The Quest for Wisdom

Some kids can really surprise you.

Take the great inventor Thomas Edison for example. As a mischievous schoolboy, he was considered by his teachers to be “stupid, restless, inquisitive, asking too many questions and a slow learner.”

And there was Albert Einstein. The self-taught high school dropout was considered “lazy, slow and dreamy,” and he even flunked the entrance examinations in the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich.

As parents, our goal should be to help our children do well in school and to grow in knowledge, but it can’t stop there. There is a huge difference from knowing information and growing in wisdom. Knowledge is the acquisition of information. Wisdom is the application of knowledge. For example, knowledge is knowing the street is goes one-way. Wisdom is looking both ways anyway.

We live in an age of information overload, as we are surrounded by information on all sides, from shared links on social media to articles forwarded via email, to television and radio, to casual conversations. We are inundated with more content now than ever before, and all of it is clamoring for our attention.

But wisdom, it seems, is in short supply, and we need it desperately. It’s wisdom that challenges us to value love over pleasure; it motivates us to cherish peace rather than wealth and it strips away the veneer and lets us see what is really important.

The eminent scientist Isaac Asimov was commenting on the rapid overload of new information and knowledge when he remarked, “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

If you are seriously seeking to grow in wisdom, the Bible is filled with excellent advice. One example is the short book of James that has two verses that speak powerful words about wisdom.

One verse tells us how to obtain wisdom.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you,” according to James 1:5.

And the other verse shares characteristics of godly wisdom.

“But the wisdom that is from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere,” according to James 3:17.

We would all do well to remember that while knowledge comes from learning, wisdom comes from living.

Or as former President Calvin Coolidge remarked, “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form wise judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.”

So, how are you doing? Are you just packing more and more information into your brain, or are you honestly seeking to grow in wisdom?

Coming next month is “Living with Doubts.”