October 21, 2021

October 21, 2021

These days we don’t lack for information. In fact, the reverse is true. As Brett McCracken puts it in his book The Wisdom Pyramid, we suffer from “information gluttony.”

Here’s some informational stats:

• In 2019, a single minute on the Internet saw the transmission of 188 million emails, 18.1 million texts, and 4.5 million videos viewed on YouTube.
• In 2020, there were 40 times more bytes of data on the Internet than there are stars in the observable universe.
• Some estimates suggest that by 2025, 463 exabytes of data will be created each day online--the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day.

If you’re like me, you are wondering, what exactly IS an exabyte? Five exabytes is equivalent to all words ever spoken by humans since the dawn of time. McCracken says that by 2025, that amount of data will be created every 15 minutes.

And the amazing thing is, all this information is in our pockets.  We no longer have to go to dusty library shelves for info.  Now our phones are encyclopedias. With a few clicks we can access the world library.

But as convenient as it is to have such access—answers to any question we might have—the sad fact is all this information is not making us wiser. Too many of us use knowledge as weapons to throw at each other in order to justify our views.

The late Hadden Robinson once said, “Our generation possesses more data about the universe and human personality than all previous generations put together. High school graduates today have been exposed to more information about the world than Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza or Benjamin Franklin. In terms of facts alone, neither Moses nor Paul could pass a college entrance exam today.

Yet by everyone’s standards, even with all our knowledge, society today is peopled with a bumper crop of brilliant failures. Men and women educated to earn a living often don’t know anything about handling life itself. Alumni from noted universities have mastered information about a narrow slice of life but couldn’t make it out of the first grade when it comes to living successfully with family and friends. Let’s face it. Knowledge is not enough to meet life’s problems. We need wisdom, the ability to handle life with skill.”

And Robinson is correct, we all need to know how to DO life correctly. As Paul writes in 2nd Timothy too many of us are “always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7)

Remember, wisdom is closer than the phones in our pockets.  God freely offers it.  James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, Who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

As Christians we must be known for the way we show God's wisdom and grace.

Keep the SON in your eyes!
Mark