If anyone sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD's commands, even though they do not know it, they are guilty and will be held responsible. – Leviticus 5:17

Today's Scripture Reading (November 2, 2021): Leviticus 5

Poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771) wrote his "Ode to a Distant Prospect of Eton College," a one-hundred-line poem, broken up into ten stanzas each with ten lines, which he published anonymously in 1747. Eton College was Gray's "alma mater;" he attended the college from 1727-1734, thirteen years before he wrote his "Ode." Eton College is an elite school that has been responsible for the education of nineteen British Prime Ministers as well as countless other national leaders over the years, meaning that Thomas Gray received an elite level of education and is one of the lucky few.

The poem can be divided into two halves, each consisting of fifty lines. The first half of the "Ode" devotes itself to the student's pursuit of the past and present. The boys at the school spend their time and energy playing appropriate games and attempting to succeed in their studies. During this time in their lives, little attention is given to the future. The second half of the poem is devoted to that neglected future and all the pain that it is likely to bring. 

But Gray ends his poem commending the students' ignorance about their uncertain futures, including a very familiar thought; that "ignorance is bliss." Gray writes,

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?

Since sorrow never comes too late,

                    And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

                             'Tis folly to be wise (Thomas Gray – Ode to a Distant Prospect of Eton College).

Gray's thought is that it is better not to know what the future might hold because it destroys the pleasure available to the students in the present in the paradise that is Eton College. It might be good advice for all of us; except that, as with everything, we take it too far.

W might not want to know too much about what our futures might hold, but that is probably the only time when "ignorance is bliss." Leviticus is concerned about the sins we commit, and in this instance, it concentrates on the evils that we commit in ignorance. And the message is clear; ignorance is not an appropriate excuse for breaking any of the laws that God gave to his people. In fact, ignorance itself is a transgression of the law because Israel was commanded to know that law.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

Know what God has commanded because ignorance will not be a suitable excuse when you stand before him. The guilty are responsible for all they have done, regardless of whether these wrongs were committed with their knowledge and understanding or without it.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Leviticus 6