Don’t Be a Fool - Revised

We are in a continuing in our new series called Solomon Gets a Smartphone. Where we are looking at how we can learn how to navigate modern day times and technology with ancient wisdom, wisdom from God’s word. So today, we are going to consider a proverb given to us by King Solomon, so would you turn with me in your Bibles to Proverbs 13:20. If you’re using one of the Blue Bibles we provide for you, it will be found on page XX.

Proverbs 13:20 NIV

20 Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.

The power of this statement is so clear it is almost self evident: if you want to be wise, surround yourself with the wise; for only a fool would surround himself with fools.

But how do we know if we’re surrounded by people who are truly wise? More specifically, how do we know what is said is true?

Technology has not only given us access to more information, but also more misinformation. You can find things that aren’t true in blog posts, in social media, in the news, in limitless forums of information.

The issue of truth is not a new problem, but is one that that has become exceedingly challenging with the rise of technology.

Especially with the invention of AI, it is exceedingly easier in the modern era to fabricate information.

How do you know what you hear is true?

This is the issue of epistemology. Epistemology is simply the ology - the study of episteme, knowing or understanding. Thus, epistemology is the theory of how do we truly know something.

How do I know that I am in this room? How do I know that I’m not dreaming right now?

Is my knowing based on sensation? Is my knowing based on logical reasoning? Is knowing based on external sources of truth or internal ones?

Over the centuries we have answered this question differently.

Historical approach

Prior to the Enlightenment, truth was objective. The means of “epistemology” or the means by which you know something to be true was external, not internal. Thus, truth was viewed to be rooted in God as the source of all knowledge. Reason was viewed by Augustine and Aquinas as a tool to understand God’s revelation not a replacement for it. Further, because truth was external their was great value and importance placed on the church, a faith community by which believers could together keep in alignment with God’s teachings.

This is why Jesus’s brother writes in Jude 3, “I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” the faith and teaching of God’s word are clarified and preserved in the context of a local church.

The teaching of God’s word and doctrines of it have been preserved since the time of Moses all the way through the life of Christ and the first followers of Jesus.

However, the enlightenment began to shift the means of epistemology.

After the enlightenment the means of epistemology, or the means by which we verify that which is true was inverted from external to internal, we now decide what is true.

The means of knowing, begins with what we think and what we feel and then progresses outward. Thus, skepticism has emerged and we as a society are hesitant to trust institutions and authority. The authority on truth is no longer God but mankind and truth is now divided into scientific truth, personal truth, and social media is full of various echo chambers. And the danger of the search engine is confirmation bias. It is designed to search for whatever input is placed into the searchbar. Thus, we lead ourselves down rabbit holes of our own finding and our own making, because there is always a thread or a column through which I can find that which I’m looking for. And the danger is that the algorithm than learns me and who I am faster than I learn who I am. This leads to us being discipled not by Jesus, not by the church, but by the algorithm which constructs for us a world of our own making.

To prove this point all you would have to do is trade phones with the person next to you and see how different your news feeds and social media feeds are.

The challenge of modern day times that we can build digital worlds of our own making and is so doing, if we are not careful, the algorithm can begin to replace person-to-person discipleship.

Thus, when formation is shaped more by algorithms than by faithful relationships, authority quietly shifts—no longer received from God through His people, but constructed by the individual.

And when this happens, no one is shaping us, instead we begin to shape what is true.

In so doing, we have become the arbiters of truth.

So what if my truth says your truth is a lie? Who is right?

What if I open my phone and come across some headline, or some instagram reel, how do I know that they are accurate and trustworthy?

The world’s answer: does it align with how I feel and what I’ve experienced.

Experience certainly is a valuable source of knowledge, but the challenge with experience is how do you know whether you’ve interpreted circumstances rightly?

You know this. Anytime you or someone in your family experiences conflict two stories always arise, both “true” and yet two very different depictions of what happened and why it happened.

Thus a more helpful metric for truth is: Does this align with God’s Word?

God’s Word has to be our standard for truth.

God’s word is the one truth that is total and complete. It is the one truth that is eternal. Is 40:8.

Jesus himself said, John 14:6

John 14:6 NIV

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus is the embodiment of the Word of God.

So here’s a simple evaluative tool you can use to assess the information you’re encountering

1. Does the “truth” you’re hearing sound like Jesus?

2. Does it look like Jesus? Is this how Jesus would have responded?

Often times the things we hear may have fragments of truth. They may portray pieces of Jesus’ heart or part of his words, but not in full. The danger of half-truths is that it can easily deceive us. So what happens is we think we are following or listening to that which is “good” and “biblical” but how do we really know that what we’re listening to is wise and Biblical? Every media outlet no matter how objective it presents itself to be is bias, so,

How do you know?

The means by which we know what is wise and what is true, is by having relational proximity to people who embody what is wise and true.

In other words we know what is wise and right, by walking with the wise.

The way we discern truth is by walking with the wise.

How do we know who is wise? The wise, live lives marked by righteousness. Righteousness is the evidence of their wisdom. (

The word “righteous” simply means living rightly and we do not define what right and wrong is, God does.

Their credibility comes not only from what they say, but how they live. Technology has made it far too easy for us to hear what people say, but exceedingly challenging to evaluate how they live. And to be honest - the internet isn’t the best place to evaluate people’s life choices. Relationships is the best place to do that. In fact, this truth has had a deeply profound impact on my own faith journey.

The summer before I entered 9th Grade became a transformational season for me. Not just because I was transitioning from middle school to high school, but also because my relationship with God was growing and part of the catalyst for that growth was a man named Atanasio, or Nasa. Nasa was my true mentor. He was one of the first people who I met and said to myself, “I want to be like that!” He was this massive dude, phenomenal athlete, and yet full of joy, full of knowledge of God’s Word and full of wisdom.

I have excelled over the years in academics. I was on the A-honor roll in HS, and then went on to get my PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology. Yet despite my accumulation of knowledge, and my pursuit of knowledge, the thing that I have craved is wisdom.

Wisdom is knowledge applied. It’s skillful living.

How do I know how to live skillfully? By finding godly people who know how to apply God’s Word and being connected to a local church.

The correlation between wisdom and truth is that both are found in Christ and when we know what is true, it informs us on how to live.

Nasa and I met at a Christian camp over the summer, and yet we’ve always lived in different states so when I came back home and got connected at Wooddale Church I got plugged into the Sr High program; where I met other godly students. And best of all I met a man, I refer to as “Deano”! This man is an elder here at our church and has had one of the most profound impacts on my life. Dean is a phenomenal husband, father, businessman, and follower of Jesus! And I have had the greatest privilage to know him, to see his life on display, to have dinner with him, etc. And my life has exponentially increased in value, not because of what I have accomplished academically, but because I have found someone who models for me what wisdom looks like.

One study that the student’s who stayed most connected to the church in their faith journey after graduating high school had 5 adults in their lives that modeled for them what wisdom looks like. This 5:1 ratio, indicates to us not only that we need mentors to teach us God’s word, mentors of whom we can evaluate the fruit within their own life; but the number 5 is an indicator that we need to be connected to the church community. We can’t do this in isolation.

(https://karapowell.com/2018/08/preventing-teenage-faith-drift/)

In fact the we know this from Scripture. In one of the most profound verses that clarifies for us the purpose of Scripture we read this:

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God’s word not only teaches us what to believe, but also how to live. It is the source of wisdom. This passage comes to us from the apostle Paul, who was writing to his son in the faith, Timothy. In this letter to his spiritual son, the statement about the power and importance of God’s Word is preceded by this,

2 Timothy 3:14–15 NIV

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Verse 15 reveals to us the Scripture is the source of wisdom; and yet the medium of communication of this wisdom isn’t a text message, it’s not an email, or an instagram reel. The medium through which God’s Word is expressed to timothy was through the relationship he had with Paul. Verse 14 says, “you know those from whom you learned it”

Do you know those from whom you are learning?

The goal is not throw away our phones or immediately to unsubscribe from whom ever it is that we follow. Rather the way of wisdom, would encourage us to reflect on if we’ve surrounded ourselves with the foolish or with the wise? And for those of us who think we subscribe to only “wise” people or podcasts, we need to realize that wisdom isn’t found in headlines or search engines but in truth embodied in individual lives and transmitted through relationships. Thus, without personal relationships with mentors and a local church, we miss the opportunity to truly walk with the wise, as Solomon admonishes us to do.

If we do this there is a promise:

Proverbs 13:20 NIV

20 Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.

The promise is that we will become wise.

If we are to be truly wise, we need to have our discipleship journey, the process by which we become more Christ-like, to be driven not by an algorithm or a subscription, but by those who are wise. By Christians, who live righteous lives.

Application: join a group! study God’s word in the context of community. Doing so allows you to grow in your relationship with Jesus, it protects you from false ideas, and helps provide the support system to live according to God’s word even when life is difficult.

(Mark of Maturity) Commit to Life-Changing Relationships, by doing so you are choosing to walk with the wise.