Information
“In our information age, many resources are readily available for us to seek the Lord—too many. A story from the desert fathers gives good advice…wandering from book to book, spiritual advisor to spiritual advisor, or church father to church father is a form of groping for the truth. A tree cannot grow and bear fruit if one keeps digging it up and planting it somewhere else.” (Fr. Basil)
“Embracing God and His Kingdom requires more than processing information—even information revealed in Scripture…Christianity is not a “collection” of facts, figures and statistics. It is a way of life guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit, lived in communion with God and His People. Important as information about the faith may be, it is formation in the faith that is essential. Information alone is not enough to “convince” someone that the Gospel is indeed good news.” (Joseph Kormos)
“Christianity is not rightly built on moment-by-moment updates, or “every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14). The history of the primitive Church is a consistent movement away from such excitement and towards the solidity of a reliable hierarchy grounded in a received body of teaching. Its instinct was that the locus of change was within the heart of each believer rather than a constant flow of fluctuating information…Christianity is not constituted by a body of information. It is constituted by our participatory communion in the life of God. Holy Dogma is a verbal icon of that life. Its truth, acquired as a way of life, will make you free.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“We can’t counter the power of cultural liturgies with didactic information poured into our intellects. We can’t recalibrate the heart from the top down, through merely informational measures. The orientation of the heart happens from the bottom up, through the formation of our habits of desire. Learning to love (God) takes practice…We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love. These sorts of practices are “pedagogies” of desire, not because they are like lectures that inform us, but because they are rituals that form and direct our affections.” (James Smith)
“We will need to learn how to turn off our electronic devices and to light a candle; we will need to turn away from the whirling frenzy of images and information that we let enter our minds and turn our hearts towards the one thing needful. We will need to return to ourselves and to look at the only screen where we can truly find God, the screen of our heart, which is the gateway to the very Kingdom of heaven.” (Bishop Alexis)
“…we do not grow in Christ by acquiring information, but by humbly developing a relationship with Him.” (OCPM 7/25/2017)
“...many young Christians admire the words and works of Jesus (information) but do not know him as Lord and God (wisdom). They read and respect the Bible (information) but they do not perceive that its words lay claim to their obedience (wisdom).” (David Kinnaman)
"The verb “to know,” when used in the context of Scripture, expresses a relationship, as in knowing a person rather than simply acquiring information about him. Because the Lord calls Himself “the Truth”, to know the Truth means to know Christ Jesus through our relationship with Him." (Dynamis 5/17/2014)
“In a world driven by information, it is more than a little easy to mistake knowing something as important and good in and of itself. As such, the acquisition of spiritual information is something of a going industry.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The Hebrews were extremely successful at making religion an integral part of life. The reason for their success was that religious education was life-oriented, not information-oriented. They used the context of daily life to teach about God.” (Life Application Study Bible, Deuteronomy 6:7)
“The abstraction that we call “thinking,” etc., in the contemporary world is a diminishment of what it means to be human. We have learned to focus on a very narrow stream of information, and, in turn, have come to be possessed by the information on which we focus.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“As greater numbers of people crowd the earth, so greater amounts of information crowd men’s minds.” (Don Meredith)
"Christ comes, indeed, to “restore,” to “make right” what goes “wrong”…we tend to seek out “food” that isn’t good for us; to nurture ourselves in unhealthy ways. Today our unhealthy “nourishment” is commonly useless information that we might choose to imbibe on a daily basis, through various news outlets and social media. This kind of information, if we immerse ourselves in it outside God’s word and grace, commonly brings us painful self-awareness, either through fear (of calamities in the world, like terrorist attacks), or delusional comparison with other people’s lives and fortunes, like the lives and fortunes of celebrities." (Sr. Dr. Vassa Larin)
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). It is the essence of our hope, even though it cannot be proven by means of our physical senses. If we touch, taste, see, hear, and smell what we hope for, we have information, but not faith.” (OCPM 12/24/2015)
“The gospels are written for our salvation, and not as mere information…We must not judge God according to our human sense of values. Our nature cannot lift itself up by its own power to the comprehension of heavenly things. We should learn from God what we are to think about God, because He is the only source of information about Himself.” (Father Stephen Freeman, St. Hilary of Poitiers)
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