Concerning Varieties of Ignorance – Sunday, April 08, 1945
In childhood we are excused for many mistakes on grounds of ignorance. But long after we cease to be children there are times when we would like to claim the same immunity—which brings before us the timeworn question as to how long and to what extent ignorance is excusable. The question would be easier to answer if all ignorance were of the same kind—but this it is not. Sometimes ignorance is honest and unavoidable. But there is also the ignorance of which Peter wrote, “ . . . they willingly are ignorant . . . ” (11 Peter 3:5) –the willful ignorance that prefers to believe what it finds convenient to believe.
There are also varieties and degrees of educated ignorance, whereby, knowing full well the consequences, we disregard many laws—economic laws, moral laws, laws of health, and others, for which we later pay, and from which much learning does not save us. There should also be added to the list a type of malicious ignorance—the ignorance that prefers to believe sensational rumor rather than sober fact; the ignorance that chooses to credit the worst about other people even when the worst isn’t true. Some ignorance is genuinely naïve, but there is also a “smart” and sophisticated ignorance—the ignorance that pretends to have a new answer for all the old questions; the ignorance that cynically brushes aside the answers which God and time and experience have given.
There are some things in life for which there are no “new” answers. There is yet another kind of ignorance that should not go unmentioned—the ignorance of laziness and indifference; the ignorance of him who is self-satisfied; the ignorance of him who ignores the wisdom of the past, or who can’t be bothered to search the scriptures, or who is indifferent to the advancing knowledge of his own generation, and yet who feels qualified to criticize what he doesn’t know; the ignorance of him who doesn’t want his life to be disturbed by greater light, more truth, new discovery; who wants to believe only what he wants to believe, because it requires an uncomfortable adjustment to believe anything else, even if it happens to be true. Again, how long shall ignorance be justified?
The question is perhaps beyond answer, but this much can be said: Even though we may not be condemned in honest ignorance, yet “it is impossible for a man to be ‘saved’ in ignorance,”* because the progress of mankind, temporally or eternally, requires a condition of enlightenment—and not of darkness. And while we may not be accountable for what we do not know and cannot know, we may surely expect to be accountable for what we readily could have known but willfully disregarded, or were too lazy or indifferent to discover.
*Doctrine and Covenants 131:6
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Apr. 8, 1945. Copyright 1945.
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April 08, 1945
Broadcast Number 0,816