We’re a people infatuated with information and knowledge. We’ve had encyclopedias, libraries and bookstores for centuries, meccas for everything we needed to know. But those are all “so-20th century.” They’ve been succeeded by online search engines and digital resources like YouTube.
Just about anything we need to know is literally at our fingertips by typing a few keys or clicking a mouse. Want videos on any kind of music? TV shows, old and new? How-to’s for such things as playing a musical instrument, growing plants, creating a costume, baking a cake, or making home improvements? They’re right there, accessible on the Internet. Everything’s on a need-to-know basis – if you need to know it, you can find it.
It's wonderful to have such a seemingly limitless storehouse of knowledge and information. Except when it’s not. Knowledge and information don’t always equate with truth and meaning. My father used to have a saying that, “Some people are so smart, they’re stupid.” There’s danger in being too enraptured with what we know – or think we know.
This is especially true spiritually speaking. There’s a wealth of knowledge available about the spiritual dimension of our lives; it’s tempting to think that the more information we absorb, the closer to God we become. But that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes knowledge can actually become an obstacle to experiencing a genuine, intimate relationship with the Lord.
The apostle Paul expressed this concern to his young disciple, Timothy, referring to people who are “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive…ungrateful, unholy…lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:2-5). Then he made this amazing description of them as “always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).
Kind of brings to mind a person who pursues one college degree after another, amassing an incredible amount of information but never putting it into practical use in the real world of work and everyday living.
But isn’t it good to grow in knowledge, especially in a spiritual sense? We have the Bible, Christian messages on TV and radio, a plethora of Bible study resources, conferences and retreats. We can never know enough, right?
J.C. Ryle, an English evangelical Anglican bishop in the late 19th century, expressed a concern similar to what Paul wrote to Timothy. He observed, “Satan is a master theologian. He’s talked to God, interacted with God, believes in God’s existence, and knows more about God’s attributes and abilities than most…and yet Satan doesn’t love God.”
Therein lies the rub, we might say. Knowledge about God doesn’t equal faith in Him and love for Him. I can read and even memorize portions of books about aerodynamics, but that doesn’t make me an airline pilot. A never-ending relationship with the Lord takes more than biblical information.
And there’s an even greater potential danger in our pursuit of knowledge about God. Later in his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Strong words for sure.
Some might say in their own defense, “But I believe in God!” To that the apostle James would respond, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder” (James 2:19). The demons’ knowledge will be of no benefit for them in eternity.
This isn’t to disparage a desire to gain a greater understanding of God and Jesus Christ from the Scriptures. We are encouraged to grow in our faith, and one way of doing this is by reading, studying, meditating on, memorizing and living out what the Bible teaches. Paul admonished Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
We need to check our own motives. Are we genuinely seeking to know the God who is and learn how to become faithful disciples of Christ? Or are we attempting to twist the Scriptures in a way that conforms with what we want the Lord to be? Is our goal simply to acquire information we can feel good about, or is it to truly believe with unwavering, unshakable faith?
Jesus, speaking about those who are presented with the truth of the Gospel but refuse to respond, said, “To them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For the people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear...” (Matthew 13:14-16).
May we be abundantly blessed by God because we see the truth, hear the truth, understand with our hearts, and determine to live out the truth.
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