“I have a secret!”

The human desire to “Be In the Know” starts at an early age, and it drives people crazy to be “In the Dark.”  In Elementary School, you probably remember giving up your favorite Gel Pen and your chocolate milk to hear Samantha’s secret about Brendan.  And then after the proverbial tea was spilled, you realized it wasn’t worth the cost; everyone already suspected Brendan liked Athena anyway, and now you had to grovel to a curmudgeonly Lunch Lady in order to stand a chance at even getting regular milk.

And you might feel “special” when privy to unpublished data…when you have “discovered something unprecedented…” or when “everyone else throughout human history has been wrong…except for us.”  Swollen with smugness and pregnant with pride, your ego inflates when you know they don’t know what you know…and then they want to know what you know.  But if that longing for belonging to the “In Crowd” isn’t tempered, you might be susceptible to far more devastation than merely giving away your milk.  The insatiable thirst for information can lead you to mortgage your morals, sell your soul to a cult, or end up on the wrong kind of Island.  Knowledge is power, right?  But ironically, the desire for enlightenment ends up catapulting otherwise “smart” and “powerful” people into eternal darkness.

Don’t get me wrong…I like knowing stuff.  But it’s WHO I know that matters most, and I fully admit that I currently only “know in part” with my finite faculties.  But I look forward to the day that I will “know fully, even as I am fully known.”  And for now, whatever understanding I acquire makes me appreciate the Author of Knowledge even more.

1 Corinthians 13:12