Many of us are addicted to information consumption. From the moment we wake, we spend endless hours scrolling our social media feeds, listening to podcasts, reading articles, catching up on the latest controversies, and more. As a result, we have become rich in knowledge but poor in wisdom. To help Christians become better consumers, Brett McCracken wrote, The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World.
The premise of the book is that Christians need to improve their knowledge intake diet to become wiser.
McCracken says, “To become wise in the information age—where opinions, soundbites, diversions, and distractions are abundant, but wisdom is scarce—we need to be more discerning about what we consume. We need a diet comprised of lasting, reliable sources of wisdom rather than fleeting, untrustworthy information that bombards us today; a diet heavy on what fosters wisdom and low on what fosters folly.”
Gaining wisdom is not, however, an end itself; it is a means to an end. We live in a sick society that calls good evil and evil good. As believers, who are the salt and light of the world, it is critical we become wiser to proclaim God’s truth. And it begins with the information we consume. Therefore, McCracken created the wisdom pyramid to develop a healthy diet of knowledge that will lead to wisdom.
Inspired by the classic food pyramid, the wisdom pyramid is a visual and practical aid to distinguish sources of knowledge according to their conduciveness to wisdom. Like the food pyramid, the wisdom pyramid follows a hierarchical structure. It goes from the most enduring to the most fleeting, the most to the least mediated by God.
The pyramid has six sources: The Bible, the Church, nature, books, beauty, and the Internet/social media. In the second section of the book, McCracken devotes a chapter to each source and explains how they supply us with wisdom. But first, he explains three bad consumption habits that are making us sick. These are information gluttony (eating too much), perpetual novelty (eating too fast), and “look within” autonomy (eating only what tastes good to me). The book concludes with a picture of what life will look like if we diligently seek wisdom.
Overall, The Wisdom Pyramid is easy to understand and apply. McCracken offers many insights about information consumption I did not know before. I found the first section of the book the most useful, as McCracken correctly diagnosed the cause of our sicknesses with social media. I picked up this book shortly after taking a social media break, and it helped me recognized the bad habits I have been doing and why social media has been feeling so toxic lately.
The wisdom pyramid itself is a brilliant idea, though much of the information about the sources has been said many times before. The two sources that marked me the most were nature and beauty. Before reading this book, I never considered them as sources of wisdom. McCracken does a good job explaining how nature is God’s “second book” and how it brims with knowledge about God. He also provides poignant illustrations that have changed the way I think about nature. The beauty chapter also offers an exciting correlation between beauty and wisdom that I never considered.
If you want to improve your digital habits and prioritize wisdom over knowledge, I recommend reading The Wisdom Pyramid. You will do well also to read Twelve Ways Your Phone is Changing You and Competing Spectacles by Tony Reinke.
*Crossway publishers graciously gave me a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.*
