So-Called Knowledge

Knowledge is a dangerous thing. Paul the Apostle (a man far wiser than I, and at least as passionate about the truth) said famously (and correctly) that love builds up, but knowledge puffs up. When I hear this used most of the time, it is used as a pat, anti-intellectual comment by those whose minds are not very sharp, and who also suffer from the very same problem. I am an intellectual, but that does not mean I do not see the dangers in the great gift of a mind that God has given me (for what reason I do not know--all gifts carry with them heavy responsibilities and a certain amount of difficulty). It is quite entertaining (as a spectator, at least, if not a participant) to watch the conflicts between "fundamentalists" and "intellectuals". Both of them make war with so-called knowledge, but in reality are quite ignorant of what they say. However, they speak with arrogance and confidence because what is in reality complicated they have simplified in their own minds in their own fashion (and both sides do this quite differently, as I hope to at least point out a little later) and used their views against others. In reality, though, both anti-intellectual fundamentalist philistines and their more erudite but equally foolish rivals are more alike than they are different.

For the purposes of this discussion, a fundamentalist is someone who believes they understand the Bible (or any other belief system) perfectly, and thus are qualified to serve as enforcers of God's laws against unbelievers. (Unlike most people, I do not define fundamentalism as merely believing in the inerrancy and infallability of the Bible, which would include many people like myself). The fundamentalist opposes the gain of intellectual knowledge, for several reasons. For one, knowledge threatens the supposed specialness of the fundamentalist (who usually is or aspires to be an unaccountable leader of a hierarchial organization). After all, said leaders are usually not very well educated themselves, and consider the educated to be threatening. Usually these people will quote scriptures condemning vain human philosophy and use those to condemn any sort of study except in ways approved by said sect leader. Rather than desiring to set people free from the ways of sin that pervade the entire world, these people are interested in making themselves leaders over men, in ways that Christ condemns when he says we should be servants and not lords. Indeed, they are like Diotrophes and others who desire preeminence over others. Such examples should not be imitated. Nonetheless, these people are proud in their own knowledge (or rather, in their own ignorance). By believing they have mastered the Bible, or some really arcane matter of Bible study (be it the identity of the ten tribes of Israel, prophetic understandings of the end time, the correct day we should keep the Holy Days, etc. ad nauseum), they feel a certain superiority towards those who do not possess this knowledge. Their so-called knowledge puffs them up. Of course, anyone who questions that knowledge must be riduculed as a pawny-headed intellectual, or a faithless, stiff-necked doubter, or so forth. Indeed, those who believe they possess great knowledge are correspondingly unable to admit fault. After all, if they are so great, they cannot be subject to the same flaws that mere mortals like ourselves (and I would include myself as a mere mortal--for all the gifts that I possess, I too am chief among sinners) suffer from on a daily basis. No, they must be special.

Intellectuals similarly suffer from a certain sense of pride in their knowledge. It is only human (one of the negative parts of human nature, which is itself a mixture of good and evil, not merely pure evil) to feel pride about knowledge, but such pride is very dangerous. The pride of the intellectual is in many ways the mirror image of the pride of the fundamentalist. The intellectual takes great pride in the ability to make the simple complex, just as the fundamentalist takes great pride in oversimplifying the complicated. Neither is right, but both are human (I myself, I must admit, err to the side of the intellectual, for which I must be honest). An intellectual, for example, will often take the simple and direct commands of God and negate them by looking at supposed contradictions or looking at boundary cases where the rules do not exactly apply. Instead of seeing these exceptions for what they are (exceptions), there is then the tendancy to invalidate the direct commands of God rather than place the exceptions in their proper place as divine mercy from God in extraordinary circumstances. In similar fashion, an intellectual will not take the Bible seriously as the Word of God, but rather will see the beliefs in the Bible as proceeding in an evolutionary pattern, often as a result of amalgamation of foreign traditions (to give some examples, they will claim that Moses did not write the Penteteuch, that there were three Isaiahs, that Daniel was not written until the Maccabean period, or that the Jews did not have any sort of ideas about the last judgment or good and evil until they met up with the Persian followers of Zoroaster). Similarly, these people will reject those who take the Bible seriously as simpletons and uneducated morons, and will behave in a rather condescending manner towards those who deny their false so-called knowledge.

We should turn away from both of these views. It distresses me that the truth is so obvious and yet so difficult to find, but such is the life I suppose. As difficult as both views are to avoid, we must work to avoid either the belief that either nothing can be known or that everything is known. There is much the Bible tells us, but also much that the Bible leaves unsaid, leaves for us all to struggle with as best as we are able. Neither blind faith nor rationalistic materialism is sufficient to being a true believer of God. We can neither believe without faith nor believe without our faith being informed by knowledge and reason. I think, in the final analysis, that it is God's doing that we have to find our way between the extremes that fundamentalism and intellectualism represent. After all, we need to be reminded about both how important we are to God (all of us, not only a select and small group of us given special gifts or knowledge, which is one thing both intellectuals and fundamentalists agree on and both err in believing) as well as the fact that our knowledge and power are rather pitifully limited. We must neither rejoice in our own greatness (and commit the sin of pride that fundamentalists and intellectuals possess in spades) nor wallow in our own weakness and believe we have no worth (and thus allow ourselves to fall prey to the slick advertising of someone who thinks they know it all, especially if they are from an advertising background *shivers*). The way of truth is always difficult, and frought with tension between two extremes of which neither are right (indeed, it can safely be said that any extreme is an error, though there is often great difficulty in properly defining what is extreme). But we will never come into greater understanding if we become complacent in our so-called knowledge, because much of what we know is wrong, no matter what it is we think we know. May God have mercy on us all, and reveal to us His truth at the right time, so that it may build up His family, rather than tearing it apart.