Knowledge Is Power

My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. (Proverbs 2:1-8 ESV). “Knowledge is power.” Stunning in its simplicity, not to mention eminently quotable, British philosopher Francis Bacon’s aphorism also is one of those rare insights that grows more rather than less profound with the passage of time. Certainly, that statement has more truth within it today than when it was written in 1597, not yet 150 years removed from Guttenberg’s invention of the printing press. Then, Bacon might just as easily have said "information is power," because information, the raw material out of which knowledge is shaped and synthesized, was every bit as precious as the finished product. Then to possess one essentially was to have the other. If you had information, you almost always had knowledge. That is not necessarily the case in today’s world of information overload. An article I read recently said, “While knowledge has lost none of its value, information has undergone a process of inflation that has made it a much less rare coin. It is no exaggeration to say that information, so omnipresent and pervasive — so available — has been reduced to the level of white noise, a persistent buzz always in the background of modern life. That we are awash if not drowning in information was made clear by a study done by the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Information Management & Systems, which determined that during the previous year the world’s citizens had produced between one and two exabytes of unique information. To lend a bit of perspective, all the words ever spoken by human beings up to that point would have amounted to about five exabytes. Put in per capita terms, which might be easier to get one’s mind around, the 2012 output amounts to 250 gigabytes of unique information for every man, woman and child on the planet.” I needed a translation of that image. So I did a little research as to how much a gigabyte of information really is. If I were to fill the bed of a truck with printed pages, that would be a gigabyte of data. And remember, that was 250 truckloads for each of us. We write it, photograph it, record it, film it and then send it or save it. Finally, like the man trying to drain the swamp, up to his knees in mud and surrounded by alligators, we wonder what to do with it all! Incredibly, with this glut of information there are still many people who have so little knowledge of God. It becomes very easy to fill our minds with things about God and never really fill our hearts with His presence. Commit yourself to learning about Him though a deeply devotional relationship with Him through His Holy Spirit. You may be surprised at how little you need to really know!