Information Isn’t the Same as Wisdom

For all the Millennials and the “Gens” out there, let’s start with a boomer throwback. In the last century – yet not that long ago – if you were a kid and wanted to look something up to get an answer, you got your library card out, actually rode your bike to the library, and found it in a book. If you were lucky, your parents may have saved you the trip by shelling out a few hundred bucks to buy a World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica set so you had a mini library at home to use for writing your school papers. Instead of using AI to cheat and write your project about Peru or the Hoover Dam, the back-in-the-day-way was to copy the article word for word from the encyclopedia, like the other kids in class did. Teachers were on to that trick too.

Today, we’re bombarded by information coming at us from every direction. With 24/7 Internet connectivity, we can use our phones and other devices to give us open access to anything and everything we want at any time. Let’s think about that.

First let me say that my career is in design and marketing, so I’m not an old geezer that wants to end the Internet. If anything, I feel a greater responsibility to use it as a tool for good. However, as we all know, there’s a good and a bad side because content can be posted by anyone about anything. Human nature hasn’t changed. Yes, the Internet makes useful and amazing information available, but it also opened a Pandora’s box of bad behavior and voyeurism that appeals to the dark side of human nature. It’s all out there already. It isn’t that people in 1932 or 1987 were innocent. For example, some men read “girlie magazines” and some women read “naughty novels,” but they had to go out and buy it. Now there’s a virtually infinite amount of ways to lose your innocence just a scroll or a swipe away. But this “free for all” has a cost many of us don’t consider. Plus kids are growing up with this access as normalized, without the wisdom to always make good choices.

There’s been a shift in all of us to a degree. We could compare it to a big technology experiment we found so enticing we let ourselves be controlled by it – even though we know what we do with it can be unhealthy. That’s a pretty disturbing thought, isn’t it? No one controls this “organism.” We have to control ourselves. By getting all we want, like a kid with Halloween candy, it will eventually make us sick. A lot of people ARE getting sick of the media, social media and, “extreme entertainment.” But they’ve become addicted and thinking of life without distractions would be intolerably boring now. Just take away a kid’s tablet or a teen’s phone and watch what happens. Then ask yourself, am I so different?

The Internet is full of information. Information isn’t the same as wisdom.

Information can be defined as facts about something.

Wisdom is a quality that comes from experience, knowledge, and insight. It uses information for good judgement. A wise person has discernment in their choices.

Let’s look to God’s Word for its perspective for the ages. Even though there were no smart phones when this was written, God knew technology was coming and we would need to make choices about its temptations. There is “lost wisdom” for us as believers to reconnect to today. Ephesians 5:7-17 (NLT) says this. 

“Don’t participate in the things these people do. For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.

Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, for the light makes everything visible. That is why it is said ‘Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’

So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.”

Is it rad to be bad? Proverbs15:12 (NLT) says, “Mockers hate to be corrected, so they stay away from the wise.” We can all see the results of ignoring wisdom by looking at the fruit it produces in people’s lives. Instead, wisdom avoids the consequences of bad behavior in the first place – or “wakes up” and turns to God instead.

True wisdom comes from God and the good news is that if we ask Him for it, He will provide it. Here’s a promise you can claim, according to James 1:5 (NLT):

“If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.“

RESET HIGHER: What can you do with the life and precious time you are being given by God each day? Where are you wasting it? How can you choose to spend it more wisely instead? I’m asking myself the same questions!

You can read more about the true wisdom of God in Proverbs chapters 1-4, then keep going!