We
all know people who don’t know what they don’t know even as they act at times
as if they do know what they really don’t know. The truth be told, each of us
could probably add ourselves to that list of sometimes know-it-alls. No one has
all knowledge, is all-knowing. That is simply a fact of our human existence. We
all would wish to know more than we know. Knowledge is power, not in the sense
of being able to use our knowledge to make others look foolish, but in order to
be a better person.
Of
course, people do abuse others when they deliberately and gleefully make others
look foolish because they are ignorant of the issue on the table. That is
certainly not a way to win friends and influence people. But, then, those who
act that way don’t seem to have any regrets on the way they abuse their
knowledge. The glee that those who are abused comes when those people get his
comeuppance. They always do sooner or later.
On
the more positive side, although it seems negative to us who are experiencing
it, is the fact that when we have lost some knowledge that we once had, there
are those who will help us remember. We not only learn more and more as we grow
older, we also forget more and more as we grow older, or at least take a much
longer time to retrieve from our brains what we once stored there. Such is
life.
All
that said, it is the responsibility of each of us to help others learn what we
have learned, both from book-learning and from personal experience. Our elders
did that for us. We learned from them even as we often believed we knew more
than they did especially when we were teenagers. What teenager does not think
he or she is smarter than his or her parents? They’ll learn the hard way, as we
all do.
It
is difficult to try to teach those whom we know do not know something we
believe they need to know. They, as we did, often take it as a put-down rather
than a helping-up. Teachers help lift us up from ignorance to knowledge. We
know they know more than we do. We come to them to learn from them. Once we
have learned what they have to teach, then it is up to us to teach others what
we have learned.
The
further difficulty that we have both as teachers and learners is that we bring
prior experience and prior prejudices with us that color both the way we teach
and the way we accept the teaching of others. That is what makes both teaching
and learning so very difficult at times, the know-it-alls notwithstanding.
Yet
as difficult as it is to teach others and learn from others, that is one of the
responsibilities we have both as human beings and even more so as Christians.
Jesus was killed because of his teachings. They made too many people,
especially those in power, very uncomfortable. The truth hurts and it often
makes us uncomfortable. But we have an obligation both teach and to learn no
matter how uncomfortable it gets at times.
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