When I was a child, the entirety of human knowledge was contained on the bottom shelf of my parents’ bookcase, in alphabetical order. It was basically the internet printed out, bound in 26 volumes, and called The Encyclopedia Britannica. The problem was, you could familiarize yourself with most of it and still not know what it was like to have a girlfriend. Not that I’m speaking from experience; I’m just saying there’s more to know than knowledge.
I’m meditating on T.S. Eliot’s “Choruses from ‘The Rock’” this week, thinking about how much truer this is in the so-called “Information Age” than it was a century ago.
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
Psalm 111, like the Britannica, is presented as an acrostic: the A-Z, (or, if you like, Alpha to Omega) of Wisdom. Yet it presents a very different vision of understanding than mere trivia recall, avoiding all the fascinating details and diving instead to the whole heart of the matter. Knowledge can be downloaded, transferred, quantified. Wisdom is not like that. Wisdom is relational, contextual, and fruit-bearing. Knowledge measures matter, but wisdom measures meaning. What does it all mean? Let’s explore it together this Sunday.
