Are You Overwhelmed with Information?

The Information Stupor-Highway

In Jane Austen’s world, women sometimes ask, “Is he a man of information?” They mean, Is he up on things, well read, informed? In an era where it was possible for a man to be highly informed about what was knowable, this made sense. We don’t live in that world now, really. Now, we live in a world of seemingly-infinite information, and it is the task of the wise man or woman to be an understanding interpreter, a discerning curator of the overwhelming volume of information. Less is more, now.

The wise are those who can successfully erect a wall around their attention, and stand guard, letting only the good, true, and beautiful inside. They don’t flit from conspiracy to conspiracy, always looking for a new hack or guru or just more and more info and entertainment. The wise curate and consider, they listen to the wisdom of the ages and don’t fall for the Zeitgeist’s instant, insistent chatter. The wise guard the gates of their attention, they set up watches over their intellects and imaginations.

It has always been thus, to some degree, but the amassed armies at the gates are hordes in numbers never before seen in history.

Therefore, cultivating wise inputs into our minds and hearts is no easy task.

The Daily (Good) News: Read All About It

This only multiplies the wisdom we have heard from our elders when they admonished us to spend time daily in the Word of God. It is vital. My own Christian tradition uses the Daily Office, and it is wonderful. Many other folks in orthodox traditions I highly respect find it valuable to use as well.

However you do it, get the Bible in your heart and mind.

Another key idea is that it’s important to read wisely outside Holy Scripture as well. Scripture itself demonstrates this. In just one example, Jude’s short letter is a goldmine of biblical and outside-the-bible allusions and quotations. He, who grew up with the Lord, read widely and invited his readers to as well.
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The Bible has lots of genres, and it’s hard to faithfully receive them if you have no idea what is happening and just interpret it all using the same tools. For instance, you can’t understand poetry if you don’t read poetry. (Lots of the Bible is poetry.)

So, reading widely is wise, but so is not reading so widely that you are overwhelmed by endless information you can’t act on. We aren’t designed to take all that in.

Clivey Lewis and the News

“It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help.”

C. S. Lewis

From a letter to Dom Bede Griffiths December 20, 1946

“But what if I miss something important?” Not likely. And being unaware of most things in the news media is a bonus, not a bummer. And if you worry that not being up on “the news” makes you uncool, then remember the wise words of another Lewis, this one Huey Lewis. Huey Lewis and the News—yep, that was the band’s name—sang, “It’s hip to be square.” And it is.

Clive Staples Lewis had a wise view of the news, I believe, when he said we weren’t meant to hear so much about so much from so many places. And if that was the case in Lewis’s day, then imagine how compounded the problem is now.

Now imagine yourself as a free child of God, accountable to your Father in heaven and to your own community. Imagine you prioritized faithfulness at home, in your church, and then in your community, and so on and out as you have capacity and gifting and calling.

For instance, some do have a calling to be highly informed on “the news” and to show up in that arena. Not all of us are so called. Discernment is needed, but we probably need fewer armchair experts spouting nonstop opinion on every subject all the time online. Probably. A safe bet, I’d wager.

Think small. Probably a lot smaller than you’re thinking now. And be faithful. Say “Yes” to Jesus and what he has called you to and “No” to almost everything else.

I spend a lot of time creating stories that are worthy of your family’s time and attention. I make them with great care, because I honor your kids’ hearts and minds. (And I also like to blam into their funny bone as well.)

I hope this is encouraging to you. I’m just an ordinary layman (sometimes a lame man) and no authority or expert. But I love you and I hope this helps. I’m honored to be your friend and to be on your side.

May God keep you in his never-failing love.

Sam

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