Is ignorance bliss?

Are most people content to be ignorant? Does ignorance create bliss? According to an article written by Himanshu Mishra (University of Utah), Baba Shiv (Stanford University), and Dhananjay Nayakankuppam (University of Iowa), people who are about to make decisions do not like to be ignorant — they want as many details as possible. However, after they've made a decision, people want to be happy with it and thereafter only want vague information. "It does appear that vagueness can actually make one more optimistic about one's own life choices and subjective well-being by allowing one to see what one wants to see—a case of ignorance truly being bliss!" the authors write.

This article got me to wondering if this so-called "Blissful Ignorance Effect" has followed many of us over into our spiritual lives. Sometimes it seems we're afraid to study Scripture for fear we might discover we've made a poor decision to follow Christ. Or, maybe we've been brought up to believe certain things and we're afraid they won't stand up to the scrutiny of Scripture. If the latter is the case, what's so terribly bad about that? Are we secretly afraid our faith will completely fall a part if we discover some of the things we were taught in Sunday School weren't exactly right? The fact is, faith is not something we have to strive to hold onto because it too is a gift God has given us.

But God does want us to grow to spiritual maturity, and He has made abundant provision for every one of us to do so. In Corinthians Paul rebukes the believers for not having grown. The trouble with the Corinthians was that they did not have much appetite for the Word; they did not have a passion to know and obey the truth. And we know that "the babe in Christ who craves pure spiritual milk will grow up in their salvation, now that they have tasted that the Lord is good" (1 Pet 2:2-3). This was the trouble with the Hebrew believers, too. When the author of the book would have gone further into the great subject of Christ as "high priest in the order of Melchizedek," he was forced to write:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn (Heb 5:11).

Scriptural ignorance is not bliss, for it is there that we learn who we are in Christ and how we are to live!

During World War II there were many stories about parents having prearranged a code with their sons so that "Johnny" could let them know to which theater of war he had been sent. These parents would pour over and study these letters in detail in an effort to make out what "Johnny" was trying to make them understand.

Such interest and concern over a letter from "Johnny"! And appropriately so, but do we show such interest in God's Word to us? Let's not be guilty of being content with "vague information," with knowing only a few passages which "warm our hearts."