Oh, Glorious Knowledge!
Yale has built a first-class reputation on its ability to handle the knowledge of our world. We have at least four dozen libraries with book holdings in excess of 11 million, professors whose fields of research extend all over the globe, accomplished students with unique curiosities, and links to computer databases of all kinds. As far as the search for knowledge is concerned, there is little Yale does not have.
Every matter of inquiry imaginable has a repository awaiting you here. Flip through a blue book and see: “Sumerian Poetry and Prose in Translation, Near East 105a;” or for number crunchers, there’s “Fields and Galois theory, Math 370b;” or for the multi-lingual, “Czech film, literature, and drama, Czech 245b.” Dare to reach for the most esoteric topic, and there will be a resource at Yale able to help you learn about it.
And certainly this is an admirable quality in a University. This is what we expect, and why we pay money to come.
Yet in my four years here, I have found one kind of knowledge distinctly lacking. As a born-again Christian, I’ve had many opportunities on campus to talk with students about God: “Do you know who Jesus is?” “Have you ever read the Bible?” When asked, many would brush the question aside, many would just find it odd, many would defend their disbelief in God and the Bible. Only a few would return an unquestionably Biblical answer.
In a time of complexity, filled with voices of every persuasion, a simple and absolute promise speaks.
And I have taken enough classes to see that only the rare professor plainly embraces the Scripture as truth.
If, to a group of ten average Yale people, I were to propose that Jesus is God’s very Son, as Scripture says “[Jesus] was declared… to be the Son of God” (Romans 1). I might be alone in my belief. If I were to claim that Jesus was killed and rose to life again, as Scripture says, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” (Matthew 28); again, I might find few others who would embrace this.
This often saddened me as an undergraduate, especially because I understood that if any knowledge should be pursued and treasured, it should be the knowledge of God. Many days, walking to classes, by Sterling Library, up the Jonathan Edwards and Branford walkway, passing student after student, catching clips of conversations, and scanning the kiosks, it disheartened me how little room God had at Yale. Secular ideas overwhelmed the campus; it seemed fanciful to think it could be different.
The biologists had their theories against God, the philosophers had their philosophies, the English professors had their tools of criticism, and religious studies professors their arguments, all to diminish what the Bible declared to be the truth of God.
Going into my senior year, I read a tiny book back near the edges of the Old Testament called “Habakkuk,” and I found a jewel there that answered all my discouragement. A promise is delivered by the prophet: “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2)
The verse hit me. A new understanding struck at the base of my discouragement. To us, in a time of complexity, filled with voices of every persuasion, speaks this simple and absolute promise, that one day everything around us will be covered, completely soaked through, with the knowledge of the glory of God—as much as the waters cover the sea. We all have pictures in our minds or personal experiences of what the ocean is like. It is an immeasurably magnificent bulk of water everywhere. So too will the earth be filled one day, only with the knowledge of the glory of God. Deep and vast, the true knowledge of God will abound and everyone will know His truth.
This strengthened my heart as I headed into senior year. The knowledge of God can be covered up, but it cannot be defeated, and what Yale is like now is not how it must always be. God can change a universe; he can change a nation; he can change a university.
Taejoon Ahn, Jonathan Edwards ’96