I want to gain knowledge, I have to gain Christ.
So, I think of TODAY as an opportunity for knowledge. It’s a conversation about the “birds & the bees,” not with the naive and misinformed of this world, but with the perfect Creator of the universe--the One who knows it all.
