A Shaman, A Librarian and Google
For the great majority of human history access to knowledge was limited to what the people you had direct contact with knew. Only within the past few centuries did that access expand to physical books that you may be able to get if you were literate and wealthy, or more recently, through a university or library. But since the latter-1990s access to knowledge has exploded online. In this sermon Fr. Garrett considers an ancient teaching (Matthew 22:34-40) and wonders about its place in our world of great abundance of information. Far from facing the constraint our ancestors had of limited available knowledge, our challenge is to sort out the truly valuable nuggets of wisdom from the mountains of irrelevant and increasingly inaccurate information at our fingertips. The essential differentiator between the wise and the ill-informed today is much less about access, and much more about discernment and the ability to stay focused on the concepts and values of true and lasting value amidst a sea of distractions and attention seeking, but ultimately worthless noise.