Joyska's Journal: Wisdom verses book smarts











Friday, August 26, 2005

Wisdom verses book smarts

Wisdom... the total quantity of things learned through both books and experience. It's deeper than head knowledge, yet not always as articulate. It is one's own ideas tied in with what we have learned from others...it is not simply a regurgating of what we have read.... and yet seems at times less intellegent. Wisdom is quiet while knowledge can be loud and out spoken. Wisdom is knowing when to be quiet... and when speak. Wisdom is something you come into... where knowledge is learned...

Why the distinction on this normally less philosophical blog? It was part of a discussion that I had tonight that has got my head really asking questions. How much of my relationship with God/Jesus/Spirit is simply what I know... not a wisdom that has come from experience... How much of my fear of things like fire, or the dark, are fears based in experience... not rational knowledge... and is fear then a form of wisdom?

I have never thought of myself as smart. I don't have a great memory for facts or dates. I can't remember the details of a subject or a book (unless I have read teh book 22 times... like On the Night of the Seventh Moon... i could tell you that whole story inside and out)... but I do remember movies, plots, quotes. Lately, it is the stories of the Old Testament that fascinate me. Maybe that is it. We know a lot of things about a lot of things... but we gain wisdom in the areas where our passions lie.

Solomon... he asked for wisdom SO THAT he could govern the people of God well, and with integrity. He loved the people. He saw his father David's heart to follow God whole heartedly and to love the people that God had chosen... He recognized his own passion for those same people and wanted to do his best by them.

Wisdom has at it's heart, a dimension of giving it away to build someone up. Wisdom hears what is being said behind the words and responds with decorum and tact; in order to build and improve. Book smarts alone (without wisdom) can tend to puff up the speaker and be about them and what they know rather than what the hearer may need or want to hear. People with emmense knowledge and less wisdom tend to hold it as "better" "more prestige" than someone who hasn't studied that subject. Often it is goes with out notice in the one whose knowledge is being spouted.

I got it... wisdom responds to and acts on the knowledge one aquires!

So on that note... I pray to the glorious father of our Lord Jesus Christ that he would give you a Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation that you may know him better... WISDOM, REVELATION, and KNOWLEDGE! Obviously a deep subject... and being that it is past my bedtime (knowledge) i should sleep (wisdom) and ask the Lord to make it clear! (revelation)... I like that... hmmm maybe that could work with my kids!

Be blessed!
Joyska at 1:12 AM

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