Naïve no More

Full disclosure – This post is the tip of the iceberg on this topic.  I need to spend more time on this but it is too good to let slide.

In October I made a note in my journal on Proverbs 14:15 (here @ BibleGateway).  This week I was reading through Siddartha Mukherjee’s book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (I would highly recommend this book, for a number of reasons.  If nothing else to understand more fully how scientific method, which is derivative of theological method, is applied to real problems.  By extension, the book gives insight on how observations lead to breakthroughs in knowledge and at the same time outlines how observation is obscured and it’s results resisted and thwarted), and ran across this sentence:

To a naive observer, the scenario might produce a strange effect. (Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (p. 230). Scribner. Kindle Edition.)

Obviously the context here is important, but beyond what I want to explore.  My first reaction to this was what makes a person a naïve observer?  Then I remembered Proverbs 14:15 (here @ BibleGateway).  

The next question then is how does one move from being a naïve observer to one whose observations are not naïve.  

This is where a full-fledged study of two of the key words in the text of 14:15, “naïve” and “consider” would be of significant help.  However enticing that sounds, and to me it sounds and looks like a sumptuous feast, I don’t have time or energy tonight to dive in.  You might consider looking up both words in your concordance and looking how they are used in other passages.

The intriguing thing for me is how does one move beyond naïve observations in their Bible study.  I think the answer is in the text of the Bible.  Again there is more here, but a good starting point would be Psalm 119:18 (here @ BibleGateway), pray and ask the Lord to help you see.  As I have mentioned, in 119 the psalmist asks for help to understand His Word, 56 times.

Second, Psalm 119:130 (here @ BibleGateway), tells us that the Word gives understanding to the simple.  The interesting thing here is that these are the same two Hebrew words that are in Proverbs 14:15.  Perhaps abiding in, studying the Word of God is the answer to move from being naïve in one’s observations.

Psalm 119:98 – 100 (here @ BibleGateway) seem to bear this out.