The Sin of Curiosity (Respectable Sins Series)

[00:00:00] We're starting a new series called Respectable Sins, which talks about exactly that. Some of the sins that we often ignore or redown play or in some cases view as virtues That in fact could actually be vices.

[00:00:14] And we're going to kick off that series by talking about the vice of curiosity. Curiosity might actually kill the Christian. So there might be a little bit dramatic, but it's all about click bait and hopefully you are curious enough to listen to this episode.

[00:00:26] We're going to talk about Thomas Aquinas and how he views the vice and sin of curiosity, intellectual and moral formation, how we deal with all the information coming at us from all spheres of life, especially with the advent of social media and how to get our bearings.

[00:00:43] How do we actually develop the virtue of studiousness, which is actually studying the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. And that just filling your mind with information about news, politics, even theology can actually be sinful

[00:00:59] if it is taking away from the things that ought to have your focus. So you might feel a little convicted, that's a good thing I certainly did and I think you guys will enjoy this episode. You're listening to Thatll Preach. We got Paul back on the show today.

[00:01:20] We are live and we're going to be talking about the topic of curiosity, which is the topic that we've talked about off the podcast and we bring that conversation onto the podcast because it's something that I think is a very interesting topic

[00:01:34] and I think that this is something that we don't really talk about a lot but we think about intellectual habits and we think about the way that we think through the things that we learn, the things that we read, the things that we invite from media, social media

[00:01:49] and we talk about the question of curiosity comes up, especially when we talk about moral philosophy and intellectual formation. And when we talk about curiosity, surprise, surprise, Thomas Aquinas has something to say about it because he has something to say seemingly about everything

[00:02:04] but this particular subject I think is going to be fruitful discussion. So, I'm not just Aquinas, this is the history of the Christian Church has had something to say about curiosity. We started with Aquinas, the church started with Aquinas.

[00:02:17] The church ended with Aquinas, that's an eye point if you ask the RCs. Yeah, right, the RCs. No, that's interesting.

[00:02:25] I think today when we think about all the access we have to information, you can go online, you can google everything, watch hours of YouTube videos on double speed, you can podcast everything, guilty. The question becomes just because you can know something should you seek it out.

[00:02:45] Yeah, and that seems to be almost a violation of our liberties when you think about forbidden knowledge that there are some things that we're not morally ready to understand. We're not morally ready to be able to follow our curiosity and that curiosity is not always a good thing.

[00:03:04] In fact, it can be a very dangerous and bad thing but it seems anti-innovation when you think, no curiosity is how we get new medicine breakthroughs and new technologies and new ways of thinking.

[00:03:14] And that's certainly true but just because you can look into a particular subject, doesn't mean that you should. And I think when we think about AI, when we think about all the things that are happening in a technological world, that's an even more pressing question.

[00:03:31] So curiosity, curiosity killed the cat. It might actually kill us, right? How do we understand? Yeah, I know. So cringe-y. Thank you. How do we understand curiosity?

[00:03:43] Do you think that's a fair way of looking at it that we tend to default to thinking that curiosity is always a good thing? I think we can make a distinction. The way we use the word make a distinction. I know, I know. Yeah, philosophy.

[00:03:55] So it may go distinct as a violation. Curiosity can be said in many ways. The way that we use curiosity, we use it as a virtue. It's an intellectual virtue.

[00:04:06] We talk about cultivating curiosity in our kids, cultivating a curious mind if you walk until like an elementary school. You see these inspirational posters about curiosity and wonder and awe and we use curiosity in this positive sense. And that's fine.

[00:04:21] Like there's a way to think about the life of the mind. You want to inspire kids to, you know, wonder at the world and have an inquisitive spirit and be eager to learn. Those are all good things.

[00:04:32] But the turn curiosity is not used the same way in the history of the church and they use it specifically as a vice. It's a sin. It's always a bad thing. And it's just at its very rudimentary form, it's just the pursuit of knowledge in a bad way.

[00:04:47] So knowledge is good, but some knowledge is bad, and some ways of pursuing knowledge are bad. Or you can pursue good knowledge for a bad motivation. So there's lots of ways that you can sin, not surprising, total depravity.

[00:05:00] Lots of ways you can sin even with a good thing. So the pursuit of knowledge typically good, but you can do it for a better reason, or you can pursue a bad thing that you shouldn't know, or you can pursue a good knowledge in an inappropriate method.

[00:05:15] And not just Aquinas, but the reformers and the church fathers, everybody talks about this vice of curiosity toss. Augustine actually equates lust of the eyes from first John as curiosity toss. It's your eye sees something that's appealing, your mind's eyes, he's something as appealing,

[00:05:33] and you pursue it to the detriment of other things, and you sin in the process of doing that. So really at base it's just using knowledge poorly. So you have this quote from Bernard of Clearvo. The first step of pride is curiosity. Yeah. I'll link that.

[00:05:49] A lot of the church fathers thought that the first sin was pride, Adam and Eve, but curiosity is what got them there. Like they saw that the fruit was appealing to the eye. There was a kind of forbiddenist there that they're like, oh well,

[00:06:02] that's something that I can explore, I haven't explored yet. There's something about us that is inquisitive, and that inquisitive spirit is good, but it can also go wrong and it went wrong in the garden, and that's ultimately what led to all the other sins.

[00:06:14] It is a first step into much deeper engraver kinds of sins and vices. Think about when we talk about parenting, you understand that just because a child can know something doesn't mean that they should. And even when you think about the conversations surrounding, quote unquote, sheltering your children,

[00:06:34] and there's this idea of no you want them to be exposed to these things, so you're not going to deal with them, and you don't want to shelter them, you're on the go of weird, but we know intuitively,

[00:06:42] no, there are some things you ought to shelter them from because they're not ready yet. They don't have the moral formation to be able to understand these things in a proper way. But I think with the advent of the internet and all these types of things,

[00:06:53] it gives us this sense that if it's out there to know we should just go, no, and it's interesting that it's tied into the garden of Eden, because viewed from the mind of Adam and Eve they're thinking,

[00:07:05] or at least what the serpent tries to tempt them to think, is that God is holding something back from you. And that there are strings attached, that he is purposefully obscuring something, and the curiosity is a way of saying,

[00:07:26] I am allowed to transgress my creaturely limits imposed by creator, that I have a right to know everything. I have a right to tap into these things that God has forbidden. And I think we've lost that, and I think today there's this sense in which we're totally consumed

[00:07:47] with all kinds of information, and we're never asking the question of whether we're ready for it. But it's kind of my opinion those movies where they find out that aliens exist, and we can't tell the populace, they'll go crazy. And there's always that brave journalist is like,

[00:07:59] we have to tell them the truth. How do you, is that the wrong way of thinking about it? I mean there's, I mean I think there's going to be wisdom at play here. And sometimes there's going to be cases where you don't want certain kinds of knowledge

[00:08:11] getting out too quickly, you don't want knowledge in the wrong hands, or you don't want knowledge in the hands of people who are going to panic and then lead to chaos. So like a coin is talking about sometimes the state has the right

[00:08:21] to hold on to certain knowledge, to make certain things classified. And it is in our interests, think about the government, if they declassified everything, like it gets into the wrong hands, that's a matter of national security. So there is wisdom when approaching knowledge.

[00:08:36] I think that's the very basic sort of insight that we can all agree on, and not all knowledge is for us. That's, I mean if you think about the cultural moment that we live in with technology and information, it sounds very counterintuitive. It's that problem of,

[00:08:52] we don't like someone telling us that you should not go into this, like realm of knowledge. This is off limits, either for your own good, or because this is knowledge that we just can't understand. It's beyond us. It's prying into something that's mysterious.

[00:09:06] It's going for the apple in the garden. It's making the tower of babble. It's this perennial human sin of trying to get beyond ourselves and acquiring information that is not for us, right? And it's using the spirit of inquisitiveness in order to get sort of mastery over nature.

[00:09:26] And basically make ourselves as God. That's ultimately like the sin that the bottom of this, for the instinct of the bottom of this. It gets to hierarchy too. Because once you start talking about people being ready to know things, you have a division between people.

[00:09:39] Some people are more suited to say, I can handle all this information, or I can see the force for the trees. I know all the moving parts, you don't need to know that. And we don't like that because it goes against sort of the egalitarian spirit

[00:09:53] of our age. When in reality, you actually need that. You want to entrust certain information to people who are able to use that correctly and apply it wisely. But that's difficult. Now, you have something, do we're going to comment on that? No, I go ahead.

[00:10:10] You had something, a quote from Dante. Dante's in front of him is assuming. Yes. He places Odysseus in the eighth circle of hell. I don't remember anything from the infernal. So you just, what is this reference to? This is infernal. Odysseus, the main protagonist of the Odyssey,

[00:10:29] who goes on all these travels and quests, and he's this Greek figure who's supposed to embody heroism Dante, really counterintuitive, places him in hell, which is really interesting because he's supposed to be this embodiment of courage.

[00:10:41] Like, he's a paradigm of virtue and the way the Greeks think about him. But he says, really interesting things here. He says, my fondness for my son and pity for my father and the love I owed Penelope,

[00:10:53] which would have glattened her, could not restrain my desire to know what lays beyond the setting sun. So this drive to just explore just at the sake of, like, forsaking other things that are more important. That can be a manifestation of curiosity.

[00:11:10] He says also, this is Dante putting words in his mouth. This chance to know to such brief, brief wakefulness of our senses that remain to us, do not deny yourselves the chance to know. Follow the sun, the world we're no one lives, consider how your souls were sewn.

[00:11:25] You are not made to live like booths or beasts, but to pursue virtue and knowledge. And that's true, humans were made to pursue virtue and knowledge, but there's a balancing that has to go. Odysseus in the story for Sakes his family.

[00:11:37] He for Sakes his wife, he for Sakes his kingdom, he for Sakes his kid, he for Sakes his dying father, to go off on this quest to pursue knowledge. And I mean, this might be a little bit spicy here, but think of like,

[00:11:49] think of the theology bro, think of someone who's ignoring the needs of their family till like going pursue theological knowledge or knowledge about God or engage in debates about things. That knowledge itself is not bad.

[00:12:06] In the same way that Odysseus is quest to understand the world is not bad, but it's about prioritizing things correctly. And you got to think sometimes it's more virtuous to put down the theology book or the philosophy book.

[00:12:19] And I say this is someone who I, you know, it goes to that saying, I love the life of the mind, but this is a call to remember that this, it's not the most important thing.

[00:12:29] There are things that are more important, loving people and pursuing and fulfilling your obligations, that are more important. So Dante places Odysseus, this paragraph of courage and hell for forsaking family and pursuing knowledge at the cost of his family. And that for him was actually a greater vice.

[00:12:48] I just thought that's interesting with Christians even though they have this rich intellectual tradition. They still think that knowledge, even theological knowledge should be subservient or below, lower, more, lower prioritized than loving family, loving people, loving things of God.

[00:13:06] Some of the church fathers talk about, we're buying the monks for studying theology textbooks when they should be praying, or reading Greek epics in Greek philosophy when they should be serving the poor.

[00:13:18] And so we can get to this when we look at the quignus' specific four ways of curiosity going wrong. But one of the main ways is just you prioritize things wrongly. You're prioritizing your knowledge over things that are more deeply important. And that's another way that we send.

[00:13:33] And it's not obvious, but it's one that I think we need to hear. So many people forget and I include myself in this. Then when we talk about sins, we're talking about competing goods many times. So it is good to want knowledge of good things.

[00:13:49] But when it becomes out-of-ordered, when your loves are disorder to become bad, it becomes idolatrous to some degree. And it's interesting the way that you're talking about curiosity, where it could very well be a very selfish act that you have this desire

[00:14:06] and you are placing the desires and needs of others beneath your quest for this understanding of knowledge, whether it be doctrine, theology, philosophy, whatever it may be. You're sort of getting things, you're not sort of you are getting things out of order.

[00:14:21] I thought it was interesting how you talked about, and I think you're quoting a guess in here, about the connection between the lust of the eyes and curiosity or how we think about physical lust. There is this compulsion that's derived to want someone else.

[00:14:40] In a sexual way and someone is being alluring to you and you're drawn in by it. And he makes that as an analogy to curiosity. How does that work? I mean, something looks appealing. Think of it like this here.

[00:14:56] You're working on something and then either an email or a YouTube trail catches your interest or you're researching something and then something in the sidebar gets recommended to you and that's more alluring all the sudden than what you have to work on.

[00:15:12] Your eyes captured by something that's an easy way out for you. In the same way that if you're in a tough marriage, it's tough to stay faithful. There's the easy option of the person who walks by and that's the escape. That's the distraction.

[00:15:26] So it's the same sin there of your being moved by the appetite to distract yourself from what's really important. And sin can often comes in that really subtle way where in the case of pursuing knowledge, it's not like the knowledge itself is evil.

[00:15:43] But it's the distraction from that which you're supposed to be working on. So instead of really digging through this topic deeply for example, let's say you're working on a project, you've got a research and it's going to take a lot of nitty gritty and details.

[00:15:55] But you can also like, let's Google this interesting question and then you're just like flitter around the internet for a couple of hours. That's the vice of curiosity. It's jumping from topic to topic because it's appealing in the moment. And we all do it.

[00:16:09] It's so, so it seems an Oculus but it's like so ubiquitous. We do it all the time. I think about that with my attention span, you go from theological topic to theological topic and you feel like you're doing all this work.

[00:16:24] But actually you're gaining a very distracted shallow understanding of a bunch of things when you really want to drill down on a subject. And if you really want to drill down on a subject, it requires you saying no to a lot of other things. Yeah.

[00:16:36] I'm not going to study these other things because I need to focus all the energies and discipline myself on this particular thing. I think this is self-control and silver-mindedness. Absolutely. That's the word. In the New Testament and something that we have to cultivate.

[00:16:51] And this has been very eye-opening for me because I love reading theology, I live listening to a podcast. I like getting interested in different areas and you feel like, well, I'm learning.

[00:17:02] I'm educating myself and you don't realize that you're placing at the center of your life this need to have this intellectual itch scratched. That fundamentally it's about whether it's an anxiety to know something,

[00:17:15] whether it's the pleasure that you get from knowing something, when it becomes an end in and of itself. You're actually not using it knowledge properly. It's not lifting up toward God and others. It's curving yourself inward, which is what a gustant talks about the nature of sin.

[00:17:30] That's what it is. It's an inward curvature, you're self-absorbed and how even something like reading a lot of theology or you think about getting an arguments online with people. There's that classic cartoon where guys like honey, you know, I'll come to bed.

[00:17:46] I just need to make sure someone on the ear is wrong. Someone who's wrong and you make sure that I correct them. But there's that idea of, or there's another mean that's like me looking down on you for not understanding something that I just learned 15 minutes ago.

[00:18:00] Were the pursuit of knowledge becomes a pursuit of vanity? Lue. It becomes a pursuit of status chasing fads, whether they be theological, the turgical fads, you know, philosophical fads, social critiques, whatever it may be,

[00:18:15] the fact that you possess something and someone else doesn't can create that this allure, the C.S. Lewis inner ring type of significance that you can afford yourself and that's a very dangerous path.

[00:18:27] And it's almost like carbon dioxide, you know, it's got no odor, it's got no stench. It doesn't affect you, but it's killing you. Yeah. It doesn't affect you in the sense if you can't sense it, but it is killing you slowly.

[00:18:40] That can be the case with the vise of curiosity. And we rarely ask that question, should I be looking into this? Do I have the maturity to look into this? Yeah. Do I have the understanding to understand this? Right. The wisdom is fear of the Lord.

[00:18:54] Do I have the fear of the Lord in which I can approach this information or go down this rabbit hole with the appropriate reverence and holiness that the moral life is connected to the intellectual life?

[00:19:06] I think that's something that the church fathers understood very well that has been lost. But let's talk a little bit about Aquinas. How do we apply this? How do we give us some categories or rather tell us Aquinas' categories for discerning when we are

[00:19:23] doing the vise of curiosity? Well, so like all good things, you can go wrong in the pursuit of good things in three ways. You can go wrong in pursuing the bad thing or we're using a bad method or for a bad motivation.

[00:19:39] So think about that with knowledge and Aquinas gives us four actually distinct ways that we can send with respect to knowledge. And the first is just the one that we've been talking about, which is he says when a man is withdrawn

[00:19:52] by less profitable study from a study that is an obligation incumbent on him. So that's where you have an obligation. You have something that you're supposed to do but you'd rather instead study or look into something else.

[00:20:05] And this is the person who's either working on a project for work and they're supposed to be researching something and they're distracting. They're attempting to distract it to something else and so they go down the rabbit hole.

[00:20:14] Or that's the case of, you know, you've got the baby screaming and crying and the diaper change. Instead you're like, oh well, I'm going to go lead a Bible study or like go read a theology book or

[00:20:27] like, I'm not an extreme case but like you can think of how that can be a misprioritization. I feel like someone would be like, oh it's terrible. It'd be so loud to read when somebody's crying. How could you do that? You put the baby in another room.

[00:20:41] This is why it all gets. Jerome gives us an interesting example of priest reading plays and singing love songs. He actually calls them erotic songs rather than studying the gospels during the allotted study time. That's a, you know, paradigmatic case of this.

[00:21:01] And so students doing deep dives on YouTube, right? Like all of a sudden these poor intellectuals. I want to know what a priest loves songs. Well, I don't think they're written by the priest.

[00:21:11] So I think they're like erotic songs from the day from maybe a Greco Roman period and they're just like, you know, you could see them in the corner unraveling the scroll. Oh, that was kind of creepy. Yeah, that is creepy. Especially the way you're describing it.

[00:21:23] So let's just move on to students deep diving students. You do. You too. It's like, you know, you got the project that you got to work on. But now all of a sudden quantum tunneling is the most interesting thing in the world. And you're clicking on all these.

[00:21:34] That's do sauce videos and stuff like that. Sometimes the interest and the other thing is more driven by not wanting to study the furniture supposed to. Yeah, so it comes from, I mean, one way to diagnose it.

[00:21:44] It's a lack of disciplines, like a fortitude to stay on track to stay on task. So I mean there's a, there's a, there's a season of time for everything. And it's not that the study itself is bad, but it's, you're, you were doing this study.

[00:21:59] You're going down this line of inquiry in the wrong time. And as a way of distracting yourself from what you have to do. Um, Bernard of Claire votes says that curiosity detracts some sanctification. He's talking again about monks here. Apparently everyone just loves racking on the monks.

[00:22:16] There's super obvious. Well, it's funny because they're the, I guess they're distracted people when they're in solitude. I mean, I guess they're, yeah, they're a good case study for virtue. They're all like locked away and you're like observed them and taken notes. Yeah.

[00:22:27] You see if they're actually getting better. He talks about the monk who his eyes are wandering. His glance, dark, right and left. His ears are cocked. He's used to, he used to watch his own conduct. Now all of his watchfulness is for other people.

[00:22:40] My man, if you gave yourself the attention you ought, I don't think you would have much time to look after others. So here, here's like curiosity in the form of like gossip or like the thing that's underlying gossip where you are not focused on your own problems.

[00:22:54] You want to know when you're curious about what's going on. Other people's lives. So you can make yourself feel better. And so you can be the guru and the person who provides counsel. And like that's what we talked about this was manly interesting.

[00:23:07] Yeah, I know in the last episode where gossip raises your status. Right? So there's this self interest. Yeah. Associated with that. I love how Bernard of Claire Vow is saying my man. My man. My man. Listen to me, my man. Kind of pay attention.

[00:23:21] Yeah, you talk about why the cooler talk. Yeah. The curiosity wanted to be in the know. And amazing how when it comes to gossip, people who can't memorize a poem or Scripture or anything can memorize elaborate details of people's dirty laundry. Yeah.

[00:23:37] I just go with the show that our attention is drawn to what we value and you know that that's a very convicting thought for myself because I do find that.

[00:23:48] I'm like, I'm sure the YouTube algorithm doesn't help me but I'm just like, oh this and that and social media. And you think you're in the know, but what I realize is, I'm like man, I think how people

[00:23:59] used to learn is they didn't have all this information so they had to just read books and they can only do it one at a time.

[00:24:06] It was expensive to get a book or even just maybe 30 years ago you just go to the library and you had to sit there through that intentional thinking process. And now when I find is in addition to curiosity, maybe this is just a part of curiosity is I'll

[00:24:19] learn about something and then I'll find out people's opinions about that thing and then people's opinions about people's opinions and I just go down this trail and I never gain a genuine understanding of a grasping with this information.

[00:24:31] And but adding a moral layer to that to say that you actually could be distracting yourself from your properties, you could be doing this to fulfill a kind of lustful desire for for knowledge that you're not ready for isn't important to you.

[00:24:46] That layer of evaluation factors in, I think, to how we consider our consumption of information. Because today with social media stuff, everyone's like, excuse me, it's terrible there. It makes you addicted to information, all this stuff, misinformation and things like that.

[00:25:05] But then there's this added layer of saying, well okay, it's not even just about the social media. That's just revealing something in you, right. That is failing to order your love as well. That is valuing scratching his itch of wanting knowledge over things that are more important.

[00:25:21] There's a second thing that you mentioned which is quite a lot. Which is quite a lot. You were saying about the listing to opinions and opinions about opinions. The Sikh knowledge we, we offend virtuous study when we seek knowledge from bad teachers. I just jumped a gun.

[00:25:34] Go for it. Is that bad teachers or false teachers or false teachers or false teachers? No, no, no, no. He says bad teachers or false teachers or false prophets and there he means everything from people who are teaching bad doctrine to people who are using demonic spirits

[00:25:50] to try to tell you the future or people who are trying to calculate the second coming of Christ. He said these people have undermined their credibility, their bad teachers. But there's something about us that finds them kind of appealing.

[00:26:02] Even if we think we disagree with them, we find something enjoyable about going to listen to them. Even if we know deep down that it's wrong. And Aquinas thinks that kind of pursuit of knowledge is misguided.

[00:26:13] It's misguided if you think they're good teachers because then you're just being given falsehoods. But even if you know they're bad teachers and you still get a listen to them because you like either you want to feel good about yourself

[00:26:24] because you're not propagating false doctrine or you want to say, look how sanctified I am that I don't believe this stuff. That's kind of self-aggrandizement. So it's also the order to know knowledge for self-game from the beginning of the Constitution. The Constitution.

[00:26:37] And you go, well I can eat the meat spit out the bones. But then you're, wonder is the act of actually listening to them corrosive for yourself. Right? Maybe you're, maybe yeah exactly like maybe you're not going to spend it. Absolutely.

[00:26:50] You're not good at spending up the bones. Why are you a lot of the Certainly? Are you doing more bones than you probably are better off being more cautious than more reckless regarding this? You probably are better off being more cautious than we're getting.

[00:27:02] And we're trying to account the fact that we like when somebody's really edgy. And in fact it's almost because they're edgy that we afford to them a greater level of knowledge. Because they're edgy.

[00:27:14] And there's this idea, I mean even just thinking about something as basic as not basic but you think about the Old Testament seeking signs and buildings from the Necromancers or from witchcraft or any such things.

[00:27:26] And we kind of laugh at that but Necromancerity is maybe that palm reader. Maybe that fortune tell actually can tell you the future. It doesn't mean you're allowed to access that.

[00:27:37] And it's a question not of whether it works or not, but whether you are supposed to do that, whether that is actually good thing. And so maybe someone does have some magical energy or something like that and they can,

[00:27:49] some fortune tell and reach your palm on stuff like that. Doesn't mean that you should go to them because that could actually be, again, something that's damning you in ways of teaching. Right?

[00:27:58] And I think again, it's going back to the idea of, well, just listen to everybody on the way. And you don't ever think about what we rarely think about the actual act of listening to all of them is actually affected. I'm not inoculated this.

[00:28:12] I don't have about this force field around me that is infected by their rhetoric. Right? It's not just information. It's information. It's the media. And it's information within an environment and the media system. That's having an effect on you as well. And so curating you.

[00:28:27] Think about what are you feeling in mind that you know, think about a constant news field. I want to be informed about the world. Can you handle being informed about everything that's going on in the world?

[00:28:39] Should you know about every tragedy, every war, every natural disaster in the world within sections? Should you actually know that? Is that actually cross-central limit in you? That's destructive and dangerous. Should you actually know that? We never want to see ignorant.

[00:28:54] But there's a sense in which there is a, I don't think we should seek to be ignorant. But rather we should seek to grapple honestly through our limitations, simply within that. Right? So, and considering whether the source is a good teacher or good influence on you,

[00:29:10] even if they say true things is very important. And the source is a good teacher or good influence on you, even if they say true things are true. And this, in this, we have this instinct to democratize knowledge and information

[00:29:22] and give everyone a hearing and in the interest of balance, you know, listen to every perspective. And obviously there's some kernel of truth there, but there's also serious warnings in the gospels and the New Testament to flee certain things and avoid false teachers.

[00:29:35] And that means cutting yourself up to certain kinds of knowledge that is, in fact, bad. Not everything that's bad deserves to be given a fair hearing in the interest of, well, let's just see what they have to say.

[00:29:47] One, because we just don't have the bandwidth for all that. And there's more important things that we can be using our time for. But also, we shouldn't trust our own ability to sift through all the information on our own because we're going to slip up eventually.

[00:30:00] So sometimes drawing the line in the sand is actually a good thing to protect our own souls and protect our communities and be good stewards of the information that we have. We don't have to give everything to the even- That's just information overload and we have-

[00:30:12] We have to be able to do this in a way that's going to be overloaded. It's psychology to press people out there. We're going to see how much psychology whether it's pops psychology, psychology, and books, all these buzzwords,

[00:30:21] where you wonder if people are reading this, they're actually not in a good place to ingest this information. If they're reading it just by themselves, they're actually a little harm than good. They can misdiagnose themselves, they could think of the pathology that they don't really have.

[00:30:35] They could actually make a problem even worse by dwelling on it constantly. There's all this stuff that we make that again, if you're assumption is what's just information. It's like it's not. It's doing something to us. This is why doctors hate WebMD because their patients can't do anything.

[00:30:56] I've been so stressed about that. This is a WebMD totally and it's just- Yeah, yeah, you've done a lot of damage to yourself by thinking you've got all these weird diagnoses, but yeah. Yeah, so- It's a good number three.

[00:31:09] Yeah, so this one is, and we've kind of touched on it, which is just pursuing knowledge for a bad end or bad ultimate end. So Aquinas says, in studying creatures, we must not be moved by empty and perishable curiosity. We should ever melt towards immortal in abiding things.

[00:31:25] So another way of putting this is Aquinas says, we should pursue knowledge as derivative of knowledge of God. All of our knowledge of the world should be an attempt to glorify God and understand creation better to better appreciate Him.

[00:31:40] It shouldn't be for our own sake, and this is where the- The Church Father's talked a lot about Herod, and this is why I have these two pastures from Herod here. In Luke 9, Herod basically exemplifies the vice of curiosity in this way.

[00:31:55] So, Herod, the tetrahch heard all that was going on about Jesus' miracles, and he was perplexed or inquisitive because some were saying that John had been raised from the dead.

[00:32:05] Others that Elijah had appeared and still others that one of the prophets of long ago had come back to him. But Herod said, I beheaded John, who then is this that I hear such things about, and he tried to see Him? So there's a curiosity there.

[00:32:20] It's a curiosity about Jesus, but not a curiosity, not an inquisitive spirit that seeks to know Jesus for who He is to then bow His name or ship it. But a curiosity like, oh is this just another prophet like the one that I've had it?

[00:32:34] Someone else that I can also put under my thumb. Someone else who I can get to conjure up tricks for me. At the end of Luke when he has the encounter with Jesus in Luke 23, Luke says,

[00:32:45] When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased because he initially wanted to see Him. For a long time he had been waiting to see Him from what he had heard about him, he hoped to see Him perform a sign of some sort.

[00:32:55] He applied Him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. So Jesus knows His heart there. The Herod is just wanting to pursue knowledge for His own sake.

[00:33:04] He has the Son of God right there in his courtroom, and he thinks of Him as a conjurer of tricks. As someone who he can just get wisdom from and ask questions to and basically get a performance. And Jesus does not engage that kind of inquisitive behavior.

[00:33:19] We're giving the promises. He who shall seek will find. But this kind of seeking from Herod is not seeking that aims to glorify God. And so this is, it has a look of virtue. Like here's someone who wants to see Jesus.

[00:33:34] Well, it's not as basic as like wanting to do something. But you don't do like a say. And the idea, I think we all fall in this trap. And he's kind of the Theo bro stereotype. Right.

[00:33:44] A guy knows all about the dog's and the grace, but it's not a gracious person. Somebody understands everything there is to know about church policy, but they're not serving at their low-picture. And I think there is something to this where you sort of see these notions of Christianity.

[00:34:00] You love how a system connects together. You love seeing how doctrines fits together. You love the debates, the reformation. You love the idea of, you know, how it's shaped society. And you even love the idea of mission, no types of things. It's shaped society.

[00:34:18] But knowledge just becomes a way for you to either. You know, have a sense of way for you to master it. Yeah, being satisfied that you've mastered a concept. That's why you want somebody else that's a classic one. That you have mastered a concept.

[00:34:36] That you have grasped something that other people have. And instead of leading you to alternate in which is worship of God. And then love, love for Him and love for others. And I think that there is just this kind of constant chatter.

[00:34:51] I remember somebody was talking about how when there's so much discussion about masculinity. And then the least masculine thing you do is actually just keep talking over and over again about masculinity as opposed actually living it out in your life.

[00:35:02] And I think it's important to talk about that. I don't get me wrong. But there is something about that. If you just have these notions in your mind and you feel satisfied that you know the essence.

[00:35:15] And now that you know these things, but you can maybe explain them, that you know them more than other people. But they don't lead to an actual transformation of the heart and that he is sent of your heart and your soul toward God and God be this.

[00:35:27] Then it is its worth. It's a clanging soul. It's pointless. You're in a sense you're better off not even knowing it. And that's important to drive us to that place in which the truth is transformed it is.

[00:35:42] And I think that's true knowledge when you're actually participating, you know about it. Right? I think that's true knowledge. When you're actually participating, you're not going to know about that. Yeah, because I mean we get the exhortation that knowledge puffs up.

[00:35:56] There is a kind of using knowledge to feel like you are greater than you actually are and to get that kind of attention. And Aquinas calls that this sin.

[00:36:06] It's curiosity here, but it goes wrong by seeking to study to know the truth in order that you might take pride in your knowledge. This is the person who they want the knowledge as a vehicle to something else, which is again that inward turn.

[00:36:19] They want the attention, they want the acclaim, they want people to look at them and go, Wow, they really know what they're talking about. Maybe I should go and hear more about what they have to say.

[00:36:27] And the knowledge for them is just a vehicle to get to something else. So here it's pursuing knowledge within impurities, motivation and the motivation is just self-aggrandizement, self-acclaim. I still know what's wondering.

[00:36:39] When you're reading the scriptures, if certain things God doesn't reveal to you and I mean this in a very tame sense, not like you're getting special messages from God, but the sense of when you read something over and over again in one day it hits.

[00:36:50] Why did it hit? It could be because you learned about Greek and you saw this syntax and you read a good commentary and you heard a good sermon. That's certainly true. But I think sometimes that you are finally mature enough to embrace that truth for what it is.

[00:37:04] Where it finally has mastery over you, you are actually willing to ascend and humble yourself underneath that truth and submit to it. And ultimately that's the end. Why are we studying theology?

[00:37:15] We want to know God so we can love Him and obey Him so that these truths don't just remain ideas in our head, but they actually cause us to bow. Cause our whole life to be shaped and conformity to what these words say.

[00:37:31] And that is very difficult because in a lot of ways culture rewards just the endless consumption of knowledge, sounding smart. You may actually genuinely be smart in the sense of you have a deep understanding intellectually about various aspects.

[00:37:51] But I think there is something about you don't fully get it until you are living in it. And that sounds kind of church, churchy. But I think that's the whole point of like the book of James.

[00:38:04] You know if you really want to understand the wisdom of God, you've got to live in accordance with it. You've got to actually do it. You've got to actually see it from the inside. You can't just know about it. Faith without works is dead.

[00:38:15] You've got to actually walk in it to really understand what it means to depend upon God, what it means to endure and suffering. There's no path except for actually submitting to that process and going into it.

[00:38:26] Now we're kind of getting a little off track, I guess, with curiosity. But the fourth thing that you mentioned or you have written down here, it's a quietness. It's a quietness talking about, Tyzen would that last point you were talking about with the humility.

[00:38:40] Right, we found error regarding learning when we seek to know what is beyond us. And so we talked about this earlier with the Garden of Eden, where as creatures we have to accept our limits and that's really hard.

[00:38:50] I think that's part of it when we just know we've got to put this down. We're just not going to know the answer to this, we can meet that. Because it automatically impose the limit upon us.

[00:39:01] Because we think if we work hard enough, think hard enough, study long enough, that we're going to get it. And that's just not how it works because we're finite. But there's also things that we're not supposed to know.

[00:39:13] And I think there's a humility that has to attend to our intellectual pursuits. Where we go, I'm not doing this because I'm going to gain mastery. I'm going to gain God like knowledge. I'm doing this to do the opposite. I'm actually doing this to humble myself.

[00:39:28] I want to, I want my faith seek understanding so that I might have a greater awe and reverence for God and a greater understanding of my own limitation and my dependence rather than the opposite. So, and I guess Aquinas is talking about that.

[00:39:42] And he talks about how the genuine search for knowledge requires humility. And in order not to attract or frustrated we must move on or surrender when something is beyond our capacity to grasp, where you can be on our state in life.

[00:39:55] And then this is connected to gossip, sloth, and pride. Something you've been talking about a little bit. Yeah. And you wrote a little bit about what's the connection there?

[00:40:04] The whole, I mean it's the whole, it's the vice of God's or the vice of curiosity is all the vices are tied together. There's no such thing as a vice that sort of exists on its own, but we saw elements here.

[00:40:15] We saw how curiosity slips into pride or can come from pride, right? I want to pursue knowledge for my own sake, or I think I'm entitled to this knowledge. Who is God withheld something from me and I've inflated sense of self?

[00:40:29] So you've got pride there, you've got gossip where you crave information about somebody else's sin. So you can feel good about yourself or so that you can have some juicy tea and that makes you feel good, right? And so it also is connected to that.

[00:40:43] And then sloth which is just the sin of I don't want to do what I have to do. I don't want to study the Bible. I don't want to be there with my family. I'd rather read a theology book.

[00:40:52] And that's sometimes theology can get in the way of your spiritual formation. We never think of it. Sometimes. A lot of times they can. Yeah. Thinking about again, sin is not always about pursuing bad things.

[00:41:03] It's about pursuing good things at the inappropriate time or in the wrong way. And if it's time for a Bible study, if it's time for spending time with the Lord, if it's time for spending time with family, then outsourcing to reading about this obscure debate

[00:41:17] in the 14th century can be a sin because it's distracting you from what you have to do. That is the sin of sloth that's you being unable to be disciplined to do your obligation. And instead do the thing that seems virtuous or seems studious, but it's not actually.

[00:41:33] So these are all sort of cousins of the vice of curiosity that they tend to go together. They come in this batch. So talk about the difference between studiousness and I just encourage and charity versus curiosity because sometimes those get confused.

[00:41:49] We get somebody who's studying a ton, other curious, but there's actually done well the pursuit of knowledge done well is studiousness. Yeah. What is studiousness? Studiousness is the exact opposite of curiosity.

[00:42:04] So ways to use studiousness to correct for curiosity are just don't study as a way of avoiding your duties. Study in ways that never sure cure duties. That's the first thing. So the studious person never avoids their duties in their study.

[00:42:19] The second is that they study good things that are worthy of their time, not just letting themselves foot around or pursue silly information and things like that. But things that are actually worthy of our time, study for good ends. The studious person studies not to exalt themselves,

[00:42:35] but they seek knowledge for the sake of promoting the common good, of illuminating for those around them and to get a better understanding of God. And they see all of their study as a way of worshiping God. That doesn't mean when they're studying the grasshopper,

[00:42:50] they're thinking about God and doing that. But their ultimate goal, their tea loss in their study is not, I'm doing this for my sake. But I'm doing this because I have a genuine appreciation of the way the world is. And I'm not sureking my duty in this moment.

[00:43:03] And I'm doing so in a way that's serious and in depth and it's not moved by any bad motives. It's deep. It's not flitting around. And it's constantly bound by this reminder that the knowledge, that we get is not the most important thing.

[00:43:19] And the most important thing is actually charity. It's love. Loving people will always be more important than acquiring knowledge. I think part of why this vices such a grip on our generation, our culture, however you want to put it, is that we're very disconnected.

[00:43:36] And when you don't have, you sort of in your mind, you think, you know, I'm just going to discover enlightenment. I'm going to read all these books, go do these things. I want to, you know, go to these spiritual gurus where I need you to see more information.

[00:43:53] All this stuff. When in fact, you probably need just rootedness, community, family, friendships, you need to serve other people. And when we're fragmented, all we have left is just the pursuit of knowledge. We have the internet. We can make these online friends. You're going to be online discussions.

[00:44:09] And even just thinking about forums or, you know, being online, Twitter, it's reducing everything that just content. And you don't have the sort of embodied sense of your life. And that makes the thing that you can keep doing online

[00:44:25] is you can keep pursuing knowledge and knowledge and ideas and ideas and ideas. And you just need to be part of real life. That's actually part of what a human being is. You've actually actually be grounded, have real relationships.

[00:44:36] And you can kind of, that's why I think people get distracted. They think what's happening online is more important because there's knowledge there. Yeah. And I can access it instantly and have that gratified immediately. But playing with your kids, getting to know your neighbor, attending to the ordinary,

[00:44:54] boring things of life, doesn't give you that immediate payoff that the constant quest for information online has. Speaking about other people, not matter. I don't have that problem. But I'm saying hypothetically, if you did, that's what it'd be like. No, I definitely have that problem.

[00:45:09] And what are some ways to counter program ourselves? What are some ways, because you mentioned, you know, don't study as a way of wanting your duties, study good things, study for good ends, but practically, what do we do?

[00:45:22] I mean, I think sometimes it means putting down the theology book, even if it comes from the theology book, besides that. I mean, resist the temptation to go on the YouTube. And that's also a guarantee of how to do another thing. It's been time with your community.

[00:45:38] It's been time forming friendships. I really think that curiosity is a symptom of what a gust can cause the fractured self. The reason why we flitter around from topic to topic is because we are selves or fragmented. We don't have the discipline to focus on one thing.

[00:45:54] Whether that's a spouse or a child or a community or a passage of Scripture, we don't have the discipline or the fortitude, the courage to look someone deeply and get to know them who they are.

[00:46:06] So we much prefer lots of superficial things over something that is real and has depth. Why is that? Well, because sin craves variety, this goes back to the Chesterton Passage, that God is strong enough to exalt and doing the same thing over and over and over again.

[00:46:23] But because of sin, we need variety. We feel like we get bored super easily. Our attention spans are so fractured. We need sexual variety. We need variety of taste. We need variety of experiences. We're thrilled seekers. We have one or less.

[00:46:37] And we need all of these things to try to fill the gap. Because variety gives us a hit of pleasure and we're pleasure seeking. So we get tired so quickly. I think that idea of novelty and variety is a self-centered pleasure.

[00:46:51] It's trying to fill the void that a gutsy says, we're restless. We're restless because of sin and we're restless because nothing can fill an infinite void unless an infinite God occupies us. This touches again on limits, the blessing that limits are.

[00:47:06] The truth is, the race reality that you are limited and the insanity and why we're so restless is because we're trying to transcend ourselves and we can't.

[00:47:15] And you know, I, man, this is, I mean, this is just, I read this and I'm like, this is exactly what I do. Yeah. This is all of us. Especially with theology, there's this thirst to know you want to get it clear.

[00:47:30] But I'm always trying to think, what is at the end of it? And you imagine this moment when you finally get it and you can rest. But that's just not true. And the writing of books, there is no end. Right?

[00:47:42] And there is a sober mind that says, that has to come where your life is short. Mm-hmm. And you have to decide how you're going to use the time and certainly study of theology and reading and podcast and listening to the news is good.

[00:47:57] But you can often masquerade the vice underneath, well, these are good things I'm listening to. What is it the right time? Yeah. You know, are you forsaking other goods for sake of this, which makes it bad, makes it a vice?

[00:48:11] And there's some hard questions that you have to ask yourself. I mean, even the quantity of self, he claimed to have had a vision at the end of his life where he saw the throne,

[00:48:20] he saw heaven and in response to that, he said after he'd written thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of theology, he said, all my work is like chaff. It's like straw that's going to be blown away in the wind.

[00:48:32] And I think that's a healthy perspective. Like you talked about, you know, study theology, what's the end quest? The end quest should be knowledge of God, but there's a sense in which we have God. We have, I mean, we have Christ and that's been given to us.

[00:48:46] And so knowledge should be expanding and illuminating who Christ is, but we have him himself. And so knowledge is, or theology is just a vehicle to help us better appreciate that. Right. But it's never going to give us something new, right?

[00:49:03] If we think there's something new to be sought after, we've already done something wrong. You don't want to know what's going on. You don't want to know what's going on. Right. That's what you get here. Exactly. Exactly. Talk about how do you cultivate studiousness then?

[00:49:15] In the sense of, you mentioned how you want to study deeply, don't bounce around. Does that mean that you read one author? Does that mean that you, your asking me for tips about virtue when I'm a very vicious person? Well, there you go. I guess never mind.

[00:49:30] I'm sorry for asking. I mean, I think this is going to be vices so difficult to pin down. But it's about forming habits that are underneath that. So the way to correct for advice is to overshoot to the other side.

[00:49:44] And overshooting to the other side here might just be, hey, I'm going to avoid reading things that I want just for the dopamine hit. Right? I don't know why I want to study this, but I feel like I have that desire.

[00:49:59] I'm just not going to give into that now. There are more important things that I can spend my time doing. I'm going to resist the temptation to maybe I'll tell myself, I can only study one topic for the next two or three months.

[00:50:11] But I'm going to study deeply and I'm going to study it exhaustively and comprehensively. And I'm not going to let my attention jump around and lead me to something else. So being able to cultivate discipline, which is a generic muscle that we can use in all our life,

[00:50:26] the more disciplined you are, the less likely you are to give into curiosity. And you find yourself constantly giving into curiosity. It's evidence that you're not as disciplined of a person. And so building your discipline muscles in general will help you be better at thwarting curiosity.

[00:50:41] Well, that would force you to say, I don't know to a lot of things. Yeah, because you're saying I don't have the time to do that. That's something that frustrates me and you talk with people. Have you read this? Have you read this? And it's like, no.

[00:50:54] Yeah, I mean, you just don't have the time to do this. And then much less process through it all. And so you have to understand, again, I think this gets to rooted in this. You've got to understand your time, your place, your responsibilities, your circles,

[00:51:07] your responsibilities, you've actually got to anchor yourself to real life, so that you can have a list of priorities. Right? You know what I mean? If you're just a free floating individual, you have no community, no family, no vocation, no service, no local community,

[00:51:19] then you don't have a hierarchy of goods. The whole world's, your oyster. It's all open to you. And that's a terrifying thought. Yeah. But when you start adding, well, I've got a job.

[00:51:29] So I've got to focus on that. I've got a family, I've got to focus on that. I've got kids, I've got to focus on that. I've got a church. I'm going to focus on needs that are local there. What are the people need there?

[00:51:37] That starts to close things down and those limits actually help focus you and can cultivate that studiousness rather than the advice of curiosity. Curiosity is fragmentation like you're saying, fragmentation of self but also a lack of roots. Yeah. I like of investment or anything.

[00:51:54] Right? If you're curious about a bunch of things, you're not invested in anything. That's right. And that's an issue in your own heart and your own mind and soul. Yeah. Great stuff. Wow. I hope this peaked your curiosity. Yeah. I was very curious about this topic myself. Yep.

[00:52:09] That's interesting. It's great talking about it. Don't plan on doing anything about it. So it doesn't really matter. In all seriousness, this is if you want to read a quietness on this, do you know where in his suma this is? Yes.

[00:52:20] We can pass the link in the show now. It's also linked in the show now. Yes. Yeah. We've got enough card there. Yeah. You don't have a memorized. But yeah, this is a great topic. Hope you guys enjoyed listening to this.

[00:52:31] We're going to post a link to again a quietness and maybe some other notes. Sure. If we find that, but yeah, appreciate this conversation. Thank you guys for listening in. Make sure you subscribe. You can follow us on Instagram. We'll see you on the next podcast.

[00:52:42] Check out the whole archive of our interviews in the past. That'll preach.io and make sure you support us on Patreon. All the links are going to be in the show notes. Make sure you let somebody know about the show.

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