Welcome to the Verbal Motivation podcast. Where we talk about the things that motivate our lives, our religion and our relationships. My name is Nathan Vail. If you would like to comment on this or other episodes, please leave me a voicemail at 530-876-4153 or you can send an email to verbalmotivation@gmail.com.
This is episode number 13 called A True…Waste Of Time.
Many years ago I was standing in front of a mural of the Virgin Mary in a small town in Hungary, admiring the beauty and detail of the work the artist was able to accomplish, despite the fact that it was painted on the outside wall of a building. There was a man standing there also admiring the work. He suddenly volunteered to me that he knew that Catholicism was true, because he once stood in front of a mural of the virgin Mary and an actual tear rolled out of her eye. I had no desire to make light of what was obviously a special experience to him. So I didn’t respond, except to acknowledge him with a friendly nod. Despite my disinterest in the conversation, he pressed me to explain how that could have happened, so I finally said to him, “If I was the mother of the Savior of the world and people were praying to me instead of to him for forgiveness, I would be crying too.” Not the answer he was looking for.
But what is knowledge?
To answer that question, I think we need to start with the fact that knowledge is not a thing of itself. In other words, you can’t eat it or invite it to spend time with you nor is it attractive or admirable.
In the field of chemistry, there are substances known as catalysts that may appear to be inactive or have little use by themselves but can significantly enhance the rate of a chemical reaction when combined with other substances.
Similarly, knowledge is only useful in application. In other words, it’s a catalyst.
If you are not driving, do a little experiment with me. Get your scale out if you would and weigh yourself. Now, consider this truth: Eating less and exercising more will result in weight loss. Let that marinate in your mind for a minute and then weigh yourself again. How much weight did you lose as a result of knowing that truth?
Of course I’m being facetious, but the point is valid.
Unfortunately, we sometimes act as if knowledge is a thing of itself and as a result, we take no further action than just knowing something.
Let’s take the most important truth there is, that Jesus Christ lives and died for each of us. Some people feel that just knowing that fact or confessing it is enough.
But consider James 2:19 which says, “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.”
This was echoed by a man in the New Testament who was possessed by many devils and when confronted by Jesus, “...cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God [the] most high?” Luke 8:28
Even Satan and his devils know and confess Jesus. Just knowing something or believing it doesn't make you a part of it. Any more than wearing Nike shoes makes you an heir to their fortune.
Consider this. The pre-existence is referred to as the first estate. We lived and learned there for an eternity, but it was as if we were viewing knowledge from the other side of a piece of glass, because we had no bodies. Learning is all we could do. Coming to earth is referred to as the second estate, where we are able to have experiences. But what happens if we spend our second estate acting like we are still in the first estate, chasing only knowledge?
Imagine a Harvard educated doctor applying for a CNA job at a nursing home instead of starting a residency at a hospital. That’s what we are doing if we re-live the preexistance on earth by thinking that knowledge is all we need.
Albert einstein said,“the only source of knowledge is experience”
I think it is equally important to understand that all truth is not equal.Throughout my life I have heard many discussions about the location of the Lost Ten Tribes. Interesting to be sure, but this is what I like to call a true… waste of time. To be clear, the Ten Tribes are somewhere. And they are important in many ways. But discovering their physical location will do little for a person's salvation.
Important truths are easy to identify because they relate directly to the salvation of mankind. Faith, repentance, baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, to name a few. These are things that may not be hip, edgy or the next best thing, but without them we cannot be saved.
Joseph Smith once cautioned, “Don’t climb to the extreme branches of the tree, for there is danger of falling: cling close to the trunk.”
I was once approached by a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. They asked me when the end of the world would be. In the friendliest tone I could muster I said, “don’t know, don’t care.”
They weren’t entirely sure how to respond to that, so I offered an analogy. If you were taking a math class, I said and you know a test is coming and you spend all your time studying the type of paper and logic behind the time of the test or size of the room in which it will be held, that knowledge will do nothing for you on test day. But if you spend all your time perfecting your math skills, you will have no fear of the test or care when the test is, because you are ready.
That was not a perfect analogy, but I came up with it on the fly. The point however, is that we should be focused on the things that matter, even if they aren’t as interesting as the end of days.
There is a science guy named Michael Stevens. He talked once about a website called The Library of Babel. It’s a fascinating website that uses an algorithm to make every possible combination of the English alphabet with numbers, spaces and periods; up to 3200 characters. The interesting part is that this website has figured out a way to catalog every combination so that it can be found consistently. You can find the permanent location of the description of your birth. Every possible description of your death. Every poem, every joke, every lie. Everything that can be known is in there, somewhere. But it is so vast you can’t possibly find anything useful, unless you already know it. So, it’s all knowing but not applicable in any useful way.
I once heard of a person who is a family and marriage counselor getting a divorce. No one could know more about how to not get divorced than a marriage counselor. Demonstrating perfectly that knowledge and the application of that knowledge are completely different.
Here's an interesting question, if everyone does it, does that make it true? This is the challenge that so many of us face right now where movies and social media produce what appear to be truth by virtue of everyone doing it or fictional ends that are not reflective of real life. It is the ultimate peer pressure.
I once hiked with our young men to the top of White Mountain; one of several peaks in California that is over 14,000 feet. We arrived at the base camp a day early to let our bodies begin to acclimate to the higher altitudes. After setting up camp we climbed to the top of a large hill to watch the sunset. Moments after arriving on top, with breathtaking views in every direction and spectacular color in the sky, one of the boys realized that he was getting cell service and within seconds every boy was playing Fortnite on their phones. Instead of drinking in the beauty of nature, the digital pied piper of our day hypnotized them away into the soft glow of their smartphone world; rendering the beauty all around them irrelevant. Not because it didn't exist, but because they weren't experiencing it.
When I was in high school I took a debate class. I cherished the idea of winning. Our debate coach was not interested in our strengths, he wanted us to learn the art of debate. So each week we had a competition but not only did we have to draw the topic out of a hat, we separately had to draw whether we would argue for or against it. My record was good. I was on a roll that year. Then one week I drew the topic of abortion and then drew the affirmative, so I was to argue for it. My first thought was to refuse. But there was my record to consider. I decided to go ahead with the debate and I won handily. I didn’t agree with anything I said but I did it with such passion and charisma that everyone believed me.
Unfortunately it is all too easy to confuse charisma with truth.
I was just reading about a guy who won one of the biggest lottery jackpots in history and became so full of himself that he declared one day in a bragging fit that he had more money than God.
Similarly, there are people who are so smart, they have become dumb. Because they think that knowledge is a thing of itself and sometimes they even think they have more of it than the God that created this world.
But unused knowledge and a lack of knowledge are synonymous. It will be a sad day if we show up to the judgment bar, armed only with such empty knowledge as the location of the Lost Ten Tribes.
My name is Nathan Vail and this is the Verbal Motivation Podcast.