Wisdom and Knowledge ...

Thursday, Oct 13, 2016. Today, it is very important to have knowledge. We call it “know-how”, and our societies are built on knowing how do do things, how to manufacture, how to manage, how to structure. And indeed, good management is very important. Good leadership is very important. Knowledge is very important. Yet, we need more than knowledge. We need more than management. We need real wisdom, we need to make choices, to balance things, need to know how to treat challenges and how do deal with difficulties.

How to gain wisdom? …

In our modern business world, I am missing a proper concept of wisdom. Usually, we have all different kind of things there, we talk about knowledge management (for example the most recent revision of the internations ISO 9001 norm on quality management). We talk about structure of things. But we do not talk too much about ethics, and we barely talk about wisdom. Before we go further, have a look into what we find in 1 Kor 1:

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach2 to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (from 1 Kor 1)

The cross is about my life. It is about how to face the purity, love, truth and faithfulness of God. Before God, my life cannot stand - that is one of the core messages of the cross. It is insight, but do we have it, do we gain it, can we see? But everything is different, when I live through the cross, when I live through faith in Christ Jesus.

What is Wisdom? …

You might ask yourself: what is wisdom? How to act in a wise way? How to do things? Even if you live with Christ already for many years, you will again and again come to the point where you realize that only Christ Jesus himself, only God in father and son and holy spirit, has the wisdom to guide your life.

Wisdom is to live with him, to live in him, to live through him. Wisdom is to learn from the holy spirit. Wisdom is to do things as much as possible as he did things. Only he can give us the freedom to be fully human, to be in him and nothing else. We become slaves of many things so quickly. Freedom does not mean not do to good, not to be reliable, but to be good in him and through him.

The longer I think about the cross, the deeper its meaning appears to me. The claim that our old self needs to die, to gain a full human and sanctified new self through Christ - that is part of this wisdom which the New Testament describes. Do not think you could gain it without the living Christ, without the power of the holy spirit. But in him and through him new and wonderful things come! Wisdom comes! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts