Beware “the things you don’t know you don’t know”
I am taking a risk today by beginning this Daily Article with a story many of you won’t care about and hoping you’ll stay with me anyway. I never imagined I would write about this topic with the Dallas Cowboys, either. In fact, that’s my point, as I’ll explain shortly.
The Dallas Cowboys are having a terrible year. Their fans like me can’t wait for it to be over. One play from last Monday night’s loss to the Cincinnati Bengals seemed to sum up their season: A Cowboys player deflected a Bengals punt late in the game. Per the rules, once the blocked ball crossed the line of scrimmage, if the Cowboys left it alone it would be theirs. They could then drive for a game-winning score. However, if one of their players touched the ball and fumbled it, the Bengals could recover it.
So, of course, one of their players touched and fumbled the ball. The Bengals recovered it, then scored a touchdown to win the game.
Cowboys fans were furious. How could the player be so dumb? How could the coaches fail to teach him such a basic football rule? The Dallas media and football social media have been scathing and unrelenting.
Then I read an article in which a Dallas Cowboys coach explained that the player, who was executing his assigned block with his back to the play, had no way of knowing that the punt had been blocked. He could not tell if it was a fumble or just a bad punt. When he saw the ball, he reacted as he had been trained to do, a fact the player later confirmed. While his fumble was an obvious miscue, his attempt to field the ball was not.
I was wrong about him, but I didn’t know that I was wrong.
“There are also unknown unknowns”
In Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld writes:
There are known knowns: the things you know you know. There are known unknowns: the things you know you don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the things you don’t know you don’t know.
The last category can be the most dangerous, in war and in life.
Israel didn’t know that it didn’t know Hamas was preparing for the October 2023 invasion that massacred more than a thousand Israelis and changed the course of the Middle East. Hezbollah didn’t know that it didn’t know Israel was weaponizing pagers to kill many of its leaders. The US didn’t know that it didn’t know Japan was preparing for Pearl Harbor or al Qaeda for 9/11.
It’s bad enough when we don’t know what we need to know, such as whether bird flu will become a pandemic or AI will threaten humanity. It’s worse when what we think we know turns out to be wrong, such as Israel’s certainty that Hamas did not have the capability to stage the October 7 invasion.
And it’s even worse when we know parts of the truth and are therefore erroneously but emphatically convinced that we know the whole truth (a misconception known as the “Baconian fallacy”).
Watching the Cowboys game from the overhead vantage point of the TV cameras, I knew they had blocked the Bengals’ punt and therefore assumed the Cowboys player who touched and fumbled the ball knew what I knew. I was convinced I was right. But confusing an opinion for a fact doesn’t make the opinion factual.
The man who denies the sunrise doesn’t harm the sun—he just exposes his ignorance.
Inoculated against the “real thing”
I was talking last Sunday with a friend who spent many years in the foreign mission field. He told me that he found evangelism much easier there than here. The people he met overseas had never heard the gospel and thus had no misperceptions about it. The people he meets here think they know what Christianity is all about and have already decided they don’t need what it offers. They are also much less open to hearing a message that contradicts their assumptions.
To illustrate: Before I went to East Malaysia as a college missionary, I was vaccinated against malaria. The vaccine used in those days gave me a mild form of the disease which my body then reacted against with antibodies that protected me from the “real thing.”
Satan loves to do the same, “inoculating” us with just enough of the truth that we become immune to the One who is the Truth (John 14:6).
We see this at Christmas. As I noted yesterday, many people think the beautiful secular traditions of the season are all that Christmas is about. Growing up, I thought the same. If there had been no such thing as “Christmas,” I would have been more interested in the biblical story of Jesus’ birth. As it was, I already “knew” the Christmas story, so I had no desire to learn more.
This “Baconian fallacy” goes a long way toward explaining why the miracle of Christmas does not change our world as it changed those who first experienced it. People in the first century were shocked and thrilled to learn that this child was truly Immanuel, meaning “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). By contrast, we see him as a figure in a Nativity scene to be displayed during the holidays and stored in the attic the rest of the year.
“They fell down and worshiped him”
Now comes my point: If we are not seeking a daily, transforming encounter with the living Lord Jesus, we are committing the Baconian fallacy ourselves. We are settling for parts of the truth rather than the Truth, assuming that what we have experienced of Jesus is all we can experience of him.
When the Magi met him in Bethlehem, “they fell down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2:11). When John met him on Patmos, he “fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).
When last were you awed by Jesus?
Why not today?
NOTE: Time magazine has named Caitlin Clark its Athlete of the Year. For my response, “What Caitlin Clark and Jesus Christ have in common,” go here.
Thursday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“Jesus Christ, the condescension of divinity, and the exaltation of humanity.” —Phillips Brooks
Denison Forum
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 