Grasshopper Flatulence

02.10.13

Acts 17.21 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. (ESV)

We moderns might restate this verse: Now all the Americans and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except being on the internet learning and telling something new. We live in the Information Age. It seems the ancient Athenians did so as well or at least inclined in that direction. It may be from this very ancient culture that we get the term: What’s New? :-)

The Gospel of God emerges from a literal ocean of information - a universe really. The internet, no thanks to Al Gore, has made tons of information accessible to billions of people; and seeing as words don’t weigh much, a ton of information is a lot! That’s not to say some words don’t have weight, because certainly they do, but much of what passes as information these days fails the truth test. And I have learned (the hard way) that just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it true…

There is one Source of Truth: God. The Source of Truth says: I love you and want for us to become friends. That is the Gospel; that is the Good News. But the offer of friendship from the Source of Truth is this: I, Almighty God, do not change, so in order for us to have friendship, you’ll have to. And that is precisely where many reject the offer of God – they don’t want to change.

God, of course, is omniscient: He knows everything: He knows what is true and what is false; He knows who is naughty and who is nice. He knows everything there is to know. But to the one who loves as He loves and accepts His offer to enter into covenant love, God shares truth with that person and helps them to navigate safely and securely through the ocean of information out there. You can’t know what you can’t know (lack of omniscience) and you can’t fear what you know to be true: because it is filtered through God and God loves you and wants to be your Friend.

There is truth and then there is misinformation, disinformation, and out and out deception… kinda like disinformation but with malice aforethought. Truth is what keeps us anchored in the raging seas of mis and dis information.

Bottom line: What is really important? What do we do with all of this information, and the mis and dis variety, thereof? Not much; not much we can do. We cannot control what comes at us. We cannot control how it is presented or whether or not it is true. We can choose to live by it, or choose not to – that's about it. But if we choose to live instead by what God tells us, we will be blessed with the ability to rightly and safely navigate those seas I mentioned. All of the information in the world amounts to grasshopper flatulence if it isn’t for the glory of God and the propagation of the Only Good News.

Man’s problem is he wants to relegate the Gospel – the Good News to the ranks of mere information: just something else that some babbler babbles. The reality is: out of all the information out there It is the ONLY information worth listening to… got your ears on?