Too Much Information
God knows when a sparrow dies or a leaf falls to the ground anywhere on this planet.
There are just some things we don’t need to know. Don’t want to know. Gory “blood n’ guts” stories at the supper table, for instance.
Then, there are other things we don’t know enough about, and we want to know more. Need to know more. How the 9-11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented, for instance.
The intelligence organizations that make their living retrieving, providing, and analyzing such information are being beaten up at the moment for not doing their job prior to that attacks. The FBI is being crucified as sluggish. Bogged down by bureaucracy. Apparently we had all the information that could have prevented the attacks, but the right people weren’t talking to each other. Or is it they weren’t listening?
Is it really fair to be lobbing blame around with 20/20 hindsight vision that can now analyze the information with full knowledge of its outcome? It’s bothersome that this effort seems to be going beyond a debriefing type of evaluation – “what could we have done better, folks?” And it has turned into outright finger pointing and second guessing – “we were attacked because you didn’t do your job.”
How much blame do I deserve for my 6-year-old son taking a spill off his bike and into the emergency room? He hit a patch of loose gravel a block from our house – information I could have known if I had been paying better attention. Therefore, I could have prevented the accident. Instead, I sent him off with his bike helmet and common sense, not to mention an angel army at his side. Was that irresponsible?
Okay, so we could tone up our intelligence operations and cooperate between agencies with better communication skills. Let’s fix that stuff – now. But we’re getting a little too close to the edge of a deep, dark, Godless canyon when we begin to imply that we should know so much information and analyze it with so much insight that we can prevent any and all acts of global terror or personal trouble. And we’re accountable for the blame if we don’t.
I need to be careful about making myself responsible for policing so much of the universe and patrolling so many bytes of information that I step on God’s toes in the process. Worse yet, that I become my own god in the process. C.S. Lewis wrote, “We keep assuming that we know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. The Author knows.”
He knows how many hairs you lost yesterday. He knows when a sparrow dies or a leaf falls to the ground anywhere on this planet. He knows the stars and calls them by name from one end of this universe to the other. We do not. We will not.
Both angry at Job’s pride and concerned for Job’s well being, God thundered at him for thinking he knew so much. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand … Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this” (Job 38:4,18)!
There are just some things that we will never know. And there are things we don’t need to know, and don’t need to spend immeasurable effort and energy to discover as if our very lives depended on it. We leave those things to God and his boundless wisdom, love, and power. We put our trust in him. We believe his promises. Like how many of my sins he forgave yesterday. How often he’ll deliver me from evil today. How many wonderful blessings he has waiting for me in my inbox of faith.
“For the king trusts in the Lord; through his unfailing love of he Most High he will not be shaken” (Psalm 21:6). If a king, who has rich resources of power and protection, admits to himself that those resources are limited but the Most High is not, then certainly we can too. We will not be shaken when we depend on our God’s unfailing love more than our abilities.
That can still mean wearing a bike helmet and improving intelligence operations. But even those aren’t perfect preventions. God’s love is.
PRAYER: There is so much to know in this world, good Lord. So much to discover. So much to analyze. So much to plan. When I fret because I can’t do it all and do it well, forgive my sinful pride that trusts too much in my doing and not enough in yours. Let my courage and confidence be found in your faithful love, which works out even the worst of troubles for my good. Amen.