Today's lesson comes from John chapter 9 verses 40 and 41:
40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt;4 but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.
Socrates said, "As for me, all I know is that I know nothing."
That is a well remembered quote. Less well remembered is where he said it. The quote is recorded in Plato's Apology, which was an account of Socrates's defense against charges that he was corrupting the youth by not believing the conventional gods. Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death -- killed by the blind piety of his age.
Jesus was killed by the same blindness. In fact, it was in naming that blindness that he earned his condemnation. When he said things like "You are blind guides of the blind," and "now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains," or "take the log out of your own eye so you can see well enough to remove the splinter from your neighbor's eye," he cast shadows of doubt upon those who were said to have the light of knowledge. For that they killed him.
All of this makes me think greater humility is in order. As the Apostle Paul said, "We see through a glass darkly." What we know is partial and limited at best and there's just a lot we don't know. And we should never condemn those who pose questions and challenges to our conventional ways of thinking about God, the universe, our world, and what it means to be human.
As one of my teachers Tony Campolo likes to say, "I may be wrong." And I would hate to be so wrong in what I think is right that I end up condemning the next Socrates -- or Jesus.
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