When Ignorance Isn't Bliss

“When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss”

 

While working at a camp one summer during my teen years I received a birthday card on which a grinning clown proclaimed, “No wonder you’re so happy.” I opened it with fear and trembling and was greeted with the words, “Ignorance is bliss!” It was signed (naturally), “Guess who!” (I had a few ideas but never found out for sure who the culprit was.)

Many years later this memory escaped from the deepest inner recesses of my gray matter and I realized (again) that whoever coined the phrase didn’t know what he or she was talking about. Some examples from the Old Testament show why. In Exodus 1:8 we read, “Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt.” In his ignorance of history, Pharaoh bound the Israelites in slavery leading to a series of events which ended with the death of the firstborn in every Egyptian family, the Jews’ deliverance from captivity, and the destruction of Egypt’s army (Exodus 12-14). How about Samson? After years of rebellion against God it’s said of him, “…He didn’t know that the Lord had left him.” (Judges 16:20) and he was captured and humiliated by his enemies. And there’s the whole nation of Israel, about whom God’s prophet Hosea said, “…My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Of what? God’s truth (“…You have ignored the law of your God….”)—Hosea 4:6.

Today we as God’s people can fall into the same trap of not taking His Word seriously. This is certainly not bliss because it leaves us vulnerable to satanic deception and the influence of false teaching. Jesus met the devil’s temptation with His Father’s truth (Matthew 4:1-11)—is Scripture any less an effective resource for us?

The believers at Berea probably never heard this saying but their actions show they wouldn’t have bought it because they “…examined the Scriptures every day….” (Acts 17:11). As present-day Bereans let’s make biblical ignorance a thing of the past and say with the psalmist, “I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.” (Psalm 119:16).

Blessings!

Jim McMillan