The Digital Age: For All or One?

We talk of infinite languages, languages that are made up of an infinite number and combination of strings. In a world where information is so abundant and ever-growing, the temptation is to think that our goal and our success is in finding something new and undiscovered to add to that massive body of data. The more important objective, however, is not to find what is new to the world, but what is new to us. “We have thousands of times more available information than Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. Yet which of us would think ourselves a thousand times more educated or more serviceable to our fellowmen than they? … Theirs was the wise and inspired use of a limited amount of information,” says Elder Dallin H. Oaks. Is our life’s purpose so great that the tools that we need to succeed are yet to be revealed to mankind?

In the Book of Mormon, the Lord refutes this rumor. In 2 Nephi 2: 27 it says, “Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man.” Like Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, our task is to take what has been given us and find within that collection of knowledge the bits and pieces that will help formulate a convincing thesis from the story of our lives.

In this same vein, the ultimate case scenario is the atonement. For me to change my ways and conform my life to the teachings of Christ is no original concept. It has been done thousands of times over. But in making his ways Gods ways, man has yet to understand that it is the worth of one soul that is great in the sight of God. Not all of the souls of our collective society, but of the individuals. That there are those who rise far above the rest in achievements and recognition, He cares not; that there are those who are not making it, who are surrounded by knowledge and truth and are yet kept from it because they know not where or how to find it - these are those for whom God worries. The power is there, the knowledge is there, it has been employed seemingly to exhaustion, but until the atonement finds fulfillment in the life of the individual, it has yet to serve its highest of purposes.

Such is the case with all of life, of knowledge, of wisdom. In the words of McLuhan, this is an age of “all-at-onceness”; but for each individual, finding the purpose, the meaning, and the focus - that still takes a lifetime.