Solomon asked for and received wisdom from God, so when he writes about wisdom I pay attention. “Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment. Wisdom will multiply your days and add years to your life. If you become wise, you will be the one to benefit. If you scorn wisdom, you will be the one to suffer.” Proverbs 9:10-12
One of my favorite illustrations of the difference between knowledge and wisdom is this: knowledge is being aware that a tomato is a fruit – wisdom is not adding one to your fruit salad.
In my final days as a pest control trainer, I discovered that many members of the younger generation seek knowledge, but find wisdom boring. One of my last trainees quit after two weeks of training and when asked why he said, “I could not sit through one more of Jim’s boring stories.” You see, I taught them the facts of pest biology and behavior, inspection and treatment techniques, customer service skills and safety measures. But I added true experiences I had while performing pest control that provided me with wisdom. Previous generations had found those bits of wisdom interesting and useful, but that impatient young millennial just wanted me to provide him with the basic knowledge needed to do the job and then turn him loose to gain wisdom the hard way through his own experiences and mistakes.
I try hard to keep each of my blog posts around 500 words or less so they are not too much to digest or become boring. But it occurs to me that a millennial might still find my “war stories” as a Christian to be uninteresting and not useful to them. I find that very disappointing, because it is the best way I know to impart to them the wisdom I have gained over 64 years of Christian life. Wisdom they will need in this world.
Solomon has been called the wisest man who ever lived, but he stumbled and fell victim to his own desires because he didn’t heed God’s wise instructions. God told him too many wives would lead him away from God, but instead of heeding that wise advise, he married 300 women and added 700 concubines. Those thousand women in his life lured him into worshiping idols instead of the true, living God. As a result, he was not the only one who suffered. His sons followed in his footsteps after his death and his kingdom was divided into two nations with idol worship continuing.
We must remember what Solomon once knew but forgot. ,All wisdom comes from God and no matter how wise we think we have become, it will only be meaningful as long as we are obeying God’s wise teachings and instructions.