Have you found yourself feeling overrun by the never ending news cycle? You’re told every day of news, fake news, conspiracy theories, leftist propaganda, etc. How can we begin to get a handle on all of this data, and respond in a healthy way? In a world overloaded with information, where is wisdom to be found?
I am very thankful for Brett McCracken’s new book The Wisdom Pyramid, and it’s aim to help us balance our information diet, so that we may grow in wisdom. In a world facing an overload of information(often times biased information), and wisdom seemingly so hard to discern at times, this book is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Diagnosing Our Problem – Information Overload
Many of us don’t need help diagnosing the issue, because we feel it everyday. We hear hot takes on the news, on our social media pages, in our group text chains, on our podcasts, and in our daily interactions with our neighbors. There is so much going on, and everyone has an opinion about it. How in the world are we to manage a never ending stream of information? The answer is, we can’t, yet we still try to. McCracken helpfully diagnoses our problem: “Just as too much food makes a body sick, too much information makes the soul sick. Information gluttony is a real problem…”(pg 28)
This opens us up to all kinds of error. As McCracken notes, our never ceasing drive to consume information and stay relevant on what is happening right now and respond, is a recipe for disaster:
Further, we consumers are often eager to share things on the spot. Our quick-draw posture on social media is often “post first, think later” (if we think at all). This is disastrous— not only because it makes us easy to manipulate, but also because it erodes our credibility and can do great harm to others. (pg 46-47)
If we are overly fixated on being “first” in reposting, liking, or sharing novel content, we shouldn’t be surprised when we are often wrong, and our souls feel like they’re on a never ending hamster wheel. We need better approaches to how we should take in truth, discern it, and respond to it. Just as our bodies suffer when we binge on candy and junk food, taking in the information equivalent of sour patch kids and milk duds will leave our souls feeling terrible and malnourished.
Plotting Our Path Forward – A Balanced Diet of Truth
What is our path forward in a world marked by such an unbalanced truth-diet? McCracken lays out 6 ways we can take in truth, and ranks them in the order we should consume the most & are most necessary for our lives. The order goes:
- Bible
- Church
- Nature
- Books
- Beauty
- The Internet
The first 2, he recommends, are the only ones truly necessary (Bible & Church pg 68) and the other 4 may be helpful after we have appropriately consumed the others. What should strike us is how often we invert this list. How many of us begin primarily with the internet (just Google it!) instead of first searching the Scriptures, or bringing it to the church?
McCracken is clear that this approach is not meant to be exhaustive in every way, but rather, to provide a helpful balance to our everyday life, and habit formation (pg 68-69). As he lays out each section, however, one can’t help but feel that this truly does provide a better way than what is so intuitive to most living in the 21st century. Just about any issue we face could be well informed by following this balanced approach. When looking at sexuality, say, we could easily be put right by searching the scriptures and hearing from the church, but consider too how nature itself is vitally important. As McCracken argues, the body has authority in itself (pg 110-113), and to deny that in favor of the most recent progressive blog post, would be to lose wisdom in favor of a cheap alternative.
Any christian would be wise to look at this list (or rather, pyramid), and evaluate how they engage with truth in light of it. Is our diet mostly junk food, taking in the less important and often expendable sources of information? Are we being served well by the sources we go to? Perhaps we could all use a more balanced diet. Maybe it would allow our hearts to rest in time tested wisdom, instead of hurriedly trying to determine how we should post about the most recent tabloid issue. Maybe our souls would begin to feel refreshed, our lives suddenly less hectic, and our witness more believable.
Living Life Wisely
I found myself challenged as I read McCracken’s insightful engagement on this issue. I recently decided to delete some of my social media accounts, and the others I removed their apps from my phone’s home screen. I want to make it far more natural for me to be slow in going to the internet, social media, and other fast hitting sources, and be far more inclined to meditating on the scriptures, thoughtful conversations, deep reflections on truth in the world, and what wisdom I have gained from other’s insightful engagement on issues. I know this will not always be perfect in my life, but I am hoping it to be far more balanced moving forward than it has been in the past.
I think christians tend to be far more shaped by their culture than they tend to realize. Living in the 21st century, we have many blessings that no other generation before us had, and yet, that comes with a great cost. If we are going to live in an era of information overload, we must be disciplined in our discernment of what constitutes a healthy diet, and balance it appropriately according to God ordained, time tested means. I would recommend The Wisdom Pyramid for any christian wanting to grow in this area of their life, having realized their need for a better approach.
*I received a free review copy of The Wisdom Pyramid from Crossway. This did not in any way impact my engagement with the book or the substance of this review.