Copyright 2014 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
One of the biggest ways we avoid living out the purpose of God in our lives and the lives of others is through willed ignorance. The Bible tells us that the human heart is deceitful, at least to the degree that it is not yet under the Lordship of Christ. Sadly, few of us can claim to have yet come to a place where that Lordship is absolute. Where our wills remain unbowed to our Redeemer there is room for all kinds of self-willed error and one manifestation of this can be found in choosing to avoid a truth that is obvious. We can know what God wants us to do, but we say we can’t. We protest that something is beyond our capacity to grasp when it really isn’t. We choose ignorance when it is within our ability to know because to know what is expected of us is to be under obligation to do it, no matter how undesirable or difficult it might seem.
Whether this happens on a conscious or subconscious level may seem hard to nail down, but perhaps it really isn’t. We often like to believe that a particular divine command is something we are not consciously aware of but that belief is part of our self-deception. Even if willed ignorance has an unconscious component it might be safely assumed that we are not without some responsibility for how it became unconscious. Things that feel unpleasant to us have a funny way of somehow being pushed from a conscious to a subconscious level. Whatever part of the psyche it is that might hold the denied knowledge of our responsibility the bottom line is that we have no way to permanently justify denying it. As moral agents and, more importantly, as children of God we must seek to know and do His will on every level.
There are, of course, times when a believer genuinely does not know what the best action to take is in any given circumstance. As fallen and finite creatures human beings are probably never going to always know what is required of them in this life, at least not right away. This is no surprise to God and it should not be a surprise to us either. But what might be called “innocent ignorance” is nowhere near as great a problem in a Christian’s life as the not so innocent kind.
So how do we guard against the tendency to pretend we do not know what God’s will is for our lives? One way is to take to heart that Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light. I believe that the Enemy of our souls is constantly trying to convince us that whatever our Lord asks of us is either unreasonably hard or even impossible for us to do. The irony in this is that there is a twisted element of truth in this lie he so often tries to make us believe. Many of the things a Christian may be required to do or endure would be impossible apart from the enabling grace of God.
However once that grace is received and applied we experience the power to do the seemingly impossible. Satan desperately wants to keep this knowledge from us because once we have it we have new ability to do great things that further the Kingdom of God on earth. It is also not necessary to pretend we do not know what God is asking of us once we realize just how much He loves us, and that is often a function of how much time we spend at the foot of the cross. It is in what Jesus did there that we come to understand we need not suppress any aspect of the truth in our lives. Willed ignorance of what we must do in obedience to Him will never truly set us free. What will is what He, in perfect obedience to His Father, did for us.
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