It was one of those calls you dread as a pastor and wife. Car accident. One of your congregants. Mom of four. Younger than forty. Not expected to live.
And in a small town it’s the call that everyone else dreads and…anticipates?
In the hours that followed that phone call, more calls and emails flooded in as everyone tried to figure out what was going on and what they could do to help. Some were so “helpful” that later the hospital staff had to speak to my husband to let him know that they would not be allowing any more of our people in the hospital with their volunteer badges because so many showed up on that day this woman was in our local hospital and they made themselves a nuisance to the staff.
Don’t get me wrong–our people meant well; they truly desired to help in a crisis situation, but it is just one of many examples we’ve seen over the years that demonstrates the insatiable need for the human mind to want to know. Some call it curiosity, but sometimes we need to call it for what it is—nosiness!
And why? I think there are a number of reasons, but it does demonstrate the great lack of patience we have as human beings. We want to know. Now. It reveals that we desire to be in control of things. Knowledge is power after all, and there is something about knowing something before everyone else, whether it is good or bad news or even gossip, that we are secretly thrilled, if we are honest with ourselves.
We’ve seen it in people at every level of church involvement, from elders and deacons and wives to the most fringe attenders. People are very eager to hear the latest news about people in our church, sometimes under the guise of desiring to pray for that person.
You can see it as soon as a situation gets brought up in a meeting. There is always that person who jumps in to let others know that they’ve already talked to so-and-so and have the latest information on how the surgery went that day. Then there is the one who always has the scoop on the newly married couple in the church who are expecting their first baby.
We do sometimes need to know things in order to pray effectively, and it’s great that we want to rejoice with others in sharing good news, but some things are just not necessary for us to know, at least right away. We need to check our own motives as pastors and wives as we are often those in the know. Our church members need to be challenged to examine why they so eagerly seek to know everything about everyone. The root of all of this is pride—a desire to be like God and know what He knows, to know more than others to feel superior and important.
It all sounds strangely like the villain from the Christmas story. King Herod, otherwise known as Herod the Great, wanted to be known as that because he was so full of himself. Whenever he saw anyone who had any influence or potential that was greater than himself, he saw them as a threat. We know that when he heard all this “news” about an angelic chorus on some hillside and rumours of a new King of the Jews being born, he panicked.
He went into investigation mode. He called all of the wise men and scribes and seers—everyone who could put him in the know about this new king rumoured to be born. He had to know before everyone else, and he wanted to be one of the first to see him, too, for his own evil purposes.
That evil came out of his prideful desire to know and be known, to be the one who had control of what was going on around him and to have others looking up to him and bowing down before him. No wonder he was so impatient to snuff out this threat!
And, as the Christmas story goes, that’s exactly what he tried to do. He ordered the slaughter of all the male children two years and under in the vicinity based on the knowledge he’d received from the scribes and teachers of the Law who knew the prophecies.
When the wise men came looking for Jesus, Herod knew he was in trouble, and being in the know was so important to him that it led to mass murder and persecution of the Son of God whose parents had to flee to the foreign land of Egypt to escape his wrath. This isn’t exactly the sparkly, whimsical scene we see portrayed on our Christmas cards, but it is a part of the story! More on that next week….
All too easily, like Herod we can get impatient to know things, and in so doing we reveal a heart like his—a heart that is prone to thinking oneself superior enough that when we can’t know it all we start panicking and try to control everyone around us, destroying them in the wake of our impatience.
As we enter this season of celebration, I would challenge us all to be more concerned not about being in the know but about being known by the God who was patient enough to wait for the fullness of time to reveal His marvelous plan in taking on the flesh and bone of His image-bearers (see Galatians 4:4).
That is the greatest knowledge—to be in the know or in the unknown with the One who truly does know it all and deserves the title of Great.
