Illiteracy (of history, literature, etc.)

Here follows a quote by Kevin O’Brien (Theater of the Word)

My friends, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. We are the most literate culture in history, and thousands of volumes of the greatest works of literature can be carried in a cell phone in your pocket. The Bible has never been more accessible to more people at any time ever.

And yet we are stunningly illiterate.

Well, nobody said that having access to vast amounts of information would make you knowledgeable.

We are all in the process of being formed–formed to have certain attitudes, philosophies, etc. They are often from the media we take in.

But, what if the menu contains 1,000,000,000 items? (actually more…) What do we choose? Who do we listen to?

In the end, the most important person to listen to is the one who meets you on the other side, when this life is over, the “Judge of the living and the dead.”

But still, it’s important to have historical and cultural literacy too. We do not live in a vacuum. Knowing what was said in the past can help prevent one from falling for a scheme in the present that is doomed to fail. Also, when you know how old many ideas are, they seem less “novel” more more “ancient.” Some people talk about the Bible being an old book, but do they know their ancient Greek philosophy? Many allegedly “new ideas” were thought about back then. The most important ideas are the eternal ones, of course.

You might say “knowledge is power,” or perhaps, “knowledge can keep you from being gullible.” Either way, there is a need for literacy of the classics.