If You Can’t Trust Wikipedia . . .

For all you paper-writers leaning on the old Wikipedia for help with those big end-of-the-year projects, check out this story about one of the site’s “prominent editors.” Obviously, Wikipedia is still a great place to start a search for info on a topic, but you’d better always double check those sources before going to the effort of typing them into your footnotes.

The site’s co-founder is quick to point out that Wikipedia is “based on the twin pillars of trust and tolerance.” I’m sure the vast majority of info on the vast site is mostly correct, but as Stephen Colbert so hilariously pointed out last year, the reliability of any knowledge is limited by the trustworthiness of those telling you about it. It might have the smell of “truthiness,” but that doesn’t mean the source isn’t making it up.

In an era when so much information is so freely available, it’s getting easier to deceive lots of people about what the truth really is. How can you know anything for sure? More than ever, we need what Proverbs talks about over and over: wisdom, discernment, understanding. We need God’s perspective on life to sort out truth from truthiness, to figure out how to really live a life that matters.