Knowing what we don't know

For several days now I have found myself referring to the old teaching that wisdom is found in "knowing what we don't know." It came up in the context of talking to my daughters. One of them has repeated the theme that she's stupid or she's not good at math -- you know the sort of thing. I have tried to respond to both girls about the process of learning. We pray at night about the things that we learned during the day and I try to give thanks for the things that were a challenge. Because, of course, I think that it is in the things that feel and appear to us to be barriers or walls against which we so obediently bang our heads -- that it is in just those things that we are most likely to learn something important.

Then the phrase "knowing what we don't know" came up again in a Bible class at church. It was in the context of challenging the group to look at our church, at the exterior, at the responses of our members, etc. -- with the eyes of a newcomer, a stranger to us. It was a challenge to look with new eyes. But as simple as that is to say, it is not an easy thing to do. To look at something familiar to us the way someone completely new might see it. It means shutting off our normal sight. Seeing with a different set of eyes. Or at least a side-set of eyes. I thought of the experience of looking for stars in the sky, or in my growing up in Colorado, looking at the distant horizon. If you tried to look directly at something you couldn't see it. Only by using your peripheral vision would the thing become visible.

Now "knowing what we don't know" is that kind of thing only taken to a much higher level. Most of the world, it seems to me, goes through the day "knowing what they know." Now they may actually "know" something or they may just have firm opinions. But in this case it's the same thing. An engineer may well know a lot about engineering -- maybe even be an expert at some part of engineering. On the other hand a viewer of "American Idol" may know quite well which performer is "the best." Certainly the judges on "American Idol" know what they know.

I believe that the knowledge of what we don't know is far more important than our expert knowledge, opinions, or truth from God. Working in the church as I do, I am especially sensitive to the way people of faith are "experts" at what they know. And it drives me crazy. I, myself, am drawn to those persons who have some sense of what they don't know. It means they are learners. It means they are listeners. It means they are open to wonder and awe.

The last experts I heard expressing "awe" was on an NPR report some months ago. They were reporting on a group of scientists who had dropped a camera into the very mouth of an active volcano -- at the bottom of the ocean. The dynamics of the ocean meant that the volcanic eruption was slowed down enough that it was physically possible to do what they did. But on the radio you heard these scientific experts begin their observation the way you would expect experts to do. It was a non-emotional accounting of what was happening. But as the images came into view of the earth giving birth, before their eyes, their objectivity dropped away and they sounded like teenagers, with, "Oh, wow! Oh my God! Oh, man!" They were suddenly being exposed to what they didn't know.

Learning to know what we don't know is worth it.