Genesis 3:4-5 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
I am a student. A lifelong student in pursuit of knowledge. As a child, I delighted in reading, in studying. Books were devoured, lectures were listened to, and conversations evesdropped on for every scrap of possible knowledge I could gain.
On any subject.
Most of these were good. My father once said (in jest) that I knew more useless things than anyone he ever met. My family thinks my middle name is Google. I could probably bluff my way into any nontechnical group on the power of my background knowledge alone.
Knowledge is potential power. And locked away in the recesses of my brain is the possibility to do some amazing things if the possibility presents itself.
But knowledge can kill you. As a parent, I have learned not to ask certain things, because then I may have to act on the knowledge I get. As a pastor, I learned to be blithely unaware of petty conflicts and emotional upheavals – for they soon righted themselves without my intervention. And thus I preserved relationships in the church.
But what do you do when you wish you could forget? When the carnal knowledge that nobody knows you have could fill books? When simple things gain hidden meanings, and innocent conversation brings back memories and associations nobody needs to remember? When there is another world unseen to others that you hope to forget, but can’t?
One of the worst is the knowledge of self-murder. Suicide. Thirty years in the dark have given way to lots of thinking along those lines. It is horrible to think how fragile a life is, and how little is needed to end it. A pen will work, a knife is better, but string, paper, or the deck rail will suffice if you let me have 120 seconds to myself. My clothes will work, but so will traffic, buildings, or infrastructure in a pinch.
The knowledge that eternity is only 120 seconds away has helped me bear some brutal situations knowing that there was a bail-out method if I couldn’t take it anymore. But it is a two-edged sword, a constant weariness to my soul as objects, places, and methods constantly pop up in my mind as secondary options if life gets too tough.
There is a common philosophical question that goes something like this:
What do you do with the knowledge gained through unethical means? Do we keep the research gained from the Nazi’s horrific experiments on the Jews? What about the knowledge gained from studying aborted children? The knowledge already exists through those means. The question is what do we do with it? Destroy the info? Use it?
I have a similar dilemma. I have a lot of knowledge that I shouldn’t. Way more than you might think.
And there is no delete button for the files in my head.
CPH
Proverbs 6:33 A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away.
Learning to Run 