Tag Archives: Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast

day 2966: Selective Ignorance

“You sing trivial songs to the sound of the harp and fancy yourselves to be great musicians like David.”

One of the great benefits of co-hosting the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast is that I get to meet and interview so many interesting people and listen intently to that they have to say.  Plus, I take away so many nuggets that I can apply to my own life and work.  This week we interviewed Pastor Chris Hodges who is an entrepreneurial church planter.  As he described how he gets so many things done he suggested that we would benefit from more “selective ignorance”.  His point was that just because we can know about something, doesn’t mean we need to know about it.  He’s right.  Just because our phones are right there to allow us to search on some obscure fact, doesn’t mean we need to do it.  This observation reminded me of the quote from Henry David Thoreau that “the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.”  And, consider that Thoreau had no idea that the internet and the 24-hour news cycle was coming.  It’s hard to stay focused on the big and important stuff and maybe the only way we can is to become selectively ignorant.

The prophet Amos warned of focusing on the wrong things.  He even pointed out the wasted time on trivial harp playing that made people look good, but didn’t really matter.  So, throughout all of time we have been given the choice to pay attention to the big or to the small.  When we choose to fill our days, hours and minutes with the trivial we are likely missing out on what the big picture is trying to show us.

Reference:  Amos 6:5 (New Living Translation)