SCRIPTURE: “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:” (1 Peter 1:14).
QUOTE: “Better be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune.” -Plato
NOTE:
Falling: Hosea professed the Lord’s declaration to the nation, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children” (Hosea 4:6). When the psalmist stated, “But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Ps. 73:2-3). He further states of such thinking, “So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee” (Ps. 73:22).
Isaiah wrote of the ignorant, “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst” (Isa. 5:13). When people do not like to retain the knowledge of God in their minds, depravity in all its forms is soon to follow (Rom. 1:28-32). Therefore, Peter exhorts to the obedient ones, “For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1 Peter 2:15).
ILLUSTRATION:
All leaders have blind spots – known unknowns (things they know they do not know) and unknown unknowns (things they don’t know that they don’t know). A leader with confident humility isn’t devoid of blind spots. Rather they put measures in place to counter those blind spots. Ignorant leaders refuse to see their blind spots. It’s not their ignorance that gets in the way of their success, but their attitude to that ignorance. Their ignorance isn’t limited to their skills and abilities, but also how they come across to others. How they engage with their teams.
REFLECTION:
As a leader can you be humble enough to learn from the people you lead?
TWO YEAR BIBLE READING: Job 28, Psalm 118