Ignorance is Bliss,...NOT!!!

"My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge."

Hosea 4:6

One of my favorite scenes from the BBC series, Sherlock (based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes) is in the first episode where Dr. Watson meets Mycroft for the first time. This particular line always stood out:

Mycroft, (speaking to Dr. Watson) "Most people blunder around this city and all they see are streets, shops and cars. When you walk with Sherlock Holmes you see the battlefield. You've seen it already, haven't you?"

The battlefield is real!

But like Mycroft said, most people are just 'blundering' along, totally clueless and seemingly willingly so. 

The events of this past year and last week have demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt...

We are in a war! 

And much of the battle is being waged in the area of information.

This past year the world economies were crippled by the coronavirus known as COVID-19. Actually it wasn't the coronavirus that crippled the economy and shut down many countries. What shut everything down was the information we were being fed about this virus and the protocols we were told we needed to apply in order to deal with it. I am not going to go into the specifics because that would take up an entire book. Suffice it to say, much of what we were being told was contradictory or made absolutely no sense at all.

Why didn't people realize that we were not being told the truth?

I believe one reason is we've been conditioned to simply believe whatever we are being told by our news media and we simply can't be bothered to do even a little research to verify the information being reported. Often it really doesn't take a lot of research to see that things aren't adding up. But we can't be bothered.

Another reason is spiritual. Proverbs 1:7 says:

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

If a person has a true and proper fear of the Lord, they have no need to fear anything else. If a person does not have a proper fear of God, then they have every reason to be afraid.

The disinformation we were fed about the virus played on people's fear. Fear makes it impossible to think intelligently. That is why Proverbs 1:7 is so profound. If you have a proper fear of God you won't fear anything else. If you don't fear anything else you can think straight. If you can think straight you can process information in an logical and intelligent way. 

The beginning of Knowledge.

Unfortunately most people, including many professing Christians, simply live by their feelings. Truth to them is based almost entirely on how they feel about something. People who live by their feelings are easily manipulated. If you can make them feel good about something they will believe it. If they feel negative they won't believe it -- entirely based on their feelings. People who live by their feelings are easily controlled by fear. If you tell them that the Chinese released a virus so deadly that if you didn't stay locked in your house, maintain 6 feet of distance and wear a face mask, we were all going to die, they will do exactly what they are told. Never mind there was no science to behind any of these protocols, and there wasn't. But people believed them and did what they were told.

When I was just at the end of my teen years, if a young man wanted to try out for the girls basketball team he would have likely been expelled and possibly committed to a mental facility. Back then we still believed that if a man identified as a woman (and vice versa) that he had lost his connection to reality. That is a defintion of insanity. Today, about 35 years later we actually celebrate such people and treat them as heroes. Why? Because we have been told that transgenderism is a real thing. And we believe what we are told.

And don't get me started with politics.

Too late. (Haha)

Just a few comments:

Most people vote for an appealing personality or someone who says what makes them feel good. The average voter has no understanding of the issues, and political candidates actually count on voter's ignorance. The average middle aged individual never took civics in school. By the time I was in school it had been replaced with Social Studies. Of course it's far worse today. I know of middle school students who have never heard of the Holocaust or Gulag.

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

"My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge."

Lesson from the example of the Bereans in Acts 17:11:

"Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."

While the Bereans were excited and eager (emotion) that wasn't sufficient. They had to look up the Scriptures to verify that what Paul was saying was true. Just as it was true then, it is still true today. There is such a thing as absolute truth! There is also such a thing as absolute falsehood!

Some things are absolutely true, whether they feel good or not.

Some things are absolutely false, whether they feel good or not.

It is absolutely imperative to verify.

Ignorance is NOT bliss. In a war of information, lack of knowledge is deadly.

Fear God and you won't have to fear anything else.

Blessings to you all.