Pursuing Wisdom Amidst the Counterfeits
Other than top-secret, security-level content, there is no information that, if we really wanted to find it, is beyond our reach. In this Age of Information, we have access to almost anything, from medical diagnosis to home values to sports statistics, within seconds. Now that our Google searches are powered by AI, we have god-like access to virtually anything we want to know.
The risk we run, as individuals and as a society, is to confuse all of the information we can access with wisdom. Certainly, of all that our technologies have made possible, we are not somehow less susceptible to war, rage, debt or bloodshed. Radical ideology still captures young people, false religions still confuse and deceive many, abortion continues, and both poverty and crime beleaguer nations.
As dramatic as the shift to the “information age” has been, expanding to the “age of AI” is even more difficult to quantify. According to TechCrunch, ChatGPT alone receives around 2.5 billion prompts per day, with roughly 330 million coming from the U.S. That doesn’t even account for all the other AI chatbots at our disposal.
What are we really getting from this windfall of information? What are we doing with it all? In that distinction—between knowing things and living wisely—there is a worldview of difference.
Nearly a century ago, in his “Choruses from ‘The Rock’,” T.S. Eliot foresaw this confusion:
All our knowledge 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?
Though information can become a counterfeit to wisdom, it’s not the only one. Perhaps even more sinister recently is grievance, the idea that a real or perceived injustice based on someone’s identity makes them “wise.” In the critical theory mood, wisdom isn’t a matter of who’s right or wrong, but who has felt more downtrodden. Moral superiority is the prerogative of the oppressed.
Captivated by this mood, wisdom is also in short supply in our schools and colleges. To borrow language from Georgetown professor and Claremont Fellow Joshua Mitchell, America’s institutions of higher learning no longer educate for “citizen competence” or “expert competence” but instead favor elevating the rule of “innocent victims” to the detriment of their oppressors.
The Bible offers a different vision: “Get wisdom,” the writer of Proverbs cries, no matter what it takes. Also, it is “The fear of the Lord,” and not information or grievance, that “is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” Such “fear” is not terror but a kind of reverence or awe that points to an understanding of wisdom that pursues a life pleasing to God. And only the “fool,” according to the Bible, says in his heart there is no God.
In the New Testament, God promises wisdom to all who earnestly seek it. Wisdom is not just the ability to ‘see around the corners of life,’ but rather the ability to live in light of what is true and good. Thus, there is no true wisdom apart from knowledge of God. Proverbs explains that wisdom was present with God when he created the world, and later Paul connects this conception of wisdom to the life of Christ, the incarnation of God, who is called “the wisdom of God.”
This is why we look to Jesus—“in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”—as our source for wisdom. Jesus promised a wisdom that would overcome the world, the kind of wisdom that is a sure foundation and provides access to the blueprints of creation and to the mind of Christ.
It is because we so desperately need wisdom and God so plainly promises it that “Pursue Wisdom” is the theme of the 2027 Colson Center National Conference. In our pursuit of wisdom, eternal but for this time and place where God has put us, we will learn from an incredible collection of presenters, from renowned Princeton Professor Robert P. George to human rights activist and thought leader Ayann Hirsi Ali to poet Malcolm Guite, entrepreneur Henry Kaestner and speaker and author Amy Orr-Ewing. Learn more and register at colsonconference.org.
Growing in biblical wisdom is a lifetime project. God has given us an incredible set of resources in our pursuit of it, from innovation to story, from repentance to forgiveness. Don’t miss this incredible opportunity to pursue it together with thousands of others.
Photo Credit: ©Duncan Meyer/Unsplash
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
