“always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7 HCSB).
The Woodstock Rock Festival, held in August 1969, is generally acknowledged as a pivotal moment in music history. Over 400,000 people attended that event and the National Register of Historic Places of the United States has given official recognition to the site where the Festival took place.
As Woodstock recedes further into past, this great cultural event from the 1960s will inevitably fade in relevance for each succeeding generation. Nevertheless, the film that documented the Woodstock Rock Festival contains a scene with one observation that endures throughout the generations.
You see, the cinematographers who documented the Woodstock Festival also recorded the activities and opinions of those who attended the event as well as the musical acts that played there. One youth who was interviewed expressed his opinion of those who had gathered together at Woodstock…
“People who are nowhere are coming here ’cause there’s people they think are somewhere. So everybody is like, really looking for, you know, some kind of answer, you know, where there isn’t one … People don’t know, you know? They don’t know how to live, they don’t know what to do, and they think that if they can come here and they can find out, you know, what it is … It’s just like, people are very lost.” (1)
Even though those words were spoken decades ago, the truth behind that youthful observation remains unchanged: “So everybody is like, really looking for, you know, some kind of answer… It’s just like, people are very lost.” This brings us to 2 Timothy 3:7, and it’s observation that some are “…ever learning and never able to come to a precise and experiential knowledge of the truth” (Wuest).
Those who are seeking to fill a void in life apart from Christianity may choose to follow many religious beliefs or life philosophies. Many of those ideologies allow us to entertain the illusory belief that we are growing, learning, and making progress in life. But in the end, those avenues never really get us anywhere. In fact, the Bible devotes an entire book to an examination of that subject in great detail.
The youth who was interviewed at Woodstock recognized this inconvenient truth when he said, “People who are nowhere are coming here ’cause there’s people they think are somewhere.” It is only through Christ that we can avoid the treadmill of a life that is “…always seeking instruction, yet never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (NET).
Image Credit: “Woodstock Music Festival/1969” by dbking. Licensed under CC BY 2.0
(1) Woodstock: The Movie Copyright 1970 Warner Bros. Inc. All rights reserved [see 1:08:47 – 1:09:20. Rated R – nudity, graphic language, sexual content. Viewer discretion advised]