Ignorance is Bust

You have likely heard the saying “Ignorance is bliss.”  Well, no it is not.  Ignorance is dangerous.  

Ignorance is defined as lack of knowledge or information.  It is being unaware and unfamiliar with something.  Obviously, there are things that we would like to be unaware of, like our high school principal.  But ignorance can put you in a world of hurt.  

The Bible sums up the topic of ignorance as follows:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you reject knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me.

This passage is found in Hosea, one of the minor prophets of the Old Testament.  The context of the statement has to do with Israel, the Jewish people, going into exile.  According to the Word of the Lord, this great tribulation that the people of Israel brought on themselves was due to their rejection of knowledge.  Not knowledge in the sense of education.  Knowledge of God, knowledge of the things of God, knowledge of their need for Almighty God in heaven.  

The Jews were literally brought to the edge of extinction as a people because they chose “ignorance is bliss” when it came to God and His commandments.  They assumed that being ignorant of God and His ways would relieve them from the necessity of serving Him and seeking His righteousness.  Um … Wrong.   When you forget God, when you choose to reject the knowledge of Him who created you, when you knowingly become ignorant of the Almighty and His statutes, you enter a place of destruction, a place of desolation, a place of exile.

God desires every person to know Him - to truly know Him.  The Lord desires that every person be saved and not one be lost.  But people refuse to acknowledge Him.  They choose ignorance over salvation.  Jesus said it this way, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19)  If our evil deeds make us pursue ignorance rather than knowing God, a judgement will fall on our heads and there will be none to deliver us.  We will be ignorant of the only One who could save us.

Hosea 4:6