I have a pastor friend that is great at quoting scripture. He always knows which scripture fits the situation best. He has a great memory and recall of what he has learned by studying the Bible. I marvel at his knowledge of the Bible. And that is just what it is, knowledge. He reads and studies the Bible hours at a time and has for years. I read the other day it takes the average person 75 hours just to read the Bible and 10,000 hours to know it well. That equates to a full time job for the next 5 years.
I doubt that I will ever know the Bible like my friend knows it, I just won’t spend the time studying the Bible to that degree.
I am always taken back by those folks who make decisions, especially about God, or religion, or attending church or even worship. They make decisions based upon what they think they know rather than on what they really do know. It was Socrates who said “The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” How true!
God summed it up well when he said to Job (From the Message), “Why do you confuse the issue? Why do you talk without knowing what you’re talking about?” (Hope He’s not reading this blog.)
Recently I was talking to a friend who was taking the position that the Bible can’t be trusted because there are things in the Bible that just aren’t true.
Curiously I asked him if he had ever studied the Bible to find out for sure which things he thought were true and which things he thought were not true. You know the answer without me repeating it here!
It was Einstein who said “Information is not knowledge.” I agree with Einstein as I have information about the Bible but my pastor friend has knowledge about the Bible and we are miles apart in understanding the Bible.
I think it’s that thirst for knowledge that drives us to succeed at most anything, whether it in a career or Bible study, and everything in between.
The more I read and study the Bible the more I understand the Bible but the more difficult it becomes to live a Christ like life in our culture today.
Maybe Mahatma Gandhi said it best, “The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.”