information about transformation
In 2006 it was predicted that by 2010 the amount of digital information in the world would double every 11 hours. Exactly how that was computed or estimated still remains somewhat of a mystery. Regardless, it makes for an interesting opening sentence in a blog.
This estimate introduced people for the first time to the term terabyte, which is a thousand gigabytes, and 1/1,000th of a petabyte. Today to speak of exabytes, zettabytes, and yottabytes may seem like science fiction, but in the next few years they won’t be. We will need more and more storage for all the digital information in our world.
If you were to enter the search term sad and creepy clowns on Google you would get about 3,760,000 results in .24 seconds. If you were to look at every result listed for one second you would be sitting in front of your computer for more than forty days. We as humans are hungrier than ever for information and we have more than enough at our disposal.
For many this great amassing of information is seen as progress, but that may be deceptive. The belief that this is progress is rooted in the deeper belief that the more information we have the better off we will be, but this is not really the case.
Ask any smoker if their habit is bad for their health, and they will more than likely say “Yes,” - although they may not want to admit this. Ask them what health risks exist with smoking, and if they’ve done any light reading they can tell you about lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema, just to name a few.
A friend of mine who is vegan once told me, while smoking a cigarette, that he chose to be vegan for “health reasons.” As he inhaled on his additive free American Spirit cigarette it was apparent to me that he had amassed a lot of information, but it had zero effect on him. This is like so many who sit on pews in church buildings every week gathering more information about God, Jesus, and the Bible and yet experience so little life change.
We may fare better in filling our minds up with less information and giving our minds, hearts, and souls over to transformation. Information, at its base, it simply amassing answers to questions; whereas transformation dives below the surface to wrestle with the implications and meanings of the answers. Information often sees the answer as the finish line, but for transformation it is only a starting line. As it turns out information is a much easier thing than transformation – you can Google that.
Transformation comes through exposing what’s true about you deep inside the places that are normally reserved for hiding what’s true about you. It’s exploring how you relate to God, others, the world, and how you relate to yourself. This is far scarier than reading about something, or sitting and listening to information being presented. It can mean going to some dark places and finding find brokenness, shame, guilt, and dirty secrets.
Typically we just want to read about something to understand it, but transformation defies this. You cannot think your way into it; you can only live your way into it. This is why it is so tremendously difficult. Some believe that transformation is so tough that it is a supernatural event that can only come about through great pain, great love, or both.
As followers of Jesus we are not called to amass information, but to the long, painful, scary journey of continued transformation. In my experience, American churches today do not provide space for transformation in the same way they provide space for information overload. It is possible to teach people about God for years and years, and in the end realize they have not learned anything. The same cannot be said about what will happen if we lead others toward transformation by showing them what it looks like.
Perhaps, with all the information we now have access to, we have missed the beauty, complexity, and simplicity of true transformation. This may just be the one thing we all need more information about.