What is the Difference Between Wisdom and Knowledge?
My weekly pastoral reflection for people who have decided I am worth listening to
I am a Christian leader because I believe that there is such a thing as Truth, and his name is Jesus. It is quite a thing to have Truth quite literally named ‘Savior,’ because the truth is that I need to be saved. The truth is that I am a bad man who cannot save himself.
My children are sometimes allowed to watch television or a movie. There is always a struggle between the protagonists and the antagonists. Sometimes one of my children will ask, “Which one is the bad guy?” I know what they are asking, but I sometimes answer, “All of them.” The truth is that we are all the bad guy. We were born in sin, bent toward sin, doomed. My Savior, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, redeemed me despite my unworthiness. He took me out of the miry pit and set me in an open place.
Today, there are many cultural elites who insist that there is no such thing as Truth. There might be things that seem more or less true to different individual people, but there is no singular ‘Truth’ to whom we might appeal. This assertion strikes at the very heart of the Christian faith.
The ancients, whether they were Babylonian, Greek, Hebrew, or Latin, knew there was an objective standard that judges all of us. They knew that the good life was lived only in conformity to the Truth. It is a hungering and hankering in the human heart. Our postmodern synthetic world would have us disregard our hearts. And yet, as Augustine said, ‘Our hearts are not at rest until they find their rest in thee.’
Knowledge is to be found in abundance in our age. Today, we now have artificial intelligence on our handheld devices. And yet our lack of knowing what to do with all this knowledge has hamstrung us. Because the purpose of knowledge is to use it rightly, to fit it together, to be changed by it, to lead lives that have been transformed by it. And yet our age is remarkable in that the vast majority of individuals remain unchanged, regardless of any new facts that come to light. Our partisan, hedonistic age has so calcified us in our creature comforts and bigotries that we often choose to believe that we cannot change. Determinism in all its forms (genetics/epigenetics, generational curses, personality profiles, cosmology, etc.) leave us saturated in the conviction that there is no change for us, that there is no salvation for us, that there is nothing to save us from or for. Because underlying all of it is a nihilism that comes to us in those rare quiet moments when we are unmedicated and undistracted. She whispers to us, accuses us, depresses us…
The role of the Christian leader is not to sympathize. Getting down in the pit will not help the person down there. Rather, throwing down a rope and pulling them up is the order of the day! That is wisdom. Wisdom is knowing oneself, knowing the Lord, and knowing my neighbor, so that I might love all three units rightly.
I do not know all things. There are still many things I am learning and hope to learn in my short time left on earth. Even so, I take great joy in that I know the most important thing: That Love is also real, and his name is Jesus. He loves me. And he loves you, too. Get out of that damned pit, friend. Call out to Jesus. He loves you, too. He’s on the other end of that rope, and he is able to pull you up.
They have all turned aside,
They have together become corrupt;
There is none who does good,
No, not one.
Psalm 14:3
So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.
Luke 18:19
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”
John 14:6-7
I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,
Out of the miry clay,
And set my feet upon a rock,
And established my steps.
He has put a new song in my mouth—
Praise to our God;
Many will see it and fear,
And will trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40:1-3
One of my favorite Jesus sayings: Matthew
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”