Willful Ignorance: The Plague of Christianity

     A major issue that is plaguing Christianity today is willful ignorance.  Willful ignorance is defined by the Urban Dictionary as, "The practice or act of intentional and blatant avoidance, disregard or disagreement with facts, empirical evidence and well-founded [arguments] because they oppose or contradict your own existing personal beliefs." (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=willful%20ignorance)  Ignorance in itself is not wrong; it is actually impossible not to be ignorant because ignorance is just not knowing something.  Willful ignorance is knowing that you don't know something and refusing to learn about it.  Many Christians today believe that willful ignorance is something holy and that you must be ignorant in order to love God.  They will deny fact and say things such as, "If it's not in the Bible, then I don't believe it!" or "I will not read or listen to anything outside of God's word!".  It's just too bad that they believe that God and his words are limited to the Bible.  Do they not know that all knowledge is knowledge because God made it to be so?  Do they not understand that if they believe in the Bible, then the world around them is all God's words that came into being*?
     If you are truly reading the Bible, then you should know that knowledge is something that we are told to attain.  We are told to seek knowledge and to be wise**.  Many Christians would claim that Paul tells us to forsake knowledge and love***, but he tells us that Jesus is the embodiment of knowledge<>.  Are we to forsake Jesus?  What is happening in Christianity today is that many people are missing the point when Paul forsakes knowledge in the wake of love.  What he is saying is that we are not to use knowledge to make ourselves feel important, but we are to love others and build them up.  He further explains this when he claims that knowledge without love is nothing, however, he doesn't say that you cannot have knowledge along with love.  His point in saying all of this is that if you are standing on knowledge alone, you will fall because people will reject you.  What is knowledge if you cannot share it?  However, if you have love, then people will listen and you will have solid ground to stand on and share your knowledge.
     What Christians need to realize is that knowledge is a part of God because He created it and when they abandon knowledge; they are abandoning a part of God.  How could we know things if God had not first given us the ability to?  I will continue to do everything I can to learn because the more I learn, the closer I get to God!

*Genesis 1

**Nearly all of Proverbs

***1 Corinthians 13:7 & 8:1

<>Colossians 2:2-3