Wisdom for all

The first six lines of Brett McCracken’s book The Wisdom Pyramid (which follow a wisdom quote from Proverbs 1: 20-22) perfectly sum up his message: 

Our world has more and more information, but less and less wisdom. More data; less clarity. More stimulation; less synthesis. More distraction; less stillness. More pontificating; less pondering. More opinion; less research. More speaking; less listening. More to look at; less to see. More amusements; less joy. There is more, but we are less. And we all feel it. (Crossway, 2021)

Of course, McCracken doesn’t leave us to find our own solutions. He digs beneath the surface and comes up with a host of truly helpful suggestions rooted in his subtitle, Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World. 

For McCracken, today’s post-truth world, is one in which “facts” are viewed as fluid, bias-laden concepts to dispute or ignore when they threaten us.

Our post-truth age, he says, pitches the individual self as the primary source of truth, and he goes on to explore the origins of this sickness, including the information gluttony, and what he calls the “look within” autonomy.

McCracken lists the sources of the wisdom that saves us—the Bible, the church, nature, books, beauty, the internet and social media, and a grasp of what real wisdom looks like.

He calls for a better diet of knowledge, and better habits of information intake. To become wise in the information age, he says, we need to be more discerning about what we consume.

We need a diet of lasting, reliable sources of wisdom rather than the fleeting, untrustworthy information that bombards us today; a diet heavy on what fosters wisdom, and low on what fosters folly.

How, then, do we achieve those goals in an age in which there are forty times more bytes of data on the Internet than there are stars in the observable universe? 

Again, McCracken shines fresh light on situations that we all know only too well, but too easily ignore.

Writing with extraordinary crispness and clarity, he insists that the world needs wisdom desperately, truth that is unshakable, and foundations that are as firmly based as a pyramid. Only Christianity provides this sort of wisdom, he says, and it’s exactly what our ailing culture needs.

In order to bring the light of Christian wisdom to the darkness of current times, however, Christians must recover habits of wisdom in their own lives.

This, McCracken explains, is what The Wisdom Pyramid is about. “It’s a plan for stabilizing a sick society by making us wiser—God-fearing, trustworthy truth-tellers and truth-livers. Salt and light.

He concludes: “Wisdom is not just intellectual knowledge of God. It’s a deep longing for God. More than a desire to know the world like God, wisdom is the desire to know the world with God.”