Wisdom > Intelligence

Intelligence is the ability to learn, memorize, remember and comprehend things. It comes in many diverse forms, but intelligent people tend to be good with things like school, trivia, reading, law, the stock market, complex equations, and precise, intricate problems.

None of this has anything to do with wisdom.

Intelligence is the ability to gather, retain and sort out information. Wisdom is the understanding of reality and the world as it really is and the willingness to apply that understanding accordingly.

In short, being intelligent does not make you wise and being wise has nothing to do with your IQ.

Some of the smartest people in the world are also some of the most foolish (“foolish” being the alternative to “wise,” as “stupid” might be the alternative to “smart”). There are several reasons for this, but at least one of the is that intelligent people are used to having things make sense. Intelligent people can get their minds around things, explain them and intellectually hold them together. Wisdom teaches that there are things about how reality actually is that you will never understand and that mankind’s highest wisdom stops long before God’s is even getting started.

Untold numbers of smart people have shipwrecked their lives over things like, "Why would God _____?" or "It doesn't make sense that God ______." Insisting that God make sense to you before you bow the knee is nothing but carving an idol in your own image. And the thing about being really smart is that it's kind of like being really beautiful: if you are it, you tend to know it. And when you insist on perfectly understanding things before you embrace them, you are elevating your own intellect to the throne of your heart and insisting that God bow to you.

Due to their intelligence, smart people also tend to believe that their successes stem directly from their intelligence. The ability to understand and command information tends to carry with it a certain sense of both capability and entitlement. Smart people tend to believe they win because they’re smart: because they understand things and have made the accordingly savvy moves.

The wise understand, however, that the sovereignty of God is to life as gravity is to scientific experimentation: it is always there, operating even when you’re unaware of it and directly affecting everything you’re looking at. This is why, as Solomon reminds us, that the “the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). They understand that they get what they get because it is God who is giving it to them, regardless of their talents or abilities. They understand that their level of intelligence, whether great or slight, is itself a gift from God, along with all of the other myriad circumstances that may or may not allow them to succeed.

The result of all of this is a kind of inverse relationship between a person’s intelligence and a person’s wisdom. Regardless of how smart you are, you will come across things in the Bible that do not make sense to you. How you respond to those things is a reliable barometer of wisdom. If you insist on rejecting them because you cannot manage to get them to make sense, as smart people often do, then you are a fool. If, instead, you bow the knee to the divine authority and glorious sovereignty of God, trusting that somehow these things that seem contradictory or backwards to you will come together perfectly in the mind of an eternal, holy God, you are living in wisdom.

God has not limited Himself to the bounds of human intelligence. Do not fret over how smart you are. But do the hard work of becoming wise. It is superior in every way that matters. Winning on Jeopardy! or earning a highly respected Ph.D. is nothing in comparison to living your life with humility and in accordance with the One who has created all things.

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“Get wisdom; get insight;
do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
“Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.
“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever you get, get insight.
“Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.” - Proverbs 4:5-8