Unknown Unknowns

From time to time I recall the old Smothers Brothers sketch where they argued over which of them their mother loved best. I remember it because it was funny, but also because it brings to mind some of our attitudes about life in general.

In their book The widening of God’s Mercy, Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays recall this quote from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know that there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things that (we know) we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know…these tend to be the difficult ones.”

The authors go on to say:

“What is true for politics is also true for theology: The most difficult things to teach are those that people don’t know they don’t know.”

They go on to talk about the nations around Israel that moved out from domination as did the Israelites. They point out that the prophet Amos proclaimed that God was working to also liberate the Cushites, the Philistines, and other peoples as well:

“Unfortunately, these stories to which Amos alludes are lost to us today; that nature of writing technology at the time means that very few Aramean or Philistine texts have survived. But because they are ‘unknown unknowns,’ we can use our imaginations to perceive God’s work in the piecemeal histories of those other nations. These stories point to a surprising broadness in God’s grace toward the world, throughout its whole history. In much the same way, we can use our theological imaginations to receive where God is at work today in the lives of people who are not like us.”

Since we have only the texts that we have, it is rather easy to presume that God was only at work among selected people—our people, our religious fore-bearers,? and that mindset influences our sense of being special, something to which we often desperately cling.

Such self-interested stances can blind us to God’s work in the world, especially the parts of the world that reside outside our self-imposed boundaries. But once you accept the fact that God is the God of all creation, many of those boundaries make less and less sense, and our responses (similar to the Smothers Brothers) raging over which of us God loves best, tends to be much too limiting, both on God and our responsibility to the world beyond our self-interested boundaries.