“The more I learn, the more I discover how much I don’t know.”
I’ve grown up hearing this phrase, but it’s taken time for me to realize how true it is. It’s easy to say this and know it in an abstract way, but how often do we live this out?
I’m the kind of person who hates being wrong. Once I’ve formed an opinion (and I have many), I tend to stubbornly stick to that opinion even when people argue with me. But over the last couple of years, I’ve discovered that what I know about life and people and God is so limited that it can’t even qualify as a fraction of everything there is to know.
In recognizing this, I’ve come to two realizations that have changed my life.
Uncertainty is not a bad thing. As humans, we hate the unknown. We want answers. We want solid definitions for right and wrong. We don’t like having to choose the “lesser evil” or being told there is no perfect solution. But if we take a step back, we realize that life doesn’t work like that. What science was certain of 100 years ago we laugh at today. What was the solution for the last problem has become the new problem. What we think we know about God can be turned on its head the next day.
If uncertainty isn’t bad, then we don’t need to have all the answers. We don’t need to have an informed opinion on every event, we don’t need to be sure on every answer. And we don’t need to know everything about God to believe he love us.
If uncertainty isn’t bad, then we have the freedom to say, “I was wrong,” and to try a second time if our first attempt fails. And allowing ourselves to be wrong leaves room for growth, which brings me to my second point.
We should never stop learning. It may seem like all of the uncertainty would be a reason to give up entirely, but we actually have a responsibility to keep learning and growing. Living in ignorance is not the answer. Do we stop learning about God because he is unfathomable? Do we stop learning about the people we love?
The world is constantly changing, and so are people. It’s not possible to keep up, but we can do our best, because stagnation is the enemy of growth. This is true in every area of our lives: our homes, our relationships, our churches, our schools, our politics, our culture.
And here’s the hard part of learning, at least for me. I have to realize that my experience isn’t the only one that matters. My opinion isn’t the only valid conclusion. I’ve stood on the higher moral and intellectual ground and said, “if you could only see it from my point of view (the logical point of view), if you could just understand if the way I can, then you could see how obviously wrong you are.”
And yet, others have said the same back to me. This is the making of a useless debate. It’s only when we realize that someone else may have experienced or learned something we haven’t, that we can come to a discussion with an open mind, ready to learn.
In the end, you might be right or wrong, or the answer might still be unknown, but we all need to have the humility to never stop learning.