Willful Ignorance

Gnosis is the active search for wisdom. Willful ignorance is just the opposite of Gnosis. It means choosing to remain in ignorance about spiritual things. The most common form of willful ignorance is reading sacred literature only within your own religious tradition. I can well imagine God asking a Muslim why he never studied Christianity. I can also imagine it the other way around. Fundamentalists in both the World of Islam and the World of Christianity make the same fundamental error – teaching their people to avoid anything that is not consistent with their religious beliefs. This is willful ignorance.

The purpose in becoming conversant with other religious traditions is not to change your current religious beliefs. It is to better understand your religion. Also, truth is where you find it. God has given all peoples in all times a measure of truth. Put all the measures together and you have one great big cumulative truth.

You must respect truth when you find it. Remember, God has no religion and belongs to no religious denomination. God simply is. We sit around and try to guess what that “is” is. God does not play such games. Most of what we attribute to God is a human projection. We would like God to be more “human like” so we can better understand God.

Any religious belief that is so wobbly it cannot withstand inspection is no real belief at all. It is a simply a social meme transmitted from one generation to another. Like a gene, the memes’ job is to thoughtlessly transmit itself from one generation to another.

You are particularly prone to willful ignorance if you were born in the “truth.” If you were born in a Jewish family – you are likely to have a leaning toward Judaism rather than Buddhism. This does not make you any more right. In fact it may make you more sloppy in your scholarship. If you think you have the “truth” why would you look further? This is true of any religion of birth.

If you are a Gnostic, you probably have a rather large reading library. I would hope it consists of several hundred volumes. It would take that many to do justice to even a cursory examination of the world’s sacred traditions. The old adage - “study to show yourself approved” – is probably still pretty good advice for all of us. At least, study, is a first step against willful ignorance.

Leland Kaiser