The Problem With Knowing Everything

Have you met The Person Who Knows Everything?

I have.

It should be a wonderful thing, to have a real-live "walking encyclopedia" available to answer all the "What do I do now?" and "How do I do this?" and "What's the best solution for...?" questions.

But it's not.
Not really.

Because, along with complete conviction of having the correct answer to everything (even when it patently isn't so), comes arrogance.

And with arrogance comes anger.

And with anger...comes inability to learn.

That's the REAL problem. 

To the person who has an all-encompassing lock on the truth, no one else has any new information to offer, no relevant insights, no compelling opposing point of view.

A Person Who Knows Everything is trapped inside the confines of their own (limited) knowledge.  They can't become bigger/faster/stronger/smarter, because no one can help them improve. 

I think most teenagers go through a Knowing Everything stage (it's those years when the parents' IQs reportedly take a severe dip, before recovering when the teenagers reach their twenties!)
Mercifully, most of them snap out of it, with a little assistance from Real Life as An Adult.

Most of the churches I've been a member of have a summer youth outreach program, often consisting of a week-long trip to Appalachia, or some other impoverished section of the country, to do some basic construction/building maintenance work.

On their return, a portion of the Sunday service is devoted to their report.
Every time I've listened to a group of these youth taking turns describing their week, at least two of them say something along the lines of:

"I learned so much from the people we went to help."
"They taught me about life."
"I thought I was helping them, but they were really helping me."

Hmmm.

I'm learning that humbleness, or willingness to say "I don't know...but I can find out", has gotten an unnecessarily bad rap.  Humbleness isn't about being weak or unintelligent.  It's about having a life-long ability to learn new things, to change directions if one desires, and to not waste time balancing on a self-created pedestal.  A Person Who Knows Everything has no place to go...but down.