In recent years, within the United States, an advertising campaign was launched through the major television networks entitled, “The More You Know.” The campaign was aimed at encouraging our nation’s young people to stay in school because education is the key to successful living. The advertisements were well done, serious, and meaningful. Have they been effective? I don’t know. And I haven’t seen the ads lately … so perhaps the networks have stopped running them.
I’m all for education! I value knowledge! I’m the type of person who seeks ‘general’ knowledge across a wide variety of subjects. As for detailed knowledge – not so much! I only seek detailed knowledge on a few subjects. But the purpose of this blog is to share my concern for what I perceive to be a growing addiction to the ‘worship of intellectual knowledge.’
Will humans ever get to the point where we have ‘too much knowledge?’ Probably not! But there is real danger in worshipping intellectual knowledge – in putting the human mind in the driver’s seat and declaring it a replacement for God or a replacement for other ways of ‘knowing’. (The ‘God is Dead’ book is one such publication. We post-moderns don’t need God anymore because we have the human brain.)
The other danger in worshipping the intellect is that knowledge alone will never solve the global problems of horizontal eyesight and hierarchical behavior which are the root cause of global hunger; poverty; abuse; neglect; human sex-trafficking; economic bondage; ecological wastefulness, etc. These are not intellectual problems – they are spiritual problems.
THE TWO TREES
In today’s post-modern world the biblical myth of the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is dismissed as irrelevant. Is it?
“Myth” is a storytelling art that uses ordinary words to point to ‘spiritual truths’ – deep truths!
And the deep truth regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that this particular tree is the human tree! It grows in the human mind – especially when it is fertilized by social pressures which suggest that the way to succeed in life is to worship intellectual knowledge.
Here is a deep truth: All of the intellectual knowledge collected by the entire world’s population over the past 15,000 years has not solved humanity’s most basic problems! And intellectual knowledge alone will never solve these problems!
For Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) humans come to know through two complementary sources: the ‘natural light’ of reason and the ‘light of faith.’
The Language of Creation depicts the spiritual difference between eating from the ‘tree of life’ which produces fruit from the light of faith; and eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which produces fruit from the natural light of reason. The difference between the two trees is found on two different wheels with the same numeric values – 49-56 as seen below.
Notice the bond between the human heart and the seed-bearing, fruit-bearing vegetation on the first wheel. Notice also the bond between the greater light and the human mind. This is a picture of good spiritual health! The human heart is seeking spiritual nourishment from the image of vegetation.
“See, I give to you to you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the earth and every tree that has seed in it. They shall be yours for food.” Gen 1:29. The words of Scripture point the human soul/spirit/mind/heart to a source of spiritual nourishment. The nourishment comes when we consider how the tree grows; what it responds to; the things that promote the health of the tree; and the abundance of its fruit.
Now consider the picture on the second wheel. The vegetation is bonded to the human flesh. Both images are vertical! The tree and the human form look good together! But the converse of this relationship is that human mind is bonded with the horizontal images of the dry land – the things of this world. Thus, in spite of the bond between the vegetation and the human body, the mind is not receiving spiritual light. There is no light in the second picture. Unlike the scenario on the first wheel, this is not a picture of good spiritual health. It is a picture that leads to spiritual depravity.
Humans don’t need to agree on whose ‘light of faith’ might be the ‘right’ light!
That’s an intellectual argument born of horizontal eyesight and hierarchical behavior. Therefore it is an unwinnable argument! Humans only need to agree on the following:
Without the ‘light of faith’ humanity can gorge itself, to the point of intellectual obesity, and still be spiritually malnourished, to the point of death.
I think that’s where we are as the conceptual hour of Midnight approaches on the Eighth Day Clock and, writing that fact makes me feel sad. But I am also hopeful! I have a deep sense of knowing (through the light of faith) that God’s Spirit of illumination is intervening on our behalf and saving us from ourselves as I write of the reality. God IS working God’s purpose out as years turn into years. “I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Isaiah 46: 4b
Campbell, Heidi A., ed., Looy, Heather, ed. A Science and Religion Primer.Grand Rapids,MI; Baker Academic, 2009 Pg. 45
One Comment
Wow. Another revelatory post. I was especially struck by the branch leading to pride How often do we congratulate ourselves for having a helpful thought, action or connection with another, little realising that God authors and allows all such successes’?I guess when the blind man saw men walking as trees’ in the gospel account, he may have seen us as really are?!Thanks for another provocative and thought-fuelled signpost back to scripture.