The Church Father Jerome observed, “It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.” He was commenting on those who are completely unaware of their own sins or flaws.
Jerome is most famous for producing the definitive translation of the Bible into Latin, which at that time was the common tongue and is still the official language of the Catholic Church. An Ancient Greece expert once told me that Jerome’s understanding of Greek and Hebrew was so profound that translations from his Vulgate are more accurate than modern translations from the original languages because scholars of today don’t have the knowledge he had. But with Jerome’s linguistic knowledge came an equally profound understanding of the messages that the Bible verses conveyed. And self-examination is a constant theme throughout both the Old and New Testaments.
Psalm 138/139:23-24 prays, “Prove me, O God, and know my heart: examine me, and know my paths. And see if there be in me the way of iniquity: and lead me in the eternal way.” Lamentations 3:40 advises, “Let us examine our ways, and seek, and return to the Lord.”
Likewise, 2 Corinthians 13:5 urges, “Try your own selves if you be in the faith; prove ye yourselves.” Galatians 6:4 says, “But let every one prove his own work, and so he shall have glory in himself only, and not in another.” Jesus Himself provides a very vivid and alarming illustration of what a man is like if he lacks self-knowledge or self-examination (Matthew 23:27): “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness.” The prerequisite to forgiveness is confession of sins (e.g., 1 John 1:9), so how can we obtain the forgiveness of God if we do not recognize honestly what our sins are?
That is where the modern West does not understand mercy, love, and forgiveness. Westerners have for many decades increasingly assumed that God will automatically forgive them everything and allow them into heaven simply because they are “nice” or because God's mercy is infinite. This belief contradicts Christ’s warning about the narrowness of the gate into Heaven (Matthew 7:14). Absolutely, God's love and mercy are infinite. But as a priest once explained to me, mercy is a gift, and if you never open the gift, you cannot have what is inside. Ignorance of self keeps one blind to the necessity of opening the gift.
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Why are there so many broken families, lonely young people, mass shootings, people on depression medication, incredibly corrupt leaders, sexual perversions, and evil institutions in our culture now? Because we replaced God with Freud and self-knowledge with self-esteem. Now no one is weak or wicked; he is only misunderstood or a victim of circumstances.Criminals secure release over and over and continue to victimize more and more people while misguided idiots sniffle about the criminals’ sad backstories. Politicians brag about breaking the law, parents wreck their children’s lives chasing the latest romance, Christian leaders ditch the Bible in favor of the latest woke catchphrases, teachers and activists claim everyone is doomed to certain behaviors by skin color, and terrorists claim their atrocities are justified because the victims have controversial opinions.
The Lindsay Clancy case, where a mother strangled her three children to death and then successfully presented herself as the victim to millions of deranged people just because she claimed depression, is an extreme example of this phenomenon. Nowadays, it seems as if judges and jurors alike are incapable of recognizing and punishing grave moral evil, instead labeling sin as a mere temporary chemical imbalance and calling in The Science to “cure” the criminal. Too many Westerners are now proud of refusing to recognize their own sins and the harms they have done to other people. Lindsay Clancy and her supporters are ignorant of their own ignorance. And three innocent children paid the price with their lives.
