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'What's the rush?'
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Tuesday, July, 13, 2010
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by John Fischer
"Many will rush here and there, and knowledge will increase." (Daniel 12:4)
This comment comes in the context of the end times struggle of nations for control in the Middle East. It is stated almost as an aside, but it jumped out at me when I read it today as such an apt description of our current way of life. We are rushing to business, rushing to school, rushing to soccer practice and ballet lessons, even rushing to church. At the same time, knowledge is increasing. This is the information age. Almost anything is at your fingertips. You name it; you can google it. And yet with all this mobility and information, are we any better off?
And so, as a civilization, we are rushing here and there, gathering more and more knowledge, but not necessarily the wisdom to go along with it. Sooner or later we're going to all hit the proverbial wall—one way of describing the apocalypse also predicted in Daniel.
The big question is: what do we do about this? Do we just rush along with everyone else and get more and more knowledge? Well—and you may be surprised at my answer—to a certain extent, yes, because to speak into a culture, you have to be in it.
There are still hippies from the 1960s living in the mountains somewhere. They chose a simpler existence and stuck with it. The rest of us who thought we were countercultural, became the new culture. We are now rushing here and there, running things and trying to get ourselves elected, and preaching, and trying to save the world, and I haven't heard a thing from any of those guys in the mountains in 40 years. Whatever they're doing up there is of no consequence to the rest of the world. Pretty selfish, I think, especially if you possess a message everyone needs.
So we will feel the effects of the information age, and of all this rushing around. We will have to figure out how to deal with it like everyone else. Jesus said we don't have to be of the world in order to be in it. We can be in it and of something else. That something—or better yet, Someone—gives us perspective and a reason to be, and the ability to detach ourselves from this world now and then to renew our faith and point of view.
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