My wife sometimes says of someone, ‘He is ignorant.’ She does not mean that he lacks knowledge. She means he has an attitude of rejection, a refusal to accept correction or new knowledge. Especially knowledge which is uncomfortable.
It is important to recognise the reality of such ignorance. Too often we tend to think of knowledge in purely cognitive terms, that is as only a process of learning and retaining information, a process which is neutral. But learning and memory cannot be isolated from the other faculties of the mind.
We choose what we want to learn, switching off or on accordingly, and we react emotionally against disagreeable data. We may learn something and remember it. But then we reject it, not because we’ve forgotten it but because we don’t like it. For us ‘it is not true’. Such refusal to accept and learn is especially prominent for knowledge in relation to God and is a key manifestation of the corruption of the mind by sin.
— This article continues for ET members
