Get Smart

Admitting our ignorance in order to be wise

1 Kings 3:5, 7-8

The LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.” Solomon answered: “O LORD, my God, you have made me, your servant, King to succeed my father David; but I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act. I serve you in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a people so vast that it cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong. For who is able to govern this vast people of yours?”

            Do you know who I think are the smartest people in the world?  They are not necessarily Harvard professors, or medical doctors or heads of state.  Those people may be pretty smart.  For my money, however, the smartest people will always be those who know they have more to learn.  Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, said, “The only thing I know for sure is that I don’t know.”  Acknowledging his ignorance, he was able to keep learning new things.  When we think we know it all, we can become too smart for our own good.

            Someone shared with me this funny story about a man who figured out how to be rich in heaven.  He tried to out-smart God.  He loved money more than anything and so he told his wife: “Now listen.  When I die, I want you to take all my money and put it in the casket with me.  I want to take my money with me into the afterlife.”  He even made his wife promise with all her heart and on a stack of Bibles.  Soon after that, the man died.  He was stretched out in the casket, his wife was sitting there in black and a friend was sitting next to her.  Just before they closed the casket, the wife said, “Wait a minute!”  She pulled out a black box, placed it in the casket, before they closed it.  Her friend asked, “Girl, I know you’re not fool enough to put all that money in there with that man.”  She said, “Listen, I’m a Christian.  I can’t lie.  I promised him that I would put all his money in the casket with him.”  Her friend said, “Did you really just put all his money in there??”  “I sure did,” the wife said, “I wrote him a check.”  You can’t out-smart God, and you sure can’t out-smart your wife.  The truly wise people know they don’t know everything; they don’t pretend to be too smart.

            In the first reading today we meet the wisest man in the Old Testament, King Solomon.  It’s his coronation day as King of Israel, and God offers him a gift: he may ask for anything.  Wow!  It’s like Solomon rubbed the magic lamp and out jumped the Genie to grant him any wish!  What did Solomon ask for?  Did you notice how his request already displays his great wisdom?  Solomon said, “I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act … Give your servant therefore an understanding heart.”  Like Socrates, Solomon humbly confessed his ignorance – he said, “I know that I don’t know!” – which made him ready to receive the gift of wisdom.  You see, Solomon wasn’t too smart for his own good: he didn’t try to out-smart God, or his wife, or anyone else.  The truly wise person always knows he or she has so much more to learn.

             Think about this for a minute.  When was the last time you genuinely and honestly said, “I really don’t know”?  Those can be tough words to utter because they make us look silly or stupid and who wants to look like that??  When I was first ordained a priest I felt like I knew everything.  After all, I had studied 4 years of philosophy and 4 years of theology, I better have some good answers!  Now, however, after 18 years as a priest, I find myself saying more frequently, “I don’t know.”  For example, “I don’t know why some people suffer, especially children.”  “I don’t know why the Church has such tough teachings that cause some people to leave the Church.”  “I don’t know why prayers aren’t answered the way we want.”  “I don’t know why I’m losing my hair!”  “I don’t know why I have to run 3 miles to work off one donut!  How is that fair!?”  “I don’t know what happens to us when we die.”  And there are so many other things I genuinely and sincerely don’t know, but now I’m finally not ashamed to admit it.  Here, however, are the two things I do know: (1) God loves me, and (2) I figure he’ll tell me the answers to these things when I need to know.  I can say with Socrates: “I know that I don’t know.”

             I wonder if husbands and wives would fight less if each was quicker to say, “I don’t know” followed up by “maybe you’re right, honey,” instead of insisting “I am right and you are wrong!”  Maybe there would be less tension and trouble between teenagers and parents if both sides believed they could learn something from the other.  One Ph.D. professor friend of mine said, “When you get a Ph.D. it means you know more and more about less and less.”  That’s very true.  Another professor friend said more sarcastically: “The letters P.H.D really stand for ‘piled higher and deeper’.”  Both those professors saw that one never stops learning; indeed, the more you know, the more you realize how much you still have to learn.

             Do you remember those books that taught children how to recognize the sounds that animals make?  It asked, “What does the duck say?”  The child would answer, “Quack! Quack!”  Or, “What does the cow say?”  And the answer is, “Mooo!”  Well, if we asked the question, “What does the smart person say?”  The best answer is not Einstein’s “E=MC2,” or the philosopher Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.”  Rather, the truly smart person says, like Socrates and Solomon, “I know that I don’t know.  I have so much more to learn.”  Why?  Because that’s what a child says, and Jesus taught that you must become like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  And that, by the way, is a lot smarter than stuffing your casket full of money.

            Praised be Jesus Christ!