The Know-It-Alls

My wife sings this song with the grandkids, just as she did with our kids when they were little.

“Mr. Moon, Mr. Moon, you’re out too soon.

The sun is still in the sky.

Go back to bed and cover up your head

and wait till the day goes by.” 

There is something magic in the voice of a child singing to the moon. She also recites this rhyme:

I see the moon and the moon sees me.

God bless the moon and God bless me.

I remember as a boy watching the moon as it sped through the night sky. I was amazed that it could move so fast and still remain in the same place. Of course, it was the clouds moving in front of the moon that gave it the illusion of swift motion. I still like to look on the night sky when the clouds are moving fast, and imagine that it is the moon moving that fast.

Childish illusion has always directed us. Just a few centuries ago we thought the earth was flat. It sure looked that way. We thought the sun circled the earth. It seemed so. Still does. But we grew up. We are sophisticated now. Though there are those who feel the world, if not the universe, revolves around them, we’ve pretty much got the basic motion of the solar system dialed in.

How about this Bible verse by the wise man of Ecclesiastes, “The sun also arises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to his place where he arose.” How primitive. Why would God choose such ignorant people to deliver His word to us? Our scientists, philosophers and theologians could do a much better job. Their intellectual grasp of the universe is light years beyond the ancient apostles and prophets…or is it?

Let’s represent our knowledge and understanding as a mountain, and that of our ancestors as a hill...a very small hill. For someone looking in our direction from ten galaxies west, our solar system is indistinguishable. Our planet is lost in a twinkle, and so our mountain is as unsubstantial as their little knoll; as unsubstantial as a grain of sand.

It is our arrogance and pride, though, that may be clearly visible from the heavens. God chose crude unlearned men to bring His revelations so that we would understand that we don’t know as much as we think we do. We’re really just as uninformed as they were.

This is the point that got Socrates in trouble. He pointed out that we are not so wise as we think. He tried to show his nation that they did not truly understand the things they thought they knew. His point being that the wisest man is the one who knows he is not wise.

God chided Job “Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!”  After many more such questions Job answers, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” When we can humbly assess our thimble store of knowledge, it will be as Neil Armstrong said from the surface of Mr. Moon, 

“That’s one small step for a man, and one giant leap for mankind”