17
Jul
2008

Informing Ourselves to Death or Being Given Knowledge unto Life

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17 Jul 2008
I am planning to preach a sermon on Ephesians 1:8-10 this Sunday. As I prepare to do so, I have been thinking about the way that the world runs after “wisdom and knowledge. “Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death explains, in an interview on The Open Mind, how the rise of information in the media brings certain problems. You can watch this interview here. Postman explains that in the history of the world “people sort[ed] information in order to solve a problem in their lives. And information was the instrument through which they would solve this problem.” And the really ironic thing, according to Postman, is that “too much information can be very dangerous because it can lead to a situation of meaninglessness, that is, people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful. They live in a culture that is simply committed through all of its media to generate tons of information every hour without categorizing it in any way for you so that you don’t know what any of it means.”

Human knowledge, no matter how great or categorized, has never solved the human problem of sin and misery. This media information overload we are experiencing in our day is a pop-culture manifestation of the same “quest for wisdom” sought by the Athenians in the Apostle Paul’s day (Acts 17). Most people believe that knowledge is power. But, the apostle Paul, who had more knowledge (2 Cor. 11:6) than most men, was the same man who proclaimed Christ to be “the wisdom of God and the power of God.”

The really remarkable thing about the Gospel is that in Christ God has made His grace abound to us in all wisdom and understanding. He has made known to us the mystery of His will. Whatever else men may learn in this day of information, they cannot know the will of God apart from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2-3). He is the wisdom of God. Christ, in His word, has given us all the necessary “weapons of our warfare…for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalt itself against the knowledge of God [and] bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-6).

There are, according to God’s word, two kinds of knowledge–one worldly, one heavenly. The first is self-learned, and, according to God, “falsely called knowledge” (2 Tim. 6:20). The second is taught by revelation and “makes us wise unto salvation.” The first leads to death, the second to life. So, is Postman correct in saying that we are “informing ourselves to death?” I would say he is, to the extent that we acknowledge that all wisdom, understanding and knowledge which does not center on Christ is “falsely called knowledge.”

About Post Author

Nick Batzig is the senior pastor of Church Creek PCA in Charleston, SC and an associate editor for Ligonier Ministries. Prior to serving at Church Creek, Nick was a pastor at Wayside PCA on Signal Mountain, TN. Formerly, Nick served as the founding pastor of New Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Richmond Hill, GA and as the editor of Reformation21 and the Christward Collective--sites of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He frequently writes for Tabletalk Magazine, Reformation 21, He Reads Truth, and the Christward Collective. Nick was also the host of East of Eden, a podcast devoted to the Biblical and Systematic Theology of Jonathan Edwards. You can friend him on Facebook here and follow him on Twitter @nick_batzig

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