“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).
In the last 200 years, the world has undergone some revolutionary changes. Very suddenly, the world has been thrust into a new orbit—changes are taking place more rapidly than at any time in the world’s history. Between the years 1750 and 1900, the amount of knowledge in the world was said to have doubled.
Now, a number of factors were responsible. The Reformation changed a lot of concepts, but it took time for them to be translated into industry and the mechanics of scientific progress. Then, it was during the same period that the sleeping giant of science began to stretch and flex new and powerful muscles; science made great strides forward. At the same time, science began to turn the wheels of industry both in the US and in Europe.
The world started shrinking with the invention of modern communications, but the greatest explosion of knowledge was yet in the future. Between the years 1900 and 1950, the world’s knowledge is said to have doubled again. During that period, the genetic and the atomic breakthroughs took place. It became commonplace to board a jet and to cross a continent in a matter of hours. Radio and television came into their own. Communication shrunk the world even smaller. Then, between 1950 and 1965, the amount of knowledge in the world doubled again. The space age was ushered in on the gleaming wings of science, and transistors came into their own.
The knowledge explosion continued. People are better educated today by far than they were a generation ago. The average first-grader will read 17 times more books than grandfather did at his age. Every year more than 1,250,000 books and articles are coming off the press. Now, books are being stored on the hard disk of a computer somewhere. So, instead of going to the library to get your book, in the future you may simply access a central computer for the information you need. You then read the screen of a computer instead of turning the pages of a book, which is pretty much what the internet does right now.
Today our lives are streamlined, compacted, specialized, but too busy. More and more we have to be selective in how we use our most precious commodity—time. Our world is experiencing an explosion of knowledge, but unfortunately, wisdom isn’t keeping abreast of knowledge. A lot of people have a lot of knowledge, but they lack the wisdom of being able to apply what they know.
Knowledge is an accumulation of facts that can be recalled at will—information, facts, and tangibles. But wisdom is applied knowledge—it is the ability to apply what you know and to act wisely in the light of it. Solomon—one of the wisest men of all times—said wisdom is a gift from God. But it’s available to everybody. “How much better it is,” said Solomon, “to get wisdom than gold, and to get understanding rather than silver!” (Proverbs 16:16). Perhaps the greatest knowledge today is not that of any particular field of science, or space technology. The greatest knowledge is “how to live”—but no, that’s wisdom.
For centuries, the Bible has been giving people light on living—it tells them how to get wisdom with knowledge. The Bible gives you insight, greater insights than psychology can provide. It shows you how to find the happiness that God intends you to have. With all of the knowledge in our world, may God give us a measure of wisdom and old-fashioned common sense. Yes, indeed.
Resource reading: Proverbs 1:20-33.
