by David Phelps

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” – Mother Teresa

May, 2021
My wife, Charlotte, and I are fans of the TV quiz program Jeopardy! I’m constantly amazed by the breadth of knowledge displayed by the contestants. But at the same time, I’m sometimes amazed by what they don’t know. In one installment, the contestants knew Sanskrit and Beowulf and geopolitics and various “-ologies,” including some that were completely unfamiliar to me. But they didn’t know where Clark Kent grew up. None of the three knew that the future Superman spent his formative years in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas. At the time, I thought to myself, “Come on, everybody knows that!” Maybe I’m more of a nerd than I originally thought and, if so, I can live with that, but I was genuinely surprised that none of those extremely bright people knew something I take for granted.

It can be fun to know something nobody else does, like when you’re planning a birthday surprise. It can be thrilling—if not especially Christian—to know some especially juicy bit of gossip. And children love to taunt others by chanting, “I know something you don’t know!” But of course, the most important knowledge is knowing Christ, not only who he was but what he is, the child of the living God (John 1:14, Rom. 1:4).

I have a head full of trivia and other generally useless information. For example, I know Chef Boyardee’s first name (Hector). I know how much a single Dorito weighs (about 2 grams). I know what a Fermi is (a tiny measurement equal to the radius of a proton). I know how to approach a person who is drowning, which is especially useless in my case since I can’t swim (thank you, Coach Wilson)—now that’s trivia—but it doesn’t do me or anyone else any good. A drowning person who depended on me for rescue would be doomed.

There’s a difference between trivia and useful knowledge. I trust my mechanic and my dentist because they know things about cars and teeth that I don’t know. In fact, if I thought they didn’t know any more than I do I’d be concerned. They not only have knowledge, they have useful knowledge. They have understanding.

Paul was a learned man (Acts 22:3, Phil. 3:5). He understood the law and scriptures. But he decided Christ was the only thing worth knowing. He wrote to the church in Corinth, “I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2 New Living Translation).

As Christians, we believe that knowing Christ is not only useful knowledge but vital knowledge. Nobody ever grew closer to God because he or she knew the capital of Botswana (Mafikeng). Truly knowing Christ instead of knowing about Christ is like the difference between knowing intellectually how to approach a drowning person and being able to put it into practice and save a life. I might know my Bible thoroughly and be able to quote any passage on demand, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t know the God and Savior it describes.

One day, Jesus healed a man who had been born blind, giving him his sight (John 9:1-7). Afterward, the Pharisees confronted the man because Jesus had healed him on a Sabbath (vs. 16-17). They told him, “‘We know God spoke to Moses, but we don’t even know where this man comes from.’” (vs. 29 NLT). The man replied, “‘He healed my eyes, and yet you don’t know where he comes from? . . . If this man were not from God, he couldn’t have done it.’” (vs. 30b, 33 NLT). The Pharisees knew scripture and law and tradition, but the man had a personal experience. He had felt Jesus’ touch and heard his voice (vs. 6-7).

If we truly know Christ, if we have felt his touch and heard his voice, we will find our lives changed. People all around us are “drowning” in sin, in the cares of the world, feeling lost and forgotten. We can share our knowledge about the greatest “life saver” of all.


“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.” (Phil. 3:8-9 NLT.)


Copyright © 2021 by David Phelps