We hear a lot of things. A whole lot of things. We’re incessantly bombarded with sheets and shards and streams of information. It’s about bits and bytes and boatloads of data that we ingest and digest without even realizing that we’re doing that. Either consciously or unconsciously we compile all of that sordid stuff into some sort of choppy mosaic about the life around us and the world within us. And as insidiously dangerous as it is, in time this rather indistinct and somewhat dubious mosaic becomes our reality. In essence, it becomes our existence.
Too Busy to Think
It seems that we tend to be busy about a whole lot of nothing. We can meticulously tally the tasks of the day only to be inordinately perplexed that for some reason the sum total doesn’t come anywhere close to reflecting the sum total of everything that we expended in accomplishing those things. So consumed are we in the tasks of ‘nothing’ that we don’t have time to think about ‘something’. Therefore, we have irreparably fallen in love with plug-and-play and pre-fab. We like things pre-packaged, prepared, and predetermined. We’re looking for answers that were already ingested, digested and reflexively regurgitated for our reflexive consumption by whatever source we happen to have happened upon. In essence, we don’t think. And in fact, there are few things as dangerous as that.
What Are We Ingesting?
We’re going to ingest a whole lot of something. That’s inevitable. And if that ‘something’ shapes us with that much force, we might be wise to ask what that ‘something’ is.
We live in a world roiling with bias and flushed murky with politically-correct agendas. We have splintering splinter groups proffering philosophies of every shape and sort. We’ve got the thematic propagation of ‘diversity’ that’s more about a permission to be permissive. Too often it’s about the ‘spin to win’. It’s less about truth and it’s more about triumph. It’s about the resolute and rather gritty proliferation of the agenda to the degree that truth becomes the agenda and the agenda becomes the truth. Therefore, truth becomes negotiable and pliable in a forced and placating servitude to an onslaught of dubious agendas. However, truth in the service of an agenda becomes opinion. And too often opinion is bias off the leash and running wild.
Listening
So, we need to listen for a change. We need to question…aggressively and responsibly. We need to ruthlessly investigate and corroborate. We need to quit being complacent consumers and become invested investigators. We need to use truth as a steeled template, not as a fluffy convenience. We need to bring the sturdy compass of ethics to point out the true north in every decision whether that true north is to our liking or not. We don’t need to be worldly wise, for that’s an oxymoron of the most deceptive kind. Rather, we need to be wise in the ways of God and life.
To live passively is to live dangerously. To live inquisitively is to live wisely. May we choose to abandon the former and coherently embrace the latter.
Craig Lounsbrough
M. Div., LPC