Therefore my people go into exile
for lack of knowledge;
their honored men go hungry,
and their multitude is parched with thirst.

Isaiah 5:13

One of the biggest things that I pray for the church in general, and in particular for my friends and family in the church, is that God would give them a heart to drink deeply from his word, not only for the emotional impact it has on them, but more importantly to our own culture, for their own benefit in hard study. Calvin says in his commentary on this verse, “…he charges them with gross and voluntary ignorance, as if he had said that, by their madness, they brought down destruction on themselves. The meaning therefore is, that the people perished because they despised instruction; whereas they might have been preserved if they had listened to good counsels…” (here). It frightens me that we lack knowledge and that some even adopt an attitude of rejecting (at least they think they reject) systematic studies of the character and nature of God and his works. I say that they think they have rejected this because they actually haven’t; everyone has a system of theology. What differs is what that theology consists of. In this case, they have a theology of ignorance and are content to leave everything at a simple level; all belief and no understanding. But belief without understanding is belief without substance. Belief without understanding is an attempt to have unintegrated belief, which ultimately doesn’t hold up to anything.