Thursday, February 26, 2009

Is knowledge finite?

All-knowing. Raised a good Christian, I have had this concept floating around me for as long as I can remember - after all isn't that one of the first things they tell you about God? My almost-nothing-knowing brain has a hard time understanding what that means because knowledge, to me, is not some tangible, finite mass of data that I can wrap a ribbon around and call complete. "Oh, that's where I left my omniscience!" On the contrary, when i think I know something in that finite way, it doesn't take me long to realize that I hadn't looked close enough - that there was more to the issue than black & white.

I feel like the more I seek to know the muddier my perception of truth becomes, and I realize the impossibility of seeing all sides of an issue and knowing a thing. So, while I may in actual fact be more knowledgable at 25 than I was at 15, my 15-year-old self would have been a lot more confident in his knowledge than the person writing this post. Why is there a difference between our self-perceived knowledge and our actual mastery of ideas? And if we cannot measure knowledge by our self-perception, what tools do we have to measure our growth? At what point could we ever say we've figured it all out? (look at all these questions!)

Does God have questions? And if he does, is he still all knowing? Could it be that an all-knowing God does not know everything, but rather has all answers available to Him?

I invite any insight you might have about the finity of knowledge and maybe we can have a conversation.