The Age Of Wander

Wander: To stray, to move without direction.
Astray: Wandering, lost, on the wrong path.

I’ve been trying to finish this blog for almost 3 months but I keep wandering away and never complete it.

Devices plunge us into an ecosystem of interruption technologies that can make our knowledge base a mile wide but only a few inches deep. Studies show the internet and cell phones decrease our attention span and increase our proclivity to wander from a task. I believe there is a deeper reason behind all of our wandering.

Wandering is so ubiquitous it’s become a form of entertainment and national past-time known as scrolling. We’ve wandered from reading books to texts. Letters have been replaced by e-mails. Conversations have given way to voice messaging. We are wandering from the people and nation we were. Politicians, governments, institutions and churches have wandered so far from their original course can they be trusted to lead us back?

Buckle up. The point I want to make is that as a human race, we have wandered so far we border on being astray. To keep from wandering farther and farther, we need to remember how far we’ve come…and where we started.

Let’s begin with…The Bible. The Word and the fear of God was historically the path to knowledge and wisdom. Now, we have Grok and ChatGPT as the sources consulted. At one time everyone believed in intelligent design until some wandered towards evolution. Now, many of those evolutionists are wandering towards aliens as our Creator. The United States Department of War recently declared there have been 4 alien species recovered from crash sites. Grays, Nordics, Insectoids and Reptillians. That’s a far piece from God creating man and woman in His image.

When I was young there was cussing and bad language on the playground but NEVER on TV. Now, the F-bomb and GD litter almost every program. Its not just civil language we have wandered from, we’ve strayed from the value of life. Yes, abortion is the low hanging fruit, but watch a movie or Netflix production and notice the men and women killed as collateral damage in every scene. Try putting a number to the body count of good and bad guys. No more Clint Eastwood gets the ONE raging psycho killer or bad cowboy.

Once heralded as the bastion of amateur athletics, the NCAA now pays student athletes with millions raised by NIL. Academic students lean on artificial intelligence to write their papers. The educational system is turning out graduates who are technologically adept but not educated. Parents send their children to these institutions of higher learning with the encouragement to follow their own truths. When parents wander from teaching their children to know THE truth and there are only two sexes, we can’t be surprised a Supreme Court Justice won’t define what a woman is.

Politicians and parties on both sides of the aisle have wandered from anti-war to pro-war, from protecting free speech to defining hate speech. Gone are the statesmen who used inspiration and words to write the Declaration of Independence or the first Proclamation of Thanksgiving. Statesmen have been replaced by politicians using polls, speech writers and AI for whatever the masses want to hear. The political elite have wandered from statesmanship to whoever has or can raise the most money.

The Bible is replete with accounts of wandering before technology was invented. The first book in the Bible records the story of Cain being under a curse and driven to be a ‘restless wanderer.’ The exodus of the enslaved Jewish people from Egypt was less than a two week journey but lasted 40 years while wandering around the dessert. The Biblical reason why people and nations wander is a lack of faith IN or obedience TO, God. Wandering from the fear of God to apathy of Him doesn’t lead anywhere good.

The Bible teaches, wandering is either allowed or orchestrated by God. The devil’s greatest trick is not to convince people he doesn’t exist, it is to manipulate and control our wandering with the intent of defining or changing our eternal destination. This partially explains why the mark of the beast in Revelation 13 is an economic mark. When you can’t buy or sell unless you have the mark, it’s the ultimate way to manipulate and control. Speaking of which….

Central Bank Digital Currencies are centralized programmable entries. Wandering from physical money allows someone else to control when and where you spend your dollars. This control may be under the guise of ‘monetary policy’ needed to reign in inflation or spur growth. The reason may be controlling what books you can purchase or institutions you can support. Regardless, CBDC’s need enormous amounts of storage for controlling and keeping track of all the data they generate. Do you really think we’re building thousands of more data centers to store your wife’s pictures of the kids and grand-kids??

The two men who grew up in the same house with Jesus spoke to wandering. James said Christians should look out for those who wander. ‘If anyone wanders from the truth and someone brings them back on course, whoever does it will save the person from death AND cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19). Jude called out those who lead others to wander. He said they were the same as fallen angels that were led astray by Lucifer in rebelling and falling from Heaven. The culprit behind wandering is not always a device…or flesh and blood.

If you’re aiming for heaven, it’s dangerous to wander far because the ‘road is narrow and the gate is small.’ Fellowship with like minded Christ followers and a good church body is essential. It is critical to be in a Bible based church that preaches Jesus and not the benefits of AI in finding our way to God.

2026 is just getting started. We are all prone to wander. Tether yourself to the Word so you don’t go astray.