Get Wisdom

“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.” (Prov. 4:7 NIV).

In order to get wisdom, you need to first know what wisdom is. Unfortunately, this is harder than you might think. There is no agreement on what wisdom is.

Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge is the acquisition of facts and information. Wisdom is not experience.

Wisdom is not the right use of knowledge, that’s prudence. Rather, wisdom is the proper perspective of reality. Experience is the practical application of knowledge in real-world situations. Wisdom is not understanding. Understanding is the ability to comprehend and interpret information. And wisdom is not prudence. Prudence is the right use of knowledge.

Wisdom is the proper perspective of Reality. It is the result of the skillful integration of knowledge, experience, and understanding. A proper perspective is God’s perspective. The closer we get to his perspective, the wiser we are.

Worldly wisdom is a distorted perspective of Reality. It is distorted by selfishness, personal bias, misinformation, and the misinterpretation of one’s experiences. Prejudice means to prejudge, and to prejudge is to misjudge.

I can give you answers, but I cannot give you wisdom. Wisdom is a result of a long process of integrating true knowledge with real experience to form a proper perspective of reality. That perspective is God’s perspective.

I’m going to give you answers to problems that you have not adequately struggled with. But I’m going to give them to you nonetheless. Hopefully you can appreciate them, if not now, maybe later. I think it is a true saying, “It takes more wisdom to receive advice than it does to give it.”