I am glad that people have referred to this as the information age.
It certainly appears as though there has been an explosion of availability of information from especially sources like the internet. At your finger-tips you can identify the capital of Bolivia (Sucre), the seventh president of India (V. V. Giri) and the great dishes of Fiji (go on then – google it).
Like never before, it appears all the more important to be informed and whether that is through the news on TV, through the radio, on the web-site, through Facebook or Twitter, it is all the craze to be as informed as possible.
The same thing is all the more pressing in some places of Christianity. It is almost as though as long as you’ve digested the Bible and are able to recite great portions of it, that in itself is a sign of Christian maturity and impresses the masses. It is seen as a sign that you really know your stuff and you must surely know God well.
There are the reading lists that take you through the Bible in a year. There is great emphasis placed on being savvy in these ways.
It is commendable to be well read and I certainly don’t want to suggest the importance of knowing the Word. Yet therein lies the problem – knowing the Word. Sometimes we can get so hung up on Bible Information that we forget that its core purpose is to grow in the knowledge of the Word. That knowledge goes far deeper and is far greater than just a literary or intellectual one.
Indeed such can be people’s focus on memorising scripture and being able to dazzle people with biblical information, that the actual Word knowledge is rarely tested and worse still rarely applied.
Word knowledge is something that incorporates the application of what is read and understood. It is how does the understanding of what was written done to build your life application of Christ in your life. How is it changed your mind-set, your outlook, your speech, your decision-making, your attitude? How has it made you appreciate God more in your life and as a result seek to live out the life of Christ in your day to day engagements and interactions?
One of my favourite scriptures is Psalm 1 and in that there is reference made to the blessed man meditating on God’s law day and night. That meditation is holistic. It’s not spending day and night chanting the verse and dreamily sleeping on the information. It’s a conscious awareness of how those words and how God’s character influences and shapes life mentally, verbally, spiritually, emotionally and socially.
You know, I reckon God would be more impressed if we knew Him in the little that we’re informed by, than waste a lot of information by not knowing Him any more by it. That is to say, if you don’t make it through the Bible in a year, that is not as important as making it through to Jesus more in the year because of what you do with how you’ve been informed.
God won’t reject you because you weren’t informed lots. His words are that He’ll tell you to depart because He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know you, cos you haven’t invested the time looking to get to know Him, rather than impressing others with awesome biblical knowledge.
We only have so much capacity in our brains and lives. Rather than fill it up with useless information that profits us little. Let us look to KNOW Him, who to KNOW is life eternal.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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