Is Knowledge Power?
In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher recognises the limits of knowledge and how that too, is vanity. Daniel Chen reflects on this theme, and helps us to see how we can think about our own pursuit of knowledge today.
Knowledge is power — this axiom is often taken to be the gospel truth, particularly for us living in resource-scarce Singapore. And it shows up in how we live. We prize education, single-mindedly pursuing it for ourselves and our children. We prefer professional qualifications, unquestioningly bestowing prestige and authority on those who have attained much knowledge and achievement. We pity the loss of knowledge, ourselves despairing over the day our mental abilities are lost to the ravages of dementia in old age.
Benefits of human knowledge
Of course, there is some truth in this, for human knowledge helps us make sense of the world. We marvel at how the water cycle circulates water to support life on earth. There is a beauty to how the same laws of motion can govern both our everyday motion and the motion of the planets and stars (neglecting relativistic effects). We experience the deep satisfaction of seeing the elements ordered in neat columns and rows in the periodic table. As the breadth, depth, and height of human knowledge grow, so have the innovations that contribute to human flourishing in the modern world. Understanding the human body has resulted in medicine and treatments to treat previously incurable conditions. Engineering and the physical sciences allow us to build bridges, fly aeroplanes, and land on the moon. In mathematics, number theory is the foundation of modern cryptographic protocols necessary for many internet activities. Your secure online transactions, encrypted messages and digital identity verifications are all undergirded by the mathematics of numbers. Personally, being trained in mathematics has given me a foundation of logical reasoning to approach decisions objectively, which is certainly useful for everyday life. Professionally, I am able to model real world operations to help organisations to steward limited resources. Spiritually, reasoning has helped me spot logical fallacies and reject poor arguments against Christianity in my conversations with non-believers, both for my own confidence in the gospel and to help remove obstacles between others and Jesus.
The wonders of human knowledge can be what tempts us to see it as an absolute good.
Yet, the wonders of human knowledge can be what tempts us to see it as an absolute good. We begin to make the pursuit of human knowledge the goal, and we start to expect knowledge to answer all our questions. Having benefited from my own pursuit of knowledge, I feel the seductive lure of its power to explain and to develop. At work, in my quest to produce definitive answers to the problems I'm asked to solve, I can develop tunnel vision that crowds out love of God and neighbour. This is even after having experienced the frustration of working on the same problem for a year and having no progress to show for it. Were human knowledge the be all and end all, it would not be very satisfying.
Limits of human knowledge
After all, human knowledge does not have all the answers. When we stay under the sun, we cannot ultimately explain everything under the sun, as the Preacher observes in Ecclesiastes 8:17, "I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out." In fact, mathematics acknowledges this: Austrian logician Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems, published in 1931, state that given any system of logic, there will be statements that are true but cannot be proved to be true, implying that any quest for a complete "theory of everything" will turn out to be futile. Mathematics proves its own limitations and sets an upper bound on what we can know as truth when we constrain ourselves to the method of reason alone. Could these limitations be pointing us to something bigger - something above the sun?
For if human knowledge is unable to explain the mystery of the observable world, how much more is it incapable of fully explaining the one who made it? Ecclesiastes 11:5 points out that "As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything." At its purest, mathematics seeks to reduce everything to provable statements, but God is not so easily contained and described. In my younger days, I sought to win apologetics arguments against my non-believing friends, hoping to win them over by pure reason. Of course, this was insufficient! For God is not only a God of logic and reason, he is also a God of poetry and emotions. Catching this glimpse of the transcendence of God humbled me to see how much higher his ways are than mine. Like Job, I have nothing to say before the Almighty.
Pursuing knowledge wisely
What ought to be our approach to knowledge then? Recognising both the potential and the pitfall of knowledge, we must be grounded in our pursuit of it. Because knowledge is so powerful, the pursuit of knowledge can be intoxicating. It is easy to be caught up with clever arguments or be enamoured by the latest technologies. But there is nothing new under the sun, and this pursuit will never be satisfied. A notable early encyclopaedia had a goal "to collect all knowledge that now lies scattered over the face of the earth". It certainly did contain much knowledge and was lauded in its time. For most general purposes, it has since been replaced by Internet search or Wikipedia. Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to change how we access knowledge even further. What lasting gain has been achieved by all these revolutions in gathering and assimilating knowledge? Putting all knowledge in one place would be just as futile as building the Tower of Babel. We have experienced how quickly exciting new inventions either become outdated or commonplace. New trends in how to live the good life (from the 5Cs to FIRE to a 4-day work week) promise much but do not fundamentally seal us from the injustices of life under the sun. We enjoy learning new understandings of Scripture, but remember that the core of the gospel will not change. Even generative AI is not truly generative, but can only reflect patterns in the data it has been trained on. Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun.
On the flip side, we can also be overly fearful of changes in the world or overly deferential to those with knowledge. The frenetic pace of change can be hard to keep up with, and the consequences of adopting new technologies on how society thinks and acts are hard to predict. Under these circumstances, it is tempting to fear doomsday scenarios, or to turn to those who seem to understand and wield these technologies with confidence. But even as we approach the situation with caution and humility, may we also recognise the created nature of both these things and these people, and look to the Creator.
Pursuing true knowledge
We cannot know all things or guard against all uncertainties, but we can know the One who knows all things.
For ultimately, the fear of the Lord is beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7). We cannot know all things or guard against all uncertainties, but we can know the One who knows all things. True knowledge comes from fearing the God who has made himself known. The transcendent God has made his eternal power and divine nature plain to us in creation (Rom 1:18-19). He has spoken to us by His Son, who is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature (Heb 1:3). And He has sent His Spirit to guide us into truth (John 16:13). As we seek Christ and His Word in all we do and experience, we are transformed by the renewal of our mind (Rom 12:2). Our eyes are opened to behold the one true God, to whom belongs true power: the power to rescue us from sin and death, the power to transform us, the power to bestow eternal life. May our pursuit of knowledge find its end in the eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor 4:17)!