What We Know

No one knows what you know.  And everyone else you meet knows things you don’t.  Even though my wife and I have been married 48 years, we each know things the other doesn’t.   

At birth we know nothing, but very early in life our knowledge base, which is built on observation and experience, begins to form.  Perhaps due to the fact that we shared a significant common base of knowledge in our formative years, most of us tend to remain close to those siblings and friends for a lifetime who shared our earliest years. 

But as we grow, our knowledge differs. We follow different paths, study different subjects, pursue different careers, live in different places and meet different people. Our individual knowledge becomes unique, like our fingerprints.   

The pursuit of knowledge is a good thing. And we should celebrate each achievement that increases our knowledge. But how much does any one of us really know?  And how much do we all know if the knowledge of every human being could be combined? 

Scientists are continually trying to piece together the puzzle of the past, to reconstruct our origins and the path we have taken to get to where we are. Since 2012 physicists have been celebrating what appears to be the discovery of the Higgs boson, what some refer to as the “God particle,” which could answer the origin of all mass and the fate of our universe.

Even with this discovery, the sum total of our scientific, philosophical and historic knowledge represents only a small fragment of the total knowledge in the universe. The more we discover, the more we realize what we don’t know.  The puzzle pieces of the past are often misleading, causing us to rearrange and reconfigure our preconceived ideas.

Solomon, who was famous for his wisdom, wrote, “I concluded that man cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun.  Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover; and though the wise man should say, ‘I know,’ he cannot discover.” (Ecclesiastes 8:17).

Perhaps the most important discovery is not what we know, but the fact that we are known.  David stated, “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all.”

The Apostle Paul wrote, “ For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

As we expand our personal knowledge and strive to understand the universe, we can live with confidence that the One Who made it all knows us and loves us as He demonstrated in His Son, Jesus.