I don’t want to get too technical with the fine points of economics, but it isn’t strictly true, despite what you may have heard, that time is money. It is not, however, that particular bit of misinformation I want to get at here. Rather it is this cousin of that nugget- knowledge is power. It too, despite being accepted wisdom, is unwise horse feathers. Truth be told, time is power and knowledge is used to wrap fish.
We live in the information age, in the comfortable suburbs right off the intersection of Vanity Fair and the information superhighway. There are wonders of efficiency that the computer has brought us, astonishing ideas at our fingertips through the web. What I’m wondering though, is where that information goes when we’re done with it. We are in an overload situation. For decades now technology has been busy about the business of bringing us more information. When the airwaves couldn’t deliver us enough television, we started laying cable. When that failed, we went with satellites. And what fills all those stations, but more information. We have phones that reach us virtually everywhere and equipped to take us virtually everywhere in cyberspace. Our bodies stay in one place, while our minds are all over an infinite map.
But let’s remember our principles. Time isn’t money; it’s power. Each one of us wakes up each morning with twenty-four hours. That we speak of “spending” time suggests that we’ve already killed it. Time is what we invest, because the days are evil. When we miss out on a conversation with our children, because we just had to check our twitter, we aren’t investing, we’re spending. When we can’t seem to find the time to read our Bibles, but can find the time to keep up with our thousands of Facebook friends, then we aren’t investing, we are spending. If we want to worry about the sufferings wrought by sin, we probably don’t need to see which tragedy is boosting Fox’s ratings during sweeps month. It might be better to see how you can help those with whom you have covenanted in the church, or to visit a lonely neighbor.
It’s true enough that the Bible doesn’t say you can’t listen to talk radio. It doesn’t say you can’t read or write blogs. It doesn’t say you can’t keep up with friends on Facebook. And as such, I’m not saying it either. But the issue isn’t whether you’re allowed to drink in this or that from the broader culture. The question is, are there better things to do with our time? And by that I don’t merely mean more work-y kind of things. I mean more joyful kind of things. I mean the kinds of things that will not merely be forever embedded in the asphalt of the information superhighway but that will be ever etched into our own cherished memories.
Here’s another axiom for you, a fundamental economic reality. At the end of the day, as you weigh this good and that, it’s people that matter, flesh and blood, three-dimensional people. Time is power. People are forever. Invest it wisely; invest in them joyfully.