Gaining Knowledge is Not the End of the Road

Heb 2:1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

I have been teaching through Hebrews lately and have to truthful say that even though I have read Hebrews many times I have not seen as much as I have recently as I prepare weekly to teach from the book. Chapter one is a glorious passage where the writer of Hebrews expresses Christ’s superiority and in the process reveals his divinity and many other attributes. What is interesting is that when you get to 2:1-4 the writer takes a brief respite to exhort the reader, the hearer of the time and us to do more than take in information but to “pay much closer attention” to what has been heard.

This speaks volumes to the whole idea of Orthodoxy (right doctrine) and Orthopraxy (right practice). All too often we as believers in a desire to grow spiritually simply take in information with no outflow or result ensuing. We read the Bible, listen to sermons, read books and go to numerous conferences all to gather that next morsel of information but at the tend of the day we are not left time to put into action all that we have taken in.

We are a nation and world that hungers for facts and see the accumulation of knowledge as the salvation of all. How often have your heard that if a certain group only had more education they would be better off or that having more knowledge means having more power, While these adages may be true in some fashion they both ignore the work of God in all that we do and that we as a human race have a much bigger problem than a lack of knowledge.

I have even written, as have others, in the past that all too often this mindset that revolves around knowledge invades the Christian Homeschool movement and leads to people schooling at home rather than home schooling. This mindset does not see the Christian reason to Homeschool being the raising of godly children but instead sees raising kids smarter than public school kids as the goal. This is the mindset that says I want my kids to have more information that your kids. Again, I am not saying information is bad it is just where we place it in the priority of things than can be an issue.

What does it take for us to see that one of the results of the fall is take the sin nature of Adam and Eve leads us to desire to seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge? We are not to abandon knowledge as people have done in the past as an over reaction to just this problem but we are to seek knowledge for the Glory of God and that Glory comes from living out all that God indwells us with. If we were to truly to see that we are to do all for His glory I dare say we would have to ask, “why am I learning this” or “why am I going to this conference” or even, yes even this, “why am I reading the Bible.” If we simply read the Bible for readings sake and not transformation through the power of the Spirit we have missed the boat. We read scripture to know Christ and it is the knowledge of Christ that is to transform us.

So I would encourage you not to stop taking in knowledge but to always ask the critical question of why and this may help in making sure that we “pay closer attention to what we have heard” and read. Do not make knowledge the end all be all but go further to let the understanding that God gives outflow into the practice of our lives and from this we will begin to have both Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy

Added 6/7/07

My friend Matt Bullen let me know that Kevin Swanson had some similar thoughts on knowledge in his blog article: Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth