"I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul." (Psalm 131:1b,2a).The people's right to know is a figment of the people's imagination.

Principled minds shouldn't want to know all the sweepings and rantings and ratings in someone else's life. There isn't time to sift through all the trustworthy data, much less the nonsense. We must sort through priorities and ascend to the top of the piles of information and find the keynote for a worthier life. The by-product is a more peaceful life.We seem afflicted with spiritual indigestion.

The violence that permeates earth is making us heart-sick. The papers are weighted with bad news and the gossip rags are atrocious. It isn't inquiring minds but sick minds that want to know the latest litter and lies in another's life. We become what we behold and what we read. It's repulsive to watch one sinner (and we are all sinners) crawl and dig through another's life to glean the tiny bits of chaff just to titillate the public and finally destroy the person.

What has happened to plain decency? "In the last days.[people] will be.malicious gossips." (2 Timothy 3:1,2).It takes child-like confidence to know that God knows everything and to be perfectly satisfied with that.

It also takes humility. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain" (Psalm 139:6). If we knew all, or even had the right to know it all, then we would be as God.

Adam and Eve were banished from the garden because Satan said and poor Eve fell for it, "For God knows that when you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:4). "You asked, `Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge? Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know" (Job 42:3).

By: Patricia Nordman