The Two Sides of Ignorance

So I recently attended a conference on Leukemia. It was all about creating awareness about Leukemia and the speaker was trying to enlighten us on this disease (it’s a terrible one!). After the conference I decided to go on the internet and find out more information on this disease (because I could be an information junkie sometimes 🙂 ). I read about what Leukemia does in the body, what some risk factors are, some symptoms and all that. Some symptoms of the disease include; swelling in the neck, swelling under the arms, red spots on the skin, easy bleeding and bruising and fever amongst others. So I freaked out for a second because I’ve actually experienced a few of these symptoms before (You can too but it doesn’t mean you have Leukemia so don’t freak out). So after I became more enlightened on this subject, I started thinking to myself, maybe I was better off without this information! Now any single spot I see on my body or any swelling I get anywhere will get me worried. Now with all this new knowledge I acquired, came along something new to get me worried. Was I better off ignorant about this?

Some people say knowledge is power but others also say Ignorance is bliss. ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’ the saying goes. Wouldn’t it really hurt you though?

Here are the two sides of Ignorance; one, you remain Ignorant and you don’t have to bear the burden of knowledge or two, you remain Ignorant and don’t reap the benefits of knowledge.

Whether you know about it or don’t, doesn’t change the fact that it exist or that it is true.

If a hurricane was about to hit the place where I live (just an analogy, if you’re in Turkey calm down, no hurricane is coming this way) and I refuse to watch the news because I’m thinking to myself; that stuff on the news these days really gets me worried and I’m better off not watching it. I don’t want to get worried by all that information. If the hurricane comes, I’m going to be hit hard by it because I was totally unprepared, but others who watched the news will have gotten themselves ready for it. It turned out that what I didn’t know hurt me after all.

Sometimes we don’t want to go deeper into the things of God because we’re afraid of what will be expected of us when we know these things. We do not want to bear the burden of knowledge. We’d rather just remain lukewarm Christians trying to ‘have our bread and eat it too’. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

So I think I’ll join the people that say ‘knowledge is power’ and will rather bear the burden of knowledge than remain in ‘blissful ignorance’. Though knowledge does have its burden, I believe that the benefits that come along with it are worth much more. With knowledge, there is everything to gain and really nothing to lose. But with Ignorance, there is much to lose and really nothing to gain.

The word of God is knowledge. “For the Lord gives wisdom and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding” (Proverbs 2:6NIV). So acquire all you can get because I can assure you there’s much more to be gained than to lose.

So which side are you on? Would you rather not bear the burden of knowledge or not reap its benefits? However way you look at it, Ignorance is a worthless coin. Heads or tails? None. Just get rid of the coin in my opinion.

“My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” Hosea 4:6aNIV

“If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God” Proverbs 2:3-5KJV