When knowing too much is running out ahead of God

I have long been of the school of thought that knowledge is empowering. The more information one has about the circumstances one finds oneself in, the more helpful it is.

Our transport systems have taken this on board too. Increasingly, when faced with inevitable delays and cancellations, particularly on our train network, information comes across a tannoy system explaining the causes in lots of detail, concluding in announcing the likely time you will be delayed. Psychologists have recognised that anxiety and frustration in passengers is reduced when people are told that their train will be x number of minutes late rather than left hoping constantly for the arrival of a train. This makes sense; it enables you to make a decision for alternative travel or to go for coffee resigned to the long delay, or continue to wait.

However, having knowledge is not always helpful or empowering.

Suzanne O’Sullivan’s excellent book The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far examines the negative impact of “knowing too much” or demanding explanations for everything. She particularly looks at the dangers of predictive medicine, genetic testing and screening programmes which indicate impending health problems.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not always empowering and can be life-limiting. I was surprised to learn that within the community of Huntington’s disease, when faced with the choice, around 90% of people worldwide who go to a genetics clinic and are offered the test ultimately choose not to have it. Knowledge comes with consequences, one of which is what O’Sullivan describes as the “nocebo” effect, in which negative expectations can cause a patient to interpret every physical twinge as an early onset of the illness.

We live in an information age, yet this recent explosion in knowledge has come with huge rises in anxiety. I have been spending a lot of time in the book of Ecclesiastes, and the phrase “you do not know” recurs repeatedly. It struck me that despite the knowledge we think we have, the preacher’s ancient wisdom still stands. However much we advance, we always live in ignorance of the future, yet we exist in a culture that, at first glance, believes having information will enable us to control it. As believers, learning to trust our unknown future to our heavenly Father, who knows everything, is fundamental to our relationship with God. It is not that our future is uncertain. It is sure and certain, but our journey there, what we must face and why, is hidden from us.

How much do we need to know? And what do we need to know? God is omniscient. God is outside of time. He knows the beginning, the middle and the end. It is why we can take refuge in Him when life is buffeting us with all the many challenging circumstances we may be facing or may yet have to face. I love the wisdom in Corrie Ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place, especially the advice she received from her father when she was a child. She was afraid that one day her father would die. Her father said: “Our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things – don’t run out ahead of Him.”

Do we run out ahead of God? Are we anxious about everything and the thousands of what-ifs that exist? Nineteenth-century author George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch about how our feeble frames struggle with the weight of knowing about tragedy and pain. She described it as “like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence”. Our society hears and knows many things that previous generations never knew. We scroll through media feeds endlessly, craving more and more information. Is this why we are the anxious generation? We have lost our ability to seek refuge in God; He is our fortress, and we cannot be shaken in Him.

This is a continual challenge – rest in Him. I am now determined to ask myself if I really need to know something. It will be good for us all to fully understand what it looks like to entrust ourselves to our heavenly Father in all circumstances, living moment by moment, content in the most essential knowledge of all – our wise Father cares for us.