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All the counsel you have received has only worn you out! – Isaiah 47:13
From whence cometh wisdom? From thither once-unknown Hollywood stars? Yea, yonder unto the CNN.com? The Holy and Undefiled Fair and Balanced? Mr. Google?
Our world is saturated with information. UC Berkely once estimated that all the words ever spoken by human beings could be stored in 5 exabytes – and in 2015 almost 1000 exabytes of information will pass over our Net lines. (Tech nugget alert: one exabyte is 1,000,000 terabytes.) Every hour in 2014, enough information was consumed by internet traffic to fill 7 million DVDs, and it doubles roughly every 2 years.
DEAR OLD GOLDEN RULE DAYS
Unfortunately, information is not the same as wisdom. It used to be that schooling was a process of acquiring information – the multiplication table, the list of presidents, the alphabet and cursive all taught to the tune of a hickory stick. That’s no longer the case. Today’s students carry more information around in their pocket than students could have accessed in their city libraries a generation ago. Finding out anything about anything is as simple as a vocal search command. Make it so.
Today, education is less about acquiring information and more about determining what information is good. A 2009 UCLA study found the ability to critically evaluate information actually declined the more information is consumed; yet it’s amazing how many people on the Internet think they are they smartest Homo Superior on the planet, because they once looked up Albert Einstein on Wikipedia. At some level, we probably all think “if everyone just had all the information I do, they would all agree with me. ” We confuse knowledge with understanding.
LOGOS LOGIC
The Bible uses the word “fool” quite often. However, it doesn’t really have the same connotation that we might think of today. A Biblical ‘fool’ could actually be the smartest person in the room, but they lack wisdom. In other words, they may be able to build a nuclear bomb, but not understand the consequences of that use. We see this often in our world today. People have the knowledge to find a sexual partner anywhere in the world – but not the wisdom to avoid it. We can find free music/movies in about 10 seconds – but not consider that stealing digitally is no different than stealing from a store. We can read websites that describe a thousand different worldviews, but not discern truth among them. So as a society, we throw up our hands and proclaim “whatever you find makes you happy, go for it.”
The Bible has the answer (go figure). Proverbs argues that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (note: not “gaa! monster!!” afraid, but more like “whoa! Awesome!” afraid. Fear of the Lord is knowing that God is powerful beyond our comprehension, not being afraid of the boogey man.) If you want to be wise, you don’t need to spend more time on the Interweb; you need to spend more time with the Author of the universe. Getting counsel from a thousand different sources does us no good if all that counsel is bad. True wisdom and critical thinking comes only from pursuing Christ. Francis Bacon once said “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Today, spend a little less time in front of a screen, and a little more in God’s Word. You’ll be the wiser for it.
Word…exabyte…nice. I think Pastors might speak a little more than 5 of those things…although, we have to listen a lot too…oh wait…you mean ALL human beings? wow…now that’s a mind blower…