What does it mean to know enough to be dangerous?
When I think about knowing something, it implies that I had to learn what it is I know. Things like breathing and eating for the most part, your body does on it’s own. Everything else we have to learn to do. This means we have the ability to learn complicated and even the simplest of tasks.
Lets take walking for instance. When you are little someone could just explain to you how to walk, and you may understand that it takes standing on two legs, balance and then placing one foot infront of the other. But until you stand up, until you put one foot infront of the other, you only know enough to be dangerous.
On a larger scale. Thank about the lieutenant in the Army just out of West Point in his first combat duty. He may know battlefield and war tactics. He may understand weaponry. But until he is in command of the battlefield and fires or directs the weapons, he only knows enough to be dangerous. His choice when it comes to action is only limited to the knowledge he has. He has not been battle tested, and quickly learns he has to rely on those with more experience.
Have you ever been in a situation where you think you know how you should react, because you have spent years studying for that very moment, only to not know exactly what needs to be done. The knowledge is there but the actions just don’t happen. Like the situations described above most everything we do, even actions that become automatic, have to be put together with action. That action and learning how our knowledge translates when in action becomes wisdom. Wisdom doesn’t always mean having the right affect or outcome.
As we experience more and more, wisdom is the understanding of how our knowledge when applied will affect the outcome of a situation or activity. And with that wisdom our choices for action become more refined, and the affect on the outcome becomes more certain. We understand that link between balance and motion when walking, and the Lieutenant learns when to advance, flank, hold the battlefield, and even retreat.
Well when it comes to doing God’s will, when it comes to doing his work… I don’t want to be dangerous anymore. I want to be effective. Dangerous is easy, effective is hard.
Ecclesiastes 2:12-14
12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom,
and also madness and folly.
What more can the king’s successor do
than what has already been done?
13 I saw that wisdom is better than folly,
just as light is better than darkness.
14 The wise have eyes in their heads,
while the fool walks in the darkness;
but I came to realize
that the same fate overtakes them both.
