knowing better

I listened to a great audio teaching in a Bible Study yesterday from Rich Nathan, a Vineyard pastor of a congregation  in Columbus, OH, I believe.  He began his teaching talking about the following categories of "unknowns" and "knowns" in our lives:

There are some things we know we know.  I know I know my name.  I know I know how to tie my shoe.

There are some things we know we don't know.  I know that I don't know how to knit.  You could give me knitting needles and yarn, and I know I would not know how to make anything you'd like to wear.  I know that I do not know how to program a computer.  I scarcely know how to turn one on and get to this page to type a blog post.

There are some things we don't know that we don't know.  There are whole bodies of knowledge that I'm completely unaware exist.  I can't even give you an example of this one because if I could, then it wouldn't fit in this category.

Then, there are some things we know that we make unknown.  This is the realm Rich talked about.  The things we know but pretend not to know.  The things we turn a blind eye to, live in denial about, choose to walk away from, to "forget" and "unknow".  Rich gave the example of intelligent bankers in our nation who knew that they should not have given loans to people who would likely not be able to repay the banks but chose to anyway.  Or persons in an affair who knows the truth of their situation but continue on anyway.  Or people who know of the principles and practices of health and nutrition but choose to ignore them.  Nathan goes on to speak of Deuteronomy as the book where God calls his people out of unknowing knowns into rememberance...Remember God when life is hard...Remember God when life is easy...Remember God by remembering our need for Christian community.

I was thinking about these last two categories as related to the pursuit of justice and racial reconciliation as Christ-followers.  There are some things we don't know that we don't know, but there are an awful lot of things that we know but are choosing to keep "unknown".  All we have to do is read the Bible, read the paper, look around our segregated communities, listen to the news reports, etc...We'd have to live under a rock to not know that things are not as they should be.  What do we do with this knowing once we turn from denial and acknowledge our awareness of it? That's a key question that is leading me these days.  That's why diverse Christian community (across race, socio-economics, cultural) is such a critical need for me...if I am only in Christian community with people similar to me, I will likely remain ignorant, and worse, to pretend to remain ignorant.  Being with people who are different from me forces me to live in the reality, grapple with it, and hopefully "know better" so that I might grow and act as an ambassador of Christ.