Contentedly ignorant – Thomas Brooks
“For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9
Take heed of curiosity, and of spending too much of your precious time in searching into those dark, concealed, mysterious, and hidden truths and things of God and religion, which lie most remote from the understanding of the best and wisest of men.
Those who are troubled with the itch of curiosity, will say they can never be satisfied until they come to the bottom of the most deep and profound things of God. They love to pry into God’s secrets, and to scan the mysteries of religion by their weak, shallow reason. Curious searchers into the deep mysterious things of God will make all God’s depths to be shallows, rather than they will be thought not able to fathom them by the short line of their own reason.
Oh that men would once learn to be contentedly ignorant, where God would not have them knowing! Oh that men were once so humble, as to account it no disparagement to them, to acknowledge some depths in God, and in the blessed Scripture, which their shallow reason cannot fathom!
They are only a company of fools, who attempt to know more than God would have them. Did not Adam’s tree of knowledge make him and his posterity mere fools? He who goes to school to his own reason, has a fool for his schoolmaster!
Oh that we were wise to admire those deep mysteries which we cannot understand, and to adore those depths and counsels which we cannot reach! Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!” Romans 11:33
Oh let us restrain our curiosity in the things of God, and sit down satisfied and contented to resolve many of God’s actions into some hidden causes which lie secret in the abyss of His eternal knowledge and infallible will.
Curiosity is one of Satan’s most dangerous weapons, by which he keeps many souls out of their closets, yes, out of heaven! When many a poor soul begins in good earnest to look towards heaven, and to apply himself to closet duties, then Satan begins to bestir himself, and to labor with all his might, so to busy the poor soul with vain inquiries, and curious speculations, and unprofitable curiosities. Ah! how well might it have been with many a man, had he but spent one quarter of that time in closet prayer, that he has spent in curious inquiries after things that have not been fundamental to his happiness.
Many are more busy about reconciling difficult scriptures, than about mortifying of unruly lusts! They set more value upon vain speculations, than upon things that make most for edification. Such men of abstracted conceits, are but a company of wise fools! Had many men spent but half that time in secret prayer, that they have spent in seeking after the philosopher’s stone, how happy might they have been! Oh how holy, how happy, how heavenly, how humble, how wise, how knowing, might many men have been had they spent but half that time in closet prayer, which they have spent in searching after those things that are hard to be understood!
There are secret things which belong to the Lord our God.” Deuteronomy 29:29