If you have ever had children you will understand all too well that there comes a time when your child believes he or she knows more than you do. Something seems to happen sometime in the teenage years that convinces them that they are the smart ones and you just don’t get it. You may even remember a time when you were like this to your parents. I have a theory about this. I wonder if this happens because children grow up around people who know more than them. It’s just the way it is. When you are little, older people have more experience and have had more time to learn things. You can’t help but be surrounded by what to your brain must seem like a bunch of know-it-alls.
But then you finally get to be old enough to learn a few things about a subject, and now you feel like you are the one that has the knowledge. Suddenly your parents aren’t the source of all information. You like this feeling, so what do you do? You act like you know better about a lot of things.
You act like you know better.
This phenomenon doesn’t just exist with teenagers. Perhaps you have heard of the term “mansplaining.” It’s a word that has become a part of our culture in the last ten years, and it occurs when a man talks in a condescending way about something to someone else, particularly when the man doesn’t have complete knowledge of what he is talking about. I traced the word’s possible roots back to a story by American writer Rebecca Solnit. She remembers a party she went to with a friend where the host talked down to her about a popular book that she should have been aware of. Her friend had to interject several times, telling the host the book in question was in fact authored by Solnit. Finally he realized what was been told to him, and his face “went ashen.”
The host thought he knew better.
Or what about the Dunning-Kruger effect? It’s a bias where people believe they are smarter or more knowledgeable than they really are. Here is more of the subject from verywellmind.com:
Low performers are unable to recognize the skill and competence levels of other people, which is part of the reason why they consistently view themselves as better, more capable, and more knowledgeable than others.
You see this kind of thing a lot on social media, where someone will read one article about something and go on to proclaim themselves an expert.
We are all very good at thinking we know better.
So here’s the kicker: Was there ever a time you thought you knew better than God?
The bible gives us examples of people who thought that way. The Adam and Eve story is one example. Another comes from the book of Jonah. Right off the bat in that book we see how Jonah felt about God’s direction for him.
Jonah 1:1-3
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
Ninevah was in modern day Iraq. Tarshish was about as far away as Jonah could have gone from Ninevah in the known world, being in what is now the Spain/Portugal area. Jonah didn’t just refuse to go where God wanted him to go. He went the opposite direction with the intention of getting as far away as possible. Why? Ninevah was the Assyrian capital, and Assyria conquered Israel and tried to take Jerusalem. And God specifically stated that the people there were wicked. What must have gone through the mind of Jonah upon hearing the command from God?
“Going to Ninevah is a death sentence. And besides, they aren’t going to repent. There is nothing I can do to make it happen.”
Jonah thought he knew better too.
Ask any child that has grown up in church about this story and what will he or she say it is about? They will most likely say it is all about the whale (or big fish). But when you look deeper you realize that the story of Jonah doesn’t have a lot to do with that. The story of Jonah is about a good man who thought he knew better than God, and when he realized he didn’t, God gave him a second chance. Here is what happened when he took it and went to Ninevah as he was told to do:
Jonah 3:1-10
1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
The real miracle here is that the Ninevites repented and were saved from destruction.
And it all happened because Jonah figured out that he didn’t in fact know better than God.
Let that be a lesson to us today. We should know better than to know better.
God Bless