You can’t do until you know, you can’t truly know until you do and if you don’t do, you can’t become…it is the paradox of knowledge and action.
When can we say that we become knowledgeable? Is it when we are taught or when we learn or when we put to action what we learnt or when we are examined in a test and pass with flying colours?
It is a serious question to ponder by all.
Obviously no one will know that you know until you do something with what you know. But even beyond the matter of showing the world that you know, we are talking about what is the proof that I know?
Examinations over decades have become a yardstick to measure those that know but is it a true judge when we consider impact in the lives of people and society?
People that argue against examinations have posited that examinations make more people feel they are ignorant or just plain dull.
Peter Tait, a headmaster in a preparatory school wrote in an article in the Telegraph, “We might well ask, are our schools guilty of promoting a passive form of intelligence, asking ‘what do you know’ rather than ‘what can you do’ simply because of the limitations of assessment?”
The question of how to test knowledge has plagued educationists for many years and I am not trying to answer it here but I dare say that the only proof that (no one can argue with that) you know is that you are able to do that which you claim to know.
But let us also consider another interesting paradox before we wrap up our thoughts, what is called by philosophers “The paradox of choice:The more choices you have, the less satisfied you are with each one.”
I am not examining this but I am asking that what you claim to know isn’t it because that is all you know? If possibly you have more options(choices) in knowing, will you find yourself in a place of confusion about what you know?
It is like choosing someone to marry, if you have two options before you, one is good and the other is bad based on your knowledge. It is pretty straightforward right? What if based on your knowledge, both of them are good, what will govern your choice? How will you come to be satisfied with your action?
At the end of it all, you will have to choose based on faith. You will put action to your knowledge inspite of the fact that you do not know it all and you will commit to your choice.
“Faith is putting action to knowledge”
Choosing based on faith, the God kind of faith, is then based on your knowledge of God, you can’t effectively choose until you know Him more.
The more you know Him; the more your options narrow, the less confusions you have in your heart, the easier it gets for you to DO that which you know and the more you become what/who you know.
For us as believers, our brother, James via the scriptures have an admonition in Jas.1.22, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
He reminds us in Jas.2.17 “Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?” MSG
So we say, “I know, I do and I am”.
They are linked together, take them apart, the other becomes a show of foolish arrogance, or ignorance or just plain stupidity…or a case of an empty barrel makes the loudest noise.
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©Omoniyi Temitope Mayowa
topeomoniyi@gmail.com
Read more at www.otmwrites.com
