|
I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself, 3in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4I am saying this so that no one may deceive you with plausible arguments. –– Colossians 2:2-4
I am captivated by the NRSV’s turn of phrase here –– the riches of assured understanding. Doesn’t that sound like a safe you would like to crack? I still haven’t conquered that combination, spending a good portion of my days spinning the dial without hearing a single click. Understanding, for me, appears securely locked behind the door, and thus beyond my grasp. Just when I think I am doing a good job of feigning understanding, my incomprehension is easily exposed by the simplest of questions. Elsewhere, Paul offers the challenge –– “For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think.” Yet, desiring others to “think more highly” of me, I quickly yield to the impulse of fraud. When perceptive friends explain what is obvious to them, and then ask –– Do you understand what I’m talking about? –– why do we find it so hard to confess –– I don’t have a clue!
Albert Einstein observed, "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.” I remember once telling a man, a good man, a man of faith who had become just a bit too enamored of his intellectual prowess, that the first sign of ignorance is the claim of intellectual superiority. You may be impressed by someone who possesses a warehouse of knowledge, but it is better to learn from someone who acknowledges that everything she knows is but a speck in the grand firmament of all there is to be known. Knowledge is good. Knowledge with modesty is better. We will never reach a point where there is nothing left to learn. Understanding this is the path toward wisdom.
It seems ironic, but perhaps the first thing to know and remember is how little we know. Certitude is the antithesis of faithfulness, for God is mystery. What little we know of God is that which has been revealed to us, primarily through Jesus Christ, the word made flesh. In John, it is written, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.” As Paul sees it, Christ is the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” When we begin by acknowledging that we may not know as much as we think, we begin to learn and make one step forward toward wisdom.
| 
