Now we are cursed

Part of what it means to live in the information age is that the operating philosophy is that we can make informed, rational decisions based on collecting information and make logical choices based on that information.

Yet we are cursed now because even after months of the pandemic, there exists no information out there that provides unanimous certitude about the right way to go.

In an age of myth and superstition, a pandemic like this would have promoted a global turning of people towards their gods. Yet what we are experiencing is a global disorientation because the god of information has no answers for us.

It feels like the world is running around with such unrest. That unrest certainly started in our hearts where the foundations of what we knew to be true and certain are now shaken.

I feel this disorientation in my life now.

I see this inexplicable apprehensiveness and helplessness of wanting to operate from the best possible information yet realizing this information doesn’t exist anywhere in our world currently.

I see how this internal angst has caused the world to turn against each other. For if what I know is not certain, I take comfort in leveling others.  Behind all of our world’s unrest in the social square, that is the modus operandi.

I know what God wants to do in our world today, he wants to do in me first–to dismantle the idol of information in my heart.

To be as again a child before him, who knows no truth other than a truth spoken by a father. To be as a child again and to know the only word that brings peace in chaos is his word spoken to me.

Right behind you a voice will say, “This is the way you should go,” whether to the right or to the left.
Isa 30:21

Long has he wanted this place in my heart.

Long have I believed that I could build wisdom from the bricks of our world. Yet I am learning in this age that wisdom is the fear of God. Wisdom is the humility to recognize that we don’t have all the answers and we never will.

Wisdom is nearness.

It is the nearness Israel had when God led them out of the wilderness and who granted certitude only by the presence of a cloud by day and a fire by night–that is the wisdom God is trying to return our world to.

Yet most in our world will not turn towards him, but will continue to scratch, claw, and call upon the god of information to provide his aegis. “Speak to me!” they cry out.

But I have been humbled to turn to a different way. I have conceded to the God who calls himself the way, the truth, and the life. I have laid down my scratching and clawing for information because I see that the blisters on my hands and nails have offered me no peace and certainty of the truth and have seen that it has brought others no closer.

I don’t have information; I just have Jesus.

A few months ago, it would have been perceived to be a foolish to say that. But I know now–this is the surest and truest wisdom.