The Path of Ignorance
Applying the truth of God’s Word to our lives helps us to continue to see the truth, understand it, value it, and then live it. When we close our heart to God, our mind also remains closed to an understanding of spiritual truth. This choice will surely put us on the path of ignorance.
Ignorance is defined as having a lack of knowledge or awareness. The path of ignorance is actually a journey, one that begins slowly and often times unnoticeably, but one that surely will lead to a frightening place.
The path of ignorance begins with spiritual indifference. We are either unable or just unwilling to respond to God’s truth. In essence, we have cut ourselves off from God and the life He offers.
Spiritual indifference eventually becomes spiritual deadness. We come to believe that there are no moral absolutes. Through endless rationalization, our conscience has little impact on our choices between right and wrong. As our spiritual and moral restraints diminish, we become more consumed with satisfying our sensual lusts. As we pursue the fulfillment of these fleshly passions, our self-indulgent appetite only increases.
Eventually we become enslaved to our lusts. We are trapped by our appetites. We are no longer free to decide if we should gratify our addictive passions. The only question is “how?” Our rationalized moral freedom has led us into the bondage of sin.
There are three levels of ignorance and they each involve a lack of knowledge or awareness. The first level is the ignorance of truth–we are not aware of what the truth is. We say, “I didn’t know that.”
The second level of ignorance is the ignorance of meaning–we do not understand how that truth relates to our lives. We say, “I didn’t know that’s what it meant.”
Finally, the last level of ignorance is the ignorance of consequences–we do not apply the truth we do understand because it is not important enough to us. We say, “I didn’t know that’s what would happen.”
Do you remember when you first began driving a car? Someone told you to regularly check the fluid levels of your engine. First, that person told you to check the oil, brake fluid, transmission fluid, and coolant. Then you needed to understand what that meant by having someone show you how to check each one of those different fluids. And finally, someone told you what would happen to your car and what could happen to you if you let any of those fluids run out. Once you had all of that information, it was your responsibility to do something with that knowledge.
