I Have to Know About Everything

Somebody mentioned something at work on Tuesday and you felt it start.

Not curiosity, though it looks like curiosity from outside and you have always called it that. It is nearer to obligation: a small pull, immediate, that says you ought to understand this properly and that you cannot have an opinion until you do and that having no opinion is itself a position.

So you read about it that evening. About forty minutes.

It joins a great many other things you have read about that way over the last few years: the supply chain of a thing you buy, the argument about a policy that does not affect you, the science of something a friend is doing, an issue that came up in a group and that you had not heard of and could not therefore contribute to.

Every one of those was worth understanding. That is what makes this so hard to see.

Underneath all of it is a rule you have never said out loud.

Not knowing about something is a way of being complicit in it.

That is the sentence. It has been running for about six years. It is why there is no such thing, for you, as a subject you are allowed to not know about, and it is why every conversation quietly produces homework.

What this page will not do

This is the closing category and the rule here is that nothing gets added, so there will be no list of what you are permitted to skip. Scripture already said it in Ecclesiastes 12:12, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.

I am not going to tell you that being informed does not matter. Some of what you have learned has changed what you buy and how you vote and one conversation you had with your niece, and none of that would have happened if you had not read. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Ecclesiastes 12:12, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

I am not going to give you a filter for deciding what is worth knowing. That is a system, and you would run it well, and it would be a seventh thing.

And I am not going to tell you the rule is selfishness in reverse, or over-responsibility, or any other diagnosis, because a name for it is another thing to carry.

What is here is the rule, said out loud, and one week of not obeying it.

You are not culpable for what you have not read. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not adjusted by how much anybody has understood, and the Holy Spirit is in that kitchen with a woman whose evenings have quietly become coursework.

The verse is a limit, and it is in the Bible

There is a line near the end of Ecclesiastes that is remarkable for being in Scripture at all.

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.Ecclesiastes 12:12

That is the Bible saying there is a limit.

Not that study is bad; the same book is full of the pursuit of wisdom and the man writing it clearly did a great deal of it.

But of making many books there is no end is a statement about the shape of the field. It does not terminate. There is no version of the world in which somebody has finished, and anybody operating on a rule that requires completion is operating against a fact about reality.

And then the second half, which is the one that will do the most for you: much study is a weariness of the flesh.

That is not a moral judgement. It is a description of a cost, and it is stated plainly, in a wisdom book, as a thing to be admonished about.

Your rule has no cost line in it. It has only ever asked whether something is worth knowing, and everything is, and so it has never once returned a no.

You are not required to finish a field that does not end. Scripture says of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh, Ecclesiastes 12:12, and the limit is stated in a wisdom book rather than in a lazy one, and the Holy Spirit has never once required anybody to be current on everything.

Where the rule came from

Not from Scripture. There is no verse anywhere that makes ignorance of a subject a moral fault, and if there were it would fall on nearly everybody who has ever lived.

It came from somewhere reasonable. Most rules like this do: something happened, or somebody said something, or you were once caught out not knowing about a thing that mattered and it cost somebody, and out of that came a private commitment never to be in that position again. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Ecclesiastes 12:12, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

That commitment was made once, honourably, about one situation. Then it generalized, the way commitments do, and now it applies to a policy that does not affect you and a supply chain and a thing somebody mentioned in a group.

And it cannot be satisfied. That is its defining feature. Every day produces new subjects, so the debt grows daily, and a rule that grows daily is not a standard, it is a treadmill.

You are not guilty of the things you have not studied. Scripture says there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, Romans 8:1, and the absence is complete rather than partial and it is not suspended for subjects you have not got to, and the Holy Spirit has never once presented an unread topic as an accusation.

What is put down

The rule. Not the reading.

Say it out loud once, because it has been operating for six years without ever being examined and it will not survive daylight in the form it has.

I have been treating not knowing as a way of being guilty.

Then, this week, leave one thing unlearned. Deliberately. Something will come up, and it will, probably by Thursday, and you will feel the pull.

Do not look it up. Not that evening, not later, not a quick check. Let it go entirely unlearned.

You will feel uncomfortable. It will feel slightly like being a worse person, and that feeling is the rule rather than the truth, and the discomfort is the whole exercise.

Nothing goes in its place. No filter, no policy about which subjects deserve attention, no decision about how you will handle this from now on.

One subject, unlearned. That is all.

You are not made worse by not knowing something. Scripture says he hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God, Micah 6:8, and being informed about everything is not among the three, and the Holy Spirit has never once added a fourth.