Why Christians Are Uniquely Equipped to Navigate the Information Age

The discovery of a few flecks of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1848 prompted one of the largest migrations in US history as citizens and immigrants moved for the promise of “striking gold” in California. For most, this promise did not materialize and today elementary students surmise as much when their textbooks show the grim faces of the Gold Rush framed in black and white, legs knee-deep in slimy, gray grit and hands holding dented pans and shovels. A Bugs Bunny cartoon from my own childhood displayed a failed prospector who finally wrestles Bugs Bunny only to yank out his own gold tooth and shout, “Euweka gold at wast!”

Job playing on what we might call “Gold Rush” imagery speaks to the similarly futile task of searching for wisdom:

Surely there is a mine for silver,
    and a place for gold that they refine.

[Man] searches out to the farthest limit…

He opens shafts in a valley away from where anyone lives

        they are forgotten by travelers…

But where shall wisdom be found?
    And where is the place of understanding?
…it is not found in the land of the living.

Abaddon and Death say,
    ‘We have (only) heard a rumor of it with our ears.’

Job’s conclusion, in keeping with the rest of the Hebrew wisdom literature, is that God both knows and grants wisdom which itself is defined by turning from evil and fearing Him. (Proverbs 2:6) But man’s search for wisdom, either deep within the earth or deep within the psyche, yields little more than an open shaft.

For some time now we have been living in “gold rush” that parallels both the frantic activity of the 1849 prospectors and the lamented futility of Job. It is not gold that we are sifting for; it is information. We have heard the cries of the experts and the influencers, the personalities and the podcasters, the professional editors, and algorithm masters: “Euweka gold at wast!” And we are migrating online in droves with the hopes of sifting through the data for our own specks of gold: important information, life-changing information, trustworthy information.

My contention is twofold:

First, and negatively, the “Information Age” has come to us packaged with a set of at least three assumptions: 1) information must be taken as important, 2) information must be taken for the purpose of growth, and 3) information must be taken at face value. Yet each of these assumptions prove to be false more often than not.

Secondly, and positively, Christians do have the resources they need to navigate the Information Age with discernment, awareness, and wisdom. Moreover, by using the “tools” intrinsic to our faith we not only find a way to navigate this confusing world, but we stand as lights to the lost. “One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” (Proverbs 12:26)

I will begin by examining the three stated assumptions in contrast with three warnings from C.S. Lewis, Edwin Friedman, and Neil Postman. I will then look at the “tools” that Christians have intrinsic to their faith to help them engage with the world around them.

“The Fatal Habit of Fluttering"

After World War I began the sixteen-year-old C.S. Lewis realized that—barring the miraculous—he was mere months away from the battlefield. But as the world around him became a cacophony of war news and global gossip Lewis resolved to block out updates on the war to remain focused on his own schooling. He knew that he would experience the war in person sooner than later and so he resolved to measure his engagement while he still had the ability to do so. But Lewis saw this strategy of blocking out mainstream information as commendable even beyond the war:

Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California.

Lewis’ warning is extreme and ignores the possibility of a balanced intake of information. But his warning is also accurate: the bulk of the information that we consume is bloated with misplaced emphasis and interpretation. It’s just not important. Moreover, we expose this irrelevance of our information as we flutter from paragraph to paragraph. We know that it is drivel; we know that we will soon forget it all and won’t be a penny shorter.

Lewis was aware that this strategy would not be popular. “[Some] will call it a flight from reality. I maintain that it was rather a treaty with reality.” (Lewis, 158) Lewis saw through the assumption that news about the war was always of fundamental importance and recognized that there was an even greater importance to be attentive to his own present life as a young man.

“Confused Information with Expertise"

Ordained rabbi and practicing family therapist Edwin Friedman wrote at length regarding the negative effects that the information age has been having on organizations and their leaders. Though Friedman died in 1996 before his essential work “A Failure of Nerve” could be completed, a team made up of his children and protégés edited the volume for publishing in 1999. Musing on the flood of information, Friedman wrote, “Today the quantity of data that is available to leaders is so huge as to be unimaginable… suppose you were to project forward two thousand years. How much data will there be?” (Friedman, 103-104)

While his two thousand year projection remains unanswerable, it is possible to speak to what would be happening within two decades of Friedman’s passing. In 2019 ‘YouTube’ would report the metric of 500 hours of content uploaded every minute. Friedman’s warning is as prescient as ever:

“As long as leaders—parents, healers, managers—base their confidence on how much data they have acquired, they are doomed to feeling inadequate, forever. They will never catch up. The situation can only get worse. Yet everywhere in our society, the social science construction of reality has confused information with expertise, know-how with wisdom, change with almost anything new, and complexity with profundity. Neither parents nor presidents will ever be able to escape the flood of data that engulfs them…”

Friedman is burdened for leaders—a term he defines generously—who feel anxious that their own lack of information is disqualifying them for their calling. Statements like, “If we only knew enough, we could fix anything,” or its inverse, “If we failed, it is because we did not use the right method,” reveal that we are indeed stuck trying to play “catch up.”

Friedman sees this myth—that information is a prerequisite to maturity and growth—as socially regressive as it has turned our focus to the external environment over the internal man. For leaders, information can only be as helpful as the spiritual health of the one employing it. “The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of the fool pours forth foolishness.” (Proverbs 15:2, NKJV) To put it another way, a leader who gives time and intention to internal processes like forgiveness, courage, patience, love, and passion will naturally have a compounding effect on even a little bit of “know-how.” But give “know-how” to a leader who remains stuck in resentment, fear, anxiety, co-dependency, or apathy and it will ultimately be useless in their hands. While information may lead to change it will never be in and of itself for “this ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1)

“Endlessly Entertaining"

One final warning which warrants consideration is that of the frequently cited critic of technology and culture, Neil Postman. Unlike Friedman, Postman’s primary critique has less to do with the quantity of information and more to do with its quality. He wonders aloud in ‘Amusing Ourselves To Death’ why TV newscasters, after revealing a slew of the latest “murder and mayhem” invite viewers to join them again tomorrow. Who could ever conceive of such an invitation? We can only understand this if we see that information largely exists to entertain us, even at and over the cost of informing us. (Postman, 87)

I remember a particular evening in which I was out to dinner with some friends and as our waitress drew up to our table for the first time it was evident to all of us that she was clearly disturbed by something. We asked her how she was, she replied that it was a hard evening of work for her because she had just received news of an earthquake that had devastated a foreign country. When we asked if she had any relational contacts in this country, she replied, “No.”

This is an example of what Postman calls the “peek-a-boo” world. A world in which bits of information peek out at us and, after affecting our emotions, pop away again to hide. We are unable to do anything in response; we are informed vastly beyond our capacity to act. If we trust the source, our instinct is to take information at face value and seek some level of practical application. But this instinct is no longer serving us in an information economy where grabbing and holding attention is so important.

So then, we have three warnings before us. Lewis’ concern is that much of our information is irrelevant. Friedman’s concern is that even our vast bulk of information is inadequate to produce the changes we desire. For though our wealth of information has expanded a corresponding growth of unity, maturity, safety, or virtue cannot be demonstrated. Finally, Postman’s concern is that our information is tainted with a motivation to grip our emotions and not let go. Indeed, with each succession in technology the potential to monetize attention has proven impossible to resist. This has all been to state the first half of my proposition: living in the information age is not what it seems and the benefits we assume to possess are actually drawbacks.

Rules for Engagement

The second half of my proposition is as follows: Christians are well equipped to navigate the information age by employing discernment, cultivating awareness, and seeking wisdom.

Employing Discernment

First, Christianity offers the two-pronged tool of discernment: the ability to seek the good while staying away from the bad. For the Christian, there is freedom to explore the arts, knowledge, and news but we are still required not to be ruled by anything other than Christ. (1 Corinthians 6:12) Marshall McLuhan’s adage bears repeating here: “The medium is the message.” Christians must take seriously the warning that we are often just as shaped by what is not stated as by what is. With discernment, we can engage in this information age with the confidence that all truth is God’s truth and yet a sobriety regarding the corruption of sin, even as it corrupts “information” itself, to say nothing of “information technology.”

Before sending out the twelve apostles for ministry, Jesus instructed them, “[Go] to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and then warned them, “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:6, 16) He sends them to the sheep as sheep amongst wolves. They have a direct relationship to the lost sheep as fellow sheep, yet a discernment to see the dangers in the world for what they are. As such, Christians must navigate the information age with the shrewdness of a serpent while keeping their consciences clean.

Cultivating Awareness

An underestimated resource of the Christian faith is that of self-awareness. All throughout the scriptures when men and women come to faith they also come to see themselves as they were: separated from God. Moreover, they are encouraged to see themselves as they are now: united to Christ by faith and reconciled to God. We cannot see our own blindspots for the very definition of the term is that which we cannot see. Yet in conversion God exposes our deepest ignorance which is the ignorance of Him and fills us with His Spirit that we would be continually “renewed in the whole man after the image of God.”

Paul writes to the Ephesians that though they formerly followed the course of this world, they did not, of course, recognize that they were going the way of the world. (Ephesians 2:2) But receiving faith in Christ opened their eyes to who they really were. Christians, through the Holy Spirit, are now able to grow in awareness toward their own assumptions, emotions, reactions, fantasies, and perceptions. The Spirit within them works to present every thought captive to Christ.

This awareness is a great asset to the Christian in a world that promises progress through information. Only by cultivating awareness by the Holy Spirit are the raw materials of information utilized for growth.

Seeking Wisdom

Jesus warned that the good life does not consist of attaining an abundance of possessions but in being “rich toward God.” (Luke 12:21) We do well to heed the parallel warning not to fill our barns with a glut of information and yet remain impoverished toward godly wisdom.

God Himself defines wisdom for men and apart from Him no wisdom can be found. (Proverbs 9:10, 28:5) Moreover, He gives wisdom to men and does so without rebuke. (Proverbs 2:6, James 1:5) And the knowledge of God is of greater value than even burnt offerings, for the days of man are brief but what God has spoken endures for eternity. (Hosea 6:6, Isaiah 40:8) Christians then, have the unique grace of knowing the source of all wisdom. Christians take advantage of this resource when they seek the wisdom of God as a guiding principle by which they test all other information.

In some ways, seeking wisdom is like acquiring a taste for wine. After sampling enough good wines, one naturally builds a dislike for that which is too sweet, or too bitter, or too stale. So the Christian, at the same time that they are being nourished in God’s wisdom is building a distaste for the godless knowledge. They are becoming rich toward God.

Conclusion

Critiques concerning the Information Age are common. Much has been written about the loss of focus and attention, the rise of anxiety and stress, and the distortion of our perception of the world. Despite these drawbacks, Christians are uniquely equipped to navigate this terrain with a particular agility. We have been given the safe-guard of discernment and the hope of renewal in Christ. We have had the scales removed from our eyes and can set about removing the remaining planks by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we have been received by the Father from whom comes all wisdom. So, let they that dwell within this land pray with expectation, “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” (Psalm 62:2)