On Knowing the Answers

THERE is an old and simple truth, so commonplace as to be frequently ignored, but so vital that it never should be. It is the truth that knowledge alone will not save us. There are unlimited examples of this, some of which we mention merely to indicate the inexhaustibility of those we do not mention: A man may know how to take nourishment, but if he doesn’t, he will starve. A man may know how to breathe, but if he doesn’t, he will smother. These simplest of illustrations are basic to life itself, and, in principle, to most of our troubles, for it is probable that there is not one among us who does not know better than he sometimes does. It is probable, for example, that there are few doctors who live as well as they are capable of telling their patients how to live. It is probable that there are few teachers but who can expound what to do better than they sometimes make a practice of doing. It is probable that there are few private or public advisers but who can tell the world how to get out of its difficulties better than they can deep their own affairs out of difficulties. It is probable that no people, no generation, ever found themselves in serious trouble without some knowledge, some intuition, some warning voice as to the consequences of the course they were pursuing. Of course, there are times when men do perish for lack of knowledge, but more often it isn’t what we don’t know that gets us into trouble, but what we do know and ignore. There are many seemingly “smart people” who seem to know all the “answers.” But “smartness,” so-called, may be of the kind that is akin to wisdom, or it may be merely the brilliant stupidity of those who think that “knowing the answers” gives them immunity from the rules of life and from the consequences of their own doing. But merely “knowing the answers” won’t save anyone. It has been scripturally recorded and long since accepted that “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” But where there is vision, and it is disregarded, they perish also_and with greater condemnation. What good is vision, what good is all the experience of mankind, and all the word of God, and all the record of the ages, if knowing it all, we leave it out of our living? What this world needs is not merely more men who know the “answers,” but also more men who have the good sense to practice what they know.