Saturday, January 21, 2012

In Google I trust - Wrong

 
1 Peter 1:22-23

Many smart people surround me, people who I’ve known for many years and some for only a few years, but a high percentile who are my age or are getting close to it have this in common; there is much we do not know or understand.  In fact, most of these smart people have told me they are very leery of anyone who seems to have all the answers.  So what is the answer to this ignorance, or where can we go to improve on our lack of knowledge?

We are told that Google has the answer, and it does, just type the word or subject in that little box on your computer, smart phone, I-Pad, and Google will give you often more than one opinion on the word or subject.  But there in lies a problem, what part of Google can we trust?  Has Google passed the test of truth, it must have because so many of us go there to relieve our momentary ignorance. “ I Googled,” for my non computer readers, is using an Internet search engine to look up when it was founded and this is what I discovered: The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the "Google Guys," while the two were attending Stanford University as PhD candidates. It was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004.  It now has 20,000 employees worldwide, and the company's unofficial slogan – coined by Google engineer Paul Buchheit – is "Don't be evil."

No where does Google or its very smart founders say; “In Google I trust,” but that is what so many of us do, and some are foolish enough to believe what the talking heads have to say on the news or in the newspaper, but often they also have gone to Google or some other internet search engine for the information they pass on to us, or they just spin, and we are not talking about tops, we are talking about what people in the so called new business do with the truth to make it say what they wish, it’s called “spin” and it means in King James English, a lie. 

All of the above is a precursor to verse 22-23, Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.”   If we are to purify our souls by obedience to the truth, we better know whom or what is truth!  Many moons ago a Roman ruler and Jesus had this exchange about truth: “Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answer, “You say I am a king.  For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth.  Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” And Pilate’s reply, in a mocking way, is the reply of so many today, “Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”  Jesus did not leave us hanging on the question of truth, in John 14:6 he gives this answer to Thomas; “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

For those who put more faith in Google than in the Bible, you fit into the mindset of Pilate, and do not call Jesus good if He is not “Truth” for if He is not what He claimed, He is a crazy person, not the Son of God.  I know Him to be what He claims, He has changed my heart, but I’m still in the process of growing in and living out His Truth.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice

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