Read part two and part three of this series. 

In these Assembly talks, I want to explore how to rightly order our loves when we seek after knowledge. Believe it or not, just because knowledge is a good, this doesn’t mean that every kind of knowledge, or any old way of seeking after it, is good. In fact, this is how it is with every good that God has given us to pursue.

Medieval Christians spent a great deal of time classifying different sins. You’ve probably heard of the “seven deadly sins,” which were the big categories under which they classified all the others, but they had names for a lot more than seven. And “sins” isn’t quite the right word, actually. The word “vice” is much more precise, since it described a bad habit or disordered disposition that was bent toward certain actions which might in principle be good or helpful, but which have become distorted, misdirected, or out of control..

Anyway, one of the vices they talked a lot about was that of curiositas, “curiosity.” Why? How could seeking after knowledge ever be a bad thing? We live in the so-called “information age” and the “information economy” and have convinced ourselves that access to more and more information must be a good thing. But this is an idea that we want to challenge—on three grounds. First, it matters what we know—not all knowledge is a good thing. Second, it matters how we know, how we orient our minds and hearts toward the objects of our knowledge, and our pursuit of them. Third, it matters why we know—what the purpose of our pursuit of knowledge is. In each of these, there is a good way to seek knowledge, which the medievals named with the virtue of studiosity, and a bad way, which they called curiosity. The medieval monks who named the vice liked to organize things in groups of three—like the Trinity—or groups of seven—like the seven days of creation. So today and Thursday, I want to explore three forms of the vice of curiosity that relate to what we know, three that relate to how we know, and one that relates to why we know—giving us the grand total of seven.

So, how might we sin in what we seek to know? Well, we can go astray by demanding to know things that only God can know—for instance, the future, something that we often deeply desire to know, but can’t. Sometimes we try to arrange our lives in a way that will make the future certain, and pretend we have succeeded, but this is always false. We can also seek to know theological mysteries that lie beyond our grasp. And there are some things—evil things—that we might be able to know, but should not seek to. So, all of these mistakes we can call this arrogant curiosity

But there are some things that are entirely appropriate for some humans to know, but maybe not for me to know. There are plenty of things out there in the world that simply do not and should not concern us, and if I try to pay attention to them, it will only take me away from the vocation that God has given me. Our lives are busy enough as it is that you might think we would find it easy to ignore anything that we don’t need to know, but we don’t. More than 2,000 years ago, Plutarch discussed this vice of meddling curiosity, in which we pry into other’s affairs and gossip about them. And you can bet that medieval monks, living together for years in tight-knit communities, had plenty of experience with this problem.

Finally, we can err by seeking to know things that are indeed ours to know, but not now, turning ourselves away from the tasks and people that God has put directly before us to pursue matters that he will call us to in due time. In a famous passage in Book X of Augustine’s Confessions, which the High School students will be reading, Augustine discusses this vice of distracting curiosity, lamenting how often he is pulled out of from serious thought and spiritual meditation by the sight of a dog chasing a hare or a lizard catching flies. There are plenty of things fine to know in principle, but they are not the task to which God has called us now. Indeed, as the medievals well recognized, curiosity and sloth—that is, laziness—often go hand in hand. 

Now, all of you can probably think back to times in your life—probably to times in the last week—when you fell prey to each of these temptations. They are deeply wired into our sinful natures. However, there are ways in which they have been literally wired into the technologies that make up our world today. Now that such vast frontiers of knowledge have been opened to our instant access by the digital revolution, we are tempted to think that anything we want to know can and should be known on demand. We become impatient with mystery and with patient reasoning, and this impatience is deeply destructive to Christian discipleship. This is arrogant curiosity, thinking that because we are capable of knowing so much, we ought to be able to know everything. What about meddling curiosity—always wanting to know what everyone else is up to, rather than thinking about what we are supposed to be up to? This is the entire business model of social media! Networks like Facebook can help strengthen healthy relationships by allowing us to keep in touch with others from a distance, but they can easily encourage unhealthy dynamics of gossip and comparing ourselves to others, or seeking to pry into other people’s business. And of course I think we all have ample experience of distracted curiosity in relation to technology. Augustine may have been a bit over-scrupulous in worrying about watching the lizard, but when we find ourselves distracted from our work by every little notification on our iPhone or desktop, or checking Facebook ten times a day, we can hardly say that he didn’t have a point.

Overcoming these temptations is not easy; overcoming temptation rarely is. But the basic strategy should be pretty obvious: fix your eyes on Jesus, and the tasks that he has set you to do. As you grow older into adulthood, He will often leave these tasks less defined, and you will have to constantly seek His guidance to know what he wants you to be doing right now. But one great blessing you have right now as students—even if you might not always see it as one—is that you have this task clearly defined for you. We give you a long list of tasks to focus your attention on each week, and your parents will give you more, no doubt. Of course, life is not supposed to be all work and no play. But you can enjoy your play much more when it comes as a reward for completion of the tasks set before you. When you are tempted to take time pursuing forbidden knowledge, or knowledge of someone else’s business, or just knowledge of something that’s irrelevant to the task at hand, just ask yourself, “Does this help me achieve what God has given me to do right now?” and if not, scrupulously ignore it, and fix your eyes on the path ahead.

Dr. Brad Littlejohn is Headmaster at Loudoun Classical School. Read his full bio here.