When I was a boy and my grades weren’t quite up to snuff I was given to committing the false dilemma fallacy. My parents would grumble, and I would explain, “But I’m not so interested in acquiring knowledge. It’s wisdom I want.” Which is teenager for, “I don’t want to study, and I’ve found a pious sounding way to hide that fact.” My father wisely pointed out not just that acquiring knowledge doesn’t keep you from acquiring wisdom, but that in fact knowledge is necessary for wisdom. You can have knowledge without wisdom, but you can’t have wisdom without knowledge.
Knowledge, rightly understood, is knowing what is. Wisdom is knowing what to do about it. The two then are tightly bound together. Indeed one could argue that it is our folly that makes us so stupid. Romans 1 tells us that we know there is a God to whom we will give an account. But we don’t like what we know, so we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. We become fools. That reality trickles down to more mundane matters. We know we should not spend more than we have, but we want more than we can afford. Wisdom says to stick with the numbers. Folly tosses them aside.
Wisdom is the ability to act on what our minds know. Folly is doing what we want, being lead by our emotions. Remember the strange case of the moral outrage at Chik-Fil-A. The head of the company affirmed that the company supports marriage, and suddenly there was a firestorm. Boycotts were constructed, counter buy-cotts were called for and worst of all the mayors of Boston and Chicago vowed to use licensing and zoning to keep Chik-Fil-A out of their “fair” cities because of their passion for diversity, inclusiveness and square dealing. Or the common outcry we hear when some poor soul actually believes he and his targets are just evolved accidents and starts shooting. In both instances, people are upset. That’s a fact. Something must be done. Well, we don’t know if its wisdom or not until we know what will be done. What knowledge tells us is marriage is between one man and one woman. What wisdom tells us is that nothing can change that.
It should not surprise us when the world falls into folly. Such is what defines them. The Bible, after all, isn’t kidding when it tells us “The fool says in his heart there is no God” (Psalm 14:1). What concerns me is how worldly the church is in mimicking the same kind of folly. When our orthodoxy is challenged we do not defend it, but get upset, hurt, put out. When our orthopraxy is challenged we do much the same. We, as Christians, are to feel strongly. But we are to feel wisely, in accordance with the truth. What matters is what is, not what we wish was. We don’t think but feel that our feelings are their own justification, and that reality must adjust to them. And if it won’t, well then, we’ll pout, stew, grouse, grumble and hold the world hostage until we get our way.
God is true. Every man is a liar. Which is why we need to stop listening to our hearts, and start listening to the One who indwells them.
So good!!