To Know or Not to Know...that is the question

Yesterday, I thought I was doing a good thing. I have to finish grades by Sunday night and I am also in the midst of preparing for my wedding with Sinae which will happen in various phases. Yesterday, I was confronted with two questions I've struggled with before: (1) the relationship between church and government and (2) the relationship between knowledge and choices.

I read on the US Embassy site that the marriage takes place at the District Office. I didn't realize that disregarded any public profession of one's commitment to one's spouse. I thought that Sinae and I would go to the courthouse together and take the next step to getting married. I didn't realize that our marriage would be complete in that one step.

As we walked about of the courthouse, I learned that what I thought was just a signature for something I didn't understand was a signature to commit oneself to one's spouse.

Of course, once it was brought to my attention that I had acted out of oblivion, there was a question of how much accountability I would have. Would it matter how much I knew or didn't know? Obviously I was not looking to get out of the commitment I had made, just to receive a little understanding over my blunder. After all, we still have two ceremonies left, not to mention the wedding night.

In spite of all the debate about how much separation of Church and State there is or ought to be in America, I saw that some countries have more separation than the most liberal politician might dream of. There seems to be a paradox because in the eyes of the law Sinae and I are really married and yet we won't be spending the night together until after the second wedding ceremony in South Korea.

When I was in seminary, and pondering all the great ideas of the world, one point of thought that really stumped me was Agnosticism. One of my uncles convinced me that Agnosticism is an idealism contrary to reality because we have to make choices based on the limited knowledge that we have and to say we don't have to make choices simply because we don't know something can easily become a scapegoat. Now I look at it another way. And perhaps his explanation had this meaning as well, that we have to make choices based on the very fact that we don't know. And even after we make the choice, we have to own up to that choice and the knowledge that we didn't have at the time.

I couldn't possibly resolve either of those questions in this short blog. The way that separation takes place is different depending on one's geographical location as well as one's philosophical and theological convictions. That probably sounds pretty individualistic, doesn't it? I don't want to end there. As of yet, I don't have a good solution to this dilemma, a way to get around rugged individualism without denying the uniqueness of each person or group of people who carry with them a variety of experiences.

On the second question, I wonder if the focal point on "knowledge" is the wrong place to start and if we need to look instead at the choices we have to make. We have to turn right or turn left. We can spend money on ourselves and write it off on our taxes or we can give it to someone else and still write it off on our taxes. We don't give money to the beggar on the street because we don't know how the person is going to use our money. All the while, we are basing are decision on what we don't know rather than on what we do know. And we will probably have to answer to our Maker someday and give an account on why we did what we did without the proper knowledge.