There are clearly advantages to having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information, inasmuch as this hyper-access to people, news, and facts assuredly has far-reaching effects on cognition, as well as the way we see, or don’t see, the world. Speaking decades before the debates over Twitter or the wonders of Google, Malcolm Muggeridge seemed to foresee the possibilities of too much information. “Accumulating knowledge is a form of avarice and lends itself to another version of the Midas story,” he wrote. “Man is so avid for knowledge that everything he touches turns to facts; his faith becomes theology, his love becomes lechery, his wisdom becomes science. Pursuing meaning, he ignores truth.” In other words, Muggeridge saw that it was possible to see so many news clips that we are no longer seeing, to hear so many sound-bites that we are no longer hearing, to seek so many “exclusives” that we are no longer understanding.
This has far-reaching implications when we consider that the same problem exists with regard to knowing God and understanding faith in Christ. It is so easy for us to grow complacent in our acquisition of biblical truth, that we miss the point of that truth. No wonder Jesus so often drew our attention to the "doing" not just the hearing of God's Word. In fact, he closed out the Sermon on the Mount with precisely such a warning when he gave the illustration of the wise and foolish men. What made the wise man wise and the foolish man foolish? It was not that the wise man built his house on Jesus Christ the Rock (though that is a perfectly valid analogy elsewhere). No, his house stood up under the storms of faith attacks because he heard the word of God and did it! Learning more is not necessarily better for us, but learning with the intent of doing that word most certainly IS!
So, Twitter away, Google the facts, but hear the Psalmist's word as gospel for today, "Be still and know that I am God" (46:10).
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