day no. 15,581: a darker ignorance

"We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep." -- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

The fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil provided a certain kind of knowledge, but it was a lesser knowing than would have been provided by resisting the temptation to eat that forbidden fruit.

One learns something about sleep by sleeping, but one forgets something about being awake in the process. One learns something about drunkenness by drinking too much, but one forgets something about sobriety. There is a way, however, to learn about sleep and drunkenness without sacrificing wakefulness and sobriety in order to learn it. In other words, there is a knowledge that is purer and deeper that doesn't require experience as a pre-req.

The opposite is actually true. You learn something about evil by doing it, but you lose something about purity which you cannot have back. There is a way to be pure and know more about evil than if you had given way to it. God Himself is evidence of this. He created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil without performing evil to produce it. His knowledge precedes its production and His wisdom has never given in to the temptation to perform it and yet His knowledge of the subject is not diminished. He is not a student in the Devil's school of devilry. The Devil doesn't have any tricks that God needs to learn as though God is Book smart and Satan is street smart. Truth of the matter is, street smarts ain't smarts at all.  The Devil did not flunk holiness while excelling in evil. He failed at both subjects. He knows less about both because he gave himself to evil. His wisdom is diluted, not enhanced by his experience. Satan does have the market on evil cornered. He knows less about what he's dealing with than God who's never dealt in it.