There was a time when I believed that knowing something meant you had earned it—that knowledge itself carried weight simply because it was hard-won. I don't think that way anymore.
I grew up in a community where knowledge lived in specific places, worn by specific people like sacred vestments. The Pastor stood at the pulpit with biblical truth. The Doctor carried healing wisdom in his black bag. The Lawyer spoke in careful syllables that could untangle or bind your future. And if none of them had your answer, there was always the library, where encyclopedias sat on wooden shelves like sentinels guarding civilization's collected understanding. These were our sources, our gatekeepers. We trusted them not because we had verified their claims, but because we couldn't. The very inaccessibility of knowledge made it precious.
In those days, second-guessing wasn't part of the equation. You didn't fact-check the Pastor's sermon or request a second medical opinion as casually as ordering coffee. The answers were accepted—reverently, completely—because acquiring the same knowledge yourself meant embarking on a long, tedious formal process of schooling. Years of your life. Thousands of dollars. The transformation of your entire identity. Formal education was treated as a single source of truth and insights, a pipeline that turned ordinary people into authorized knowers.
Biblical truth was especially held high in my community, elevated above even scientific or legal knowledge. Scripture wasn't just true—it was Truth, capital T, the foundation upon which all other knowing rested. That reverence shaped how I saw the world for years, how I measured right from wrong, how I understood my place in the cosmos.
But that's not the case any longer.
The shift began quietly, like dawn breaking before you realize the darkness has lifted. First came Google, that humble search bar that promised to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. Suddenly, the encyclopedia was in your pocket. The Pastor's interpretation could be cross-referenced with a hundred theologians in seconds. Medical symptoms could be researched at 2 AM from your bed. Knowledge, which had once required pilgrimage to specific places and people, now flowed through fiber optic cables directly into our homes.
Then came AI—not just one source, but numerous ones, each ready to answer questions, generate insights, write essays, solve problems. The floodgates opened completely. Knowledge became abundant to the point of overwhelming.
And here's where my understanding shifted fundamentally: abundance didn't make knowledge more valuable. It made it cheaper.
Those numerous sources brought with them varied opinions about what "truth" actually is. Where there was once a single authoritative voice, there are now a thousand voices, each claiming validity, each backed by their own evidence, their own logic, their own worldview. Truth itself is continually questioned as opinion takes over as the standard. The boundaries that once seemed so clear—between fact and interpretation, between knowledge and belief—have blurred into something murky and unsettling.
Standards, I've come to realize, are viewed as flexible now, changed and updated as the accessible knowledge base grows. What was true yesterday might be revised today. What was certain in my childhood is debatable now. The knowledge base growth and accessibility has created something paradoxical: a cheap, non-trustworthy commodity.
This troubles me, yes. But it also opens something up.
Because maybe knowledge was never meant to be hoarded in libraries and institutions, guarded by degrees and titles. Maybe the democratization of information, messy as it is, invites us into a deeper kind of discernment. Not the blind trust of my childhood, but not cynical relativism either. Something more mature—a wisdom that can hold biblical truth as a standard, that can also sit with the uncertainty dominating societal norms, that understands the difference between information and understanding.
Perhaps what we're being called to now isn't the certainty of the past, but the courage to seek knowledge in a world where it doesn't announce itself with credentials. To become our own discerning seekers, humble enough to question, wise enough to wonder, rest assured in biblical standards, patient enough to sit with mystery.
Knowledge may have become cheap. But wisdom—wisdom is still priceless.