“How many cups are in a
quart?” “I wonder what’s the best route from here to Louisville?” “Do you know who
won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship in 1997?” “Which U.S. President served
two non-consecutive terms?” If you are like me, then you “Google” questions
like these every day. We live in an age when we literally never have to wait
for an answer. If it can be known, we know it in seconds. Siri, Alexa and Google
lie at our disposal ready, helpful and connected to all of man’s knowledge via
the ever-growing Internet.
I recently read an article
in USA Today about tech-giant Google.
According to their stats, Google processes on average 40,000 search queries
every second, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2
trillion searches per year worldwide. Did you know every Google search you’ve
ever performed is stored on the search giant's servers? With that mountain of
information, Google can tell a lot about you: where you live, your hobbies,
age, health problems, religion and more. Of course, Google uses that data
mostly to target you with ads. But the point remains, anything you’ve ever done
on a computer with Google is instantly recorded and can be recalled.[1]
While Google doesn’t publicly
report how much data they have stored up, expert estimates say they hold
somewhere around 10-15 exabytes of data. If you are in the majority of the
population that doesn’t know what an exabyte is, no worries. An exabyte equals
1 million terabytes. Today’s average personal computer holds around 500 GB, which
would mean 1 exabyte would equal 2 million personal computers, and Google’s 15
exabytes would be around 30 million personal computers![2]
While Google is a powerful
tool that brings vast amounts of information to our fingertips, I have been
thinking how many of us have come to trust Google more than God. We have an
all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God, but most of the time we’d rather
entrust our soul to the Internet. After all, the god at our fingertips is
visible, controllable, instant, and seemingly omniscient. Have we come to the
point where we think Google is greater than God?
All of this got me
meditating on an attribute of God that is often left for nerdy theologians to
ponder—that is, God’s omniscience. For a textbook definition, we can do no
better than A.W. Tozer, who wrote:
“To say that God is
omniscient means that God perfectly knows Himself, and being the source and
author of all things, it follows that He knows all things that can be known.
And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes
every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could
have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist
in the centuries or ages yet unborn. Because God knows all things perfectly, He
knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He
never discovers anything. He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders
about anything, nor does He seek information or ask questions (except when
drawing men out for their own good)”[3]
Has it ever occurred to
you, that nothing ever occurs to God? The Bible is replete with Scriptures
attesting to the infinite knowledge of God. For example:
·
God knows everything
about you—The number of your days (Ps. 139:16), your thoughts before you think
them and your words before you speak them (Ps. 139:1-4), your sins and failures
(Is. 1:18), the secrets of your heart (Ps. 44:21), the hairs on your head (Matt.
10:30) and every cell in your body (Ps. 139:15-16).
·
God knows the
past, present and future—"I am God,
and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from
ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be
established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Is. 46:9-10).
·
God knows everything
about the creation— “He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all
of them” (Ps. 147:4). By the way, an Australian study a few years ago put the
number of stars we can see at 70,000 million million million, or the number 70
followed by 22 zeroes. That means there are more stars in the sky than there
are grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts of the world! Yet, God names
each star like we name our pets.
·
God knows all counterfactuals,
that is events that could have happened in alternate universes had
circumstances been different. Jesus said that the villages of Tyre and Sidon
would have repented had He performed the mighty miracles He did in Bethsaida (Matt.
11:21-23). Moreover, Paul contends that had Pilate and Herod known that Jesus
was the Son of the God, then they would not have crucified Him (1 Cor. 2:7-8).
What this means is that we
have a God much greater that Google, and He isn’t affected by a power outage or
weak Wi-Fi. The omniscience of God should lead to several results in our spiritual
lives. First, it should heighten our worship. David praised God in Psalm 139:14
& 17, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are
your works; my soul knows it very well . . . How precious to me are your
thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!”
Second, it should make us
feel secure in God’s love. God knows every ugly thing about you including your
deepest, darkest sins and yet, despite this knowledge He still loves you! 1
John 3:20 reminds us, “in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater
than our heart and knows all things.”
Third, it should cause us
to trust in Him. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but God does. Nothing
that comes to us whether it be death, disease, disaster or debt catches Him by surprise.
He knew about it long ago, and allowed it enter our lives for a reason. As
Corrie Ten Boom said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known
God.” We don’t know what our future holds, but we know the One who holds our
future and He does all things well.
-DM
[1]
Kim Komando, “How to Protect Your Privacy on Google,” USA Today, 17 May 2013 <http://www.usatoday.com/
story/tech/columnist/komando/2013/05/17/google-maps-duckduckgo-web-history/2155759/>
[2]
Colin Carson, “How Much Data Does Google Store Up?” Curious Insight, 20 January
2016
<https://www.cirrusinsight.com/blog/much-data-google-store>
[3]
A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San
Francisco: Harper, 1961), 156.
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