We are an instant access society. I recall in my early days of being a pastor, I was also the track and cross country coach at Grantsburg High School in Grantsburg Wisconsin. There was a very talented athlete that attempted to run cross country as a senior. It was his first time running. He also had an incredible natural running ability. However, it was squandered because he quit shortly after beginning, and the reason given was that he "wasn't the best." What he wanted was to be able to come out, run for the team, and be the absolute best runner in the school, and presumably the state - instantly. And because he wasn't an instant success, he would not also work to attain that goal over time.
I ponder if this attitude is due in part to our instantaneous access to all manner of information, data, reporting, and so on. I'm getting frustrated with the new fiber optic service in town which seems to lack the bandwidth to provide service for all of its customers. They advertise blazing fast speeds (in excess of 50mB per second) and yet downloads can "spin" for minutes at a time. We can send emails around the world in seconds. We can hear news as it happens. We are well aware of the atrocities being committed against Christians around the world, in part because those perpetrating such evils record their deeds of darkness and evil, and in part because we can transmit video around the world almost instantly as well. People now spend hours at a time on Facebook, often reading the mundane and trivial events of someone's life in short posts. We hear of politicians' and analysts' viewpoints and positions, often not through the truth but through spin - efforts to make what amount to lies appear as though they are the truth. We often find out when politicians are lying (which seems to be more and more frequently). We see that they are often all about control, power, money, and self-advancement. We can download music, video, stream live events, watch the news on multiple channels, and even access many of the "classic" TV shows of yesteryear to watch at our leisure. We can download entire books, stream magazines, and find a point of view that will fit virtually anyone's perspective. And honestly, I find that our minds cannot process all this data. Our "instant access society" has reached the point of information overload. The net result is that we are more confused about things than ever before, because contained in that overload are competing and contradictory claims about everything.
As such, the landscape in America has become more confusing than ever. It drives us collectively to stop trusting in anything other than ourselves, which means we are reduced to defining life and the universe on our terms only. As the old saying goes, "we cannot see the forest for the trees." We cannot make sense of the world around us because of the information overload that bombards us daily. And so what often disappears first is any sense of the divine in the universe - meaning we either ignore God or simply dismiss Him altogether when it comes to living out our lives.
In the Gospel of John, we are given an encounter between Mary, Martha, and Jesus. The two sisters have invited Jesus into their home, and Mary is listening intently to Jesus' words, at the expense of anything else. Martha, on the other hand, is trying to play the good host and is frantically scrambling to get all things done and ready. She complains to Jesus about Mary, and his reply spells out for us that if we are to see the forest through the trees (that is, to see the big picture), Mary has chosen the one thing that is needed: to hear, listen, focus on, and apply Godly teaching, wisdom, truth, and virtue in her life.
Seems like a valuable lesson to me. The world, through its constant bombardment of our senses and mind, wants to convince us that God isn't real, or that God doesn't matter. And yet the way to lasting peace is to put to practice Godly truth in a way that really matters - making it of first importance in our lives. It is a good place to start if we truly want to make any sense out of the information overload that rules our world.
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