In every elementary school class, in every high school and college course, in every job, in every church, in every denomination, on every floor of every building, there seems to be a resident “know-it-all.” You know the type.

As much as we despised and resented those resident know-it-alls, we love the current universal know-it-all. It’s name is . . . . . Google. But even in a world where the phrase “Google It!” has become every parent’s answer to every question we can’t answer, we still have that suspicious feeling that Google is sometimes too eager to show off what technology “knows,” and what humans don’t. And no one likes a show-off.

Those “in the know” are the most respected, the most powerful, and the most influential. Knowledge offers a way to power and prestige. Portals to knowledge, like Yahoo and YouTube, wield the most authority over us and over our imagination.

Of course, whether we turn knowledge into wisdom is another matter. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most influential philosophers who ever lived, even though in his lifetime he published only one little book, one essay, and one book review. Wittgenstein said that philosophy is “thinking about what we think how we think, and how we can think.” In other words, philosophy doesn’t add to our knowledge of God, only to our understanding of the forms of our thoughts about God. Sometimes knowledge can loop back on itself and never leap into wisdom, leaving us imprisoned in the details of knowledge, the data of information.

Then . . . how much knowledge is wasted and goes unused for human betterment? The French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel calls the failure of known facts to inform public opinion “connaissance inutile” or “wasted knowledge.” There is a lot of “wasted knowledge” even with all our know-it-alls.

The philosophical study of “how we know what we know” is called “epistemology.” A scholarly study of epistemology considers the differences between knowledge of facts, of beliefs, and of truths. Each of those involves a different kind of “knowledge.” But epistemological scholars ironically never take into consideration “who” you know as a form of knowledge. That is why epistemological scholars are sitting in cramped little offices, teaching for long hours and little money, talking to few people other than each other.

In this week’s gospel text in Matthew the debate between Jesus and the “chief priests and elders of the people” is an “epistemological” debate — a “how do you know what you know” jousting match. It is a fight between the “what you know” people and the “who you know” people. 

The “chief priests and elders” were the acknowledged, respected religious authorities in Jerusalem, especially on Temple grounds. They are the portals to knowledge, the Googles of their day. The various courtyards surrounding the Temple itself were gathering places for Jews to gather and pray, study and socialize, and to purchase sacrificial offerings. The courtyards furthest away from the Temple were the most casual and commercial. These “outer courtyards” are where Gentiles, sellers of sacrificial animals, and women were all allowed to gather. But as one went from the outer rings and approached closer to the holy Temple itself, the selectivity and solemnity factor went up. Only Jewish men were allowed to be present in this closer ring, and the focus of those gathered was on study and prayer. The atmosphere in these inner courtyards was one of both piety and pressure. Think Harvard. All those students who get into a great Ivy League school in order to learn from the best, to gain great knowledge, also know there is a whole lot more going on than just book learning. It is a place where what you know and who you know are forever linked together. Those moments of linkage can change your life.

One day when Jesus was teaching within this “inner sanctum” of privilege and influence, a cadre of officialdom, the “chief priests and elders,” confronted him and demanded that he show some credentials: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

In good rabbinic tradition Jesus answered his challengers with a challenge. A question was answered with another question. Jesus was not being evasive or coy. Instead he was forcing the religious authorities to look beyond the “who” they were worried about protecting to the “what” that God was doing in their midst. The Jewish priests and elders were committed to protecting and promoting the uneasy “status quo” they had established between themselves and the occupying Roman army that ruled their world. As long as they “played nice” their Roman rulers might “play nice” back. But for this delicate balance to work the Jewish religious authorities needed everyone to “go along and get along.” Jesus’ message of the gospel, of leveling the playing field so that all people, not just the most obedient and observant, might be welcomed by God, was far too disruptive and potentially disastrous for either Jerusalem or Rome to accept.

That Jesus already evoked and emitted an unquestionable authority is evident in the fact that his quibbling questioners, who were no less than “chief priests” and “elders,” immediately acquiesced in the conditions for a response that he demanded. Jesus challenged those who questioned his authority with a challenge of his own.

They took the bait. But they could not answer the challenge. When Jesus asked them to declare whether John the Baptist’s baptism was “from heaven or was it of human origin?” the greatest of Judaism’s scholars and leaders could not bring themselves to give an answer. Instead they fussed about and made circles with their toes in the sand until they finally confessed, “We do not know.”

Today we call this being “p.c.” — “politically correct.” We all ought to be sensitive to others. But we are now living in a world with pc-ness gone amuck to the point where there is a religion of pc-ness. You all know what “PC” means, although the best example of it was given by Gary Trudeau, the “Doonesbury” cartoonist, at an opening-of-the-year speech at Yale University a few years ago:

Dean Kagan, distinguished faculty, parents, friends, graduating seniors, Secret Service agents, class agents, people of class, people of color, colorful people, people of height, the vertically constrained, people of hair, the differently coiffed, the optically challenged, the temporarily sighted, the insightful, the out of sight, the out-of-towners, the Eurocentrics, the Afrocentrics, the Afrocentrics with Eurailpasses, the eccentrically inclined, the sexually disinclined, people of sex, sexy people, sexist pigs, animal companions, friends of the earth, friends of the boss, the temporarily employed, the differently employed, the differently optioned, people with options, people with stock options, the divestiturists, the deconstructionists, the home constructionists, the home boys the homeless, the temporarily housed at home, and God save us, the permanently housed at home.

The Temple religious authorities gave the answer that would not offend anyone. Their answer was calculated not to get them in trouble with any one in particular, but clearly their answer went against their own personal knowledge of the truth. In the words of Sergeant Schultz of “Hogan’s Heroes,” “I know nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing.”

To declare that John the Baptist’ s mission and baptism was “from heaven” would be an admission of their own rejection and disbelief of him as he worked and witnessed among the people.

To declare that John’s mission was just some sort of personal mission, his own singular-fueled desire, would enrage the huge numbers of people whom John had touched with his message and baptized with his own hands.

Answering Jesus’ question was a “lose-lose” situation politically for the Temple authorities. Back then, as here today, there are pc czars, people who live and listen and read at red-alert for anything not politically correct. Every age lives in a “pc” world. So they took the “pc” course. They chose not to come clean: “We do not know.”

We all “know.” We all know when something feels wrong. We all know when something is wrong. We all know when something will be wrong. We all know what we know — and in our hearts we know the truth. Many of us are not good at directions, hardly knowing our left from our right. But in politics, as in directions, we may not be good at “left” or “right” but we do know “wrong.”

The biggest lie the chief priests and elders told in today’s gospel text was “We do not know.” They knew. They knew lots of things. They knew that if they admitted that John the Baptist had performed his baptisms and offered his message of redemption under the authority of God, as a true prophet of God, then they could be hung out to dry by embracing a new messenger of God to the people. They also knew that John had baptized Jesus and so, even if they did not know of Jesus’ uniquely divine authority they, at the very least, knew that John had acknowledged Jesus’ authority over him and his mission. Admitting that John’s work and baptism were divinely ordained was bad enough; the implications for his cousin Jesus’s mission was even worse.

 “I can neither deny nor confirm” was their final answer. A big fat “I don’t know.” Jesus was standing and teaching in the inner courts of the Temple, with large crowds listening to him and accepting him as both a teacher and a prophet. The “authorities” could not afford to trouble those waters. Is it any wonder that Jesus could say about them in Luke 11:52, in the words of “The Message:”

You're hopeless, you religion scholars! You took the key of knowledge, but instead of unlocking doors, you locked them. You won't go in yourself, and won't let anyone else in either."

Or in the words of the New King James:

Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.”

Or in the words of the NIV:

Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."

The religious authorities at the Temple choose to lock the doors of knowledge and follow the party line. The “don’t ask/don’t tell/don’t let on to what you know” line. The “go along to get along” line. The “pc” line.

It is the “line” we have all stood in at some point in our lives. Who among us cannot remember humiliating a kid in junior high school who was “different,” who stood out beyond the bounds of acceptance? In high school there were the super “cliques,” and the rule was to find your own or find the exit. What you knew versus who you were made up and mapped your world.

There is a different voice that calls us. For some of us this voice calls crystal clear early in life. There are amazing young people, living in the midst of the most crazy, cranium crushing household conditions you could imagine, who still manage to “know” and act according to the “right thing.” And for everyone who does “act,” there are all those who “know” the right thing, and cannot quite do it yet. But they “know.”

Those are Jesus’ people. Those who know there is a wrong way. Those who want to go a right way. Those who “know” there is something more to life than getting ahead and getting along, being “popular” or being powerful. Those who are trying every day to do more and be more than we appear to be in the world.

“I don’t know,” was the cowardly act of a group of people who wanted to try and keep a bad status quo. “I don’t know” is only a good answer when it is an honest answer, when we really don’t know. Affirming what we do know is a better answer. We know that God loves us enough to muck about and muddle in our lives. We know that God sent us Jesus to redeem our lives from that mortal mess-up. We know that in the divine drama of Hide-and-Seek, God is always seeking us, even as we are always hiding.

The best argument against the rectitude of political correctitude is this: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and actions” (1John3:18). We spend so much time and energy loving with our language, making sure our words don’t give offense, that we have little time and energy left to love “in truth and actions.” Who cannot admire how the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard begins one of his essays with an anti-“pc” disclaimer: “These are Christian reflections. Therefore we will not talk about love, but about the works of love.”

Jesus was not on the “correct” side of hardly any issue of his day. Most often he was politically and piously incorrect. Where did we get the notion that Christians need to be on the “correct” side of every issue of our day? 

Besides, who decides the “correct” side? There is only one. And even when we truly “don’t know,” we can always say what we do know. And what we do know is not a “what” but a “who.” For disciples of Jesus it is not “what you know” that counts but “who you know.” And we can always say “who” we know. It’s a confession worth memorizing:

I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day (2 Timothy 1:12).

You can be “In the Know” even while living “I don’t know. Even when we don’t know, even when we must admit “I don’t know,” we can always confidently be “in the know” about one thing:

I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.