3 million times the information contained in all the books ever written, was produced digitally in one year, according to Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post Writers Group. Further, she writes, “By next year, 16 times that data will be produced.”
What has it gotten us?
The Western media’s mantra is that it’s “the people’s right to know.” To know what? Enough to “Be a Millionaire;” or the Trivia King? What are we searching for when we “surf the net”? What’s the hot video on YouTube? What difference does it make? Could you have learned more in a Classroom with live people around you to test your ideas and experience the expanding of the mind that comes from active engagement of other Thinkers, than through an online University? Is learning about more than the accumulation of knowledge?
A First Century defender of the Christian Faith, predicted that there’d come a time when there’d be people who were, “always learning yet never able to grasp the truth.” That day has come. The data Ms. Parker wrote about is digital. Her statistics don’t account for the books that have been written or lectures, speeches, sermons that have been heard across the world. “Information overload,” is very much with us! But are we better because we have such a wealth of apparent knowledge? Have we “grasped the truth?”
One of the characters in the Old Testament story of the Jewish people was, apparently, recognized as among the wisest men who ever lived. A great Queen of another nation came to see this man, who was, at the time, Israel’s King. As the story goes, this woman came to him, “and talked with him about all that she had on her mind. He answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her.”
Now that's a feat! How many men do you know who can hear “all” that any woman “has on her mind,” not to mention answer “all her questions” in such a way that she's pleased?
Do you know any man who’d pay big money to buy what this guy knew?
This “wise” man had some rather sobering things to say about the “proliferation” of knowledge. “I've stockpiled wisdom and knowledge," he wrote. “What I've finally concluded is that so-called wisdom and knowledge are mindless and witless—nothing but spitting into the wind. Much learning earns you much trouble. The more you know, the more you hurt.” “(T)he wise man,” he concluded, “like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten.”
We mortals are, today, the custodians of a largely time bound database. For all of our progress most of what we’ve achieved will, with us, perish in the sands of time. “Then,” Jesus asked, “who will those things you’ve acquired and achieved belong to when you’re gone?” "Where," Paul the Preacher writes, “is the wise person?” “Where is the educated person?” “Where is the skilled talker of the world?” “God,” he says, “has made the wisdom of the world foolish.” He has done this, the Preacher explains, through the “crucified Christ.” Through an event which is quite possibly the greatest paradox ever played out God gave us “the truth.” Christ – the Son of Man – who is also Lord, was crucified. The idea that someone whose life ended in such a shameful way could be the “hope of Israel” was and still is “scandalous to Jews.” Any proud intellectual laughs at the idea that someone so weak and insignificant could be of any importance to them. But that’s the paradox Christ’s life poses. It is “when you’re weak,” that “you’re strong.” “In dying,” St. Francis insisted, “we are born to eternal life.” This is nonsensical to the secular mind. It's scoffed at because of widespread resistance to the idea that weakness and death can be in any way beneficial. Our resistance is what has prevented us from getting, out of the galactic body of knowledge at our disposal, what is the ultimate truth. We are mortal. But meant to be immortal. We are made for bigger and better things. Jesus said, “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it is nothing more than a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds.” Few of us have not, at one time or another, witnessed that phenomenon. “Just remember,” the song insists, “in the Winter, far beneath the bitter snow, lies the seed that with the sun’s warmth, in the Spring, becomes the Rose.” Jesus, 6 days after He said that about seeds, died. Three days later He came back to life. A single seed died; then grew through the walls of a rocky tomb with immortal life -- "many seeds" -- for any and all who would willingly accept this truth. Now the true wisdom of God calls mortals to relinquish their life’s acquisitions in exchange for another kind of life. The life Christ offers. He who was “dead and is alive again; who holds the keys to life and death,” who is “the way, the truth, and the life,” has made available to us the immortality we’re made for. What we long hoped for is true. We can live well and forever.
In all of our ruminating through the mountains of information we hope will yield ultimate answers we have not “grasped the truth.” No knowledge we’ve acquired of our own accord has solved the problem of our mortality. So “the wise man, like the fool,” will one day “be forgotten.” The claptrap of computers, endless digital periphals, and the explosive proliferation of technological wonders deludes us into thinking that we’re advancing with the passing of every nano-second. Sadly we’re not. We've put our hope in an untruth. None of our applaudable achievements have solved the problem of death. Only that person who’s breached the vault of death and shown it for what it is -- the door to everlasting life -- has the truth which eludes us.
That person is Jesus of Nazareth … the Christ – Son of Man – Son of the living God.
It is the “wisdom” of God to know this everlasting life giving God/Man! To know Him is to know the “truth.” And this “truth,” will “set you free!”
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