The priest is to take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it on the doorposts of the temple, on the four corners of the upper ledge of the altar and on the gateposts of the inner court. You are to do the same on the seventh day of the month for anyone who sins unintentionally or through ignorance; so you are to make atonement for the temple.
- Ezekiel 45:19-20
“Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders.
- Acts 3:17
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
- Acts 17:30
But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.
- Hebrews 9:7
“Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous?”
- Bill Watterson
Of course, Bill Watterson is the cartoonist that did the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips.
There was great wisdom in those strips, and also a lot of ignorance. Bill Watterson captured being a little boy with expert style.
But can we get away with ignorance before God?
Our need to do sacrifices is over. Jesus paid the price, but when ancient Israel made sacrifices for those sins done in ignorance, it means that God notices even when we do not.
I heard a pastor argue recently that we cannot confess each sin we do because the list is too long, but then we sin as we go through the list. One of those sins is to be so arrogant that we are aware of all our sins to then put everything on the list. As you can see this list making, the list of our sins, becomes ever expanding.
But one of my major themes in these writings are to make people think.
And I will continue to fight that battle, even if I have to go down swinging.
With that in mind and the opposite being that ignorance comes upon us instantaneously, am I fighting an uphill battle?
I grew up in Mississippi. It has a reputation of being a backward state, but I have learned that you can learn in spite of the school system, or due to the system, even with ignorance around you.
The big joke was that the reason why the state is so ignorant is that all the people who could read a map left. With that joke in mind, I had been gone from Mississippi for sixteen years, and then I found a job in northeast Mississippi. My uncle who lives in Washington state called me and said, “You idiot! You had escaped the state and now you go back willingly?” That uncle recently had a birthday, his 100th. I always liked him.
But there are a lot of Mississippians that are smart. There are others that do not know how to read, and they rely on the cashier at the store to print the check for them and they draw their “X” on the check.
One should not let the other define the state. I have a lot of people that I love that live there. And most of them are pretty smart.
But we need to keep learning, each and every day.
If for no other reason, we need to discover more about God and how He loves us.
And we still need to confess that we do not know all the sins that we commit. Yet, we need to have the heart of Jesus and not like those sins.
Someday soon, God will make us whole and ignorance will be one of the first things that will be no more.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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