Wisdom over Intellect

I was listening to a podcast on the rise and fall of Enron recently. If you don't remember, they were one of the world's largest companies, and dealt primarily with all the different ways you might produce power.

They got themselves into trouble because they were unethical, cheated the system, and took advantage of others to make themselves richer.

How folks come to this kind of place in their lives has always been something that fascinates me. In listening to one of the episodes in this podcast, I was introduced to the idea of "intellectual purity." I wasn't completely sure what it meant, but just hearing the words gave me a lot to go on.

Since then, I've done a little bit of reading (I read a few websites, so not a lot of reading) to see if I was on the right track....I think I was.

Purity, when used in this case, has a meaning that an idea or concept is unencumbered with unnecessary or unrelated things. One example of this can be morals or ethics.  They're thought experiments. They are what you conceive of when an idea is only affected by the results of its own decisions and nothing else.

This is a great thing when we use it to think through a problem or issue. This works well when we follow a trail to a point that we can conceive of something that might happen. We do this all the time when we try to figure out possible solutions to problems. This goes wrong when it never comes back to reality.

One of the big things that got Enron in trouble was that they had a team of folks that worked under the assumptions of intellectual purity.  If they could do something, find a loophole of some sort to exploit, then they would.  As a thought experiment, that's a good thing, but in reality other things are involved.

Those other things have to be accounted for.  An example would be the lives of the people that were affected by the brownouts and power shortages in California caused by Enron and their exploitation of the law and electricity needs.

What could have stopped this?

The simple answer is wisdom.  Wisdom could have stopped this.  But what do I mean by wisdom?

By their wisdom the prudent understand their way, but the stupidity of fools deceives them.
--Proverbs 14:8

Wisdom is what happens when intellect is rooted in reality and not purity.  This is one of the clear messages of scripture. We find this very clearly in the book of Proverbs, but can find it throughout the Bible.

We do not live in a world that is disconnected from reality.  We live in a world that finds its meaning in the reality we are a part of.  Wisdom comes to us through what we come to know, but only finds expression when tempered by the world we are a part of.

This is something that we see Jesus deal with all the time.  He lived as a part of a world that was full of intellect, but had very little wisdom.  Those in charge, the religious leaders, priests, scribes, Pharisees, and so on, were very smart, but not wise.

They knew the law forwards and backwards, and were very quick to point out to others when they'd broken it, but they didn't have wisdom.

Wisdom would have told them that their world was a different place than what they knew. It would have told them that they needed to view their laws differently because of that world.  Instead, we see Jesus combat their intellect with wisdom, and win every time.

My favorite story when this happens is when Jesus is questioned about taxes in Matthew 22:15-22.  The final part of the story is when Jesus interjects the real world into their intellectually pure world in verse 20-21.

"Whose image and inscription is this?" he asked. "Caesar’s," they replied. Then he said, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." --Matthew 22:20-21

Jesus is telling these good church people that they've got it wrong.  He is telling them that they are very smart, but not wise.  Wisdom leads to a fullness of life, because it does not try to force us to live in a world that does not exist, but teaches us how to live inside the world that God has created.

We live in a world today that resembles much of the world that Jesus was a part of.  In our churches we have become very good at being smart, but we have lost a great deal of our wisdom.  We can name chapter and verse, but we forget how to use it to find wisdom.

My challenge to us, and my hope for us, is that we temper what we know with the reality of the world around us. In that, we will find Jesus at work.  Through his guidance we will find a better path to weave through our lives such that we are not condemned by our intellect, but revered for our wisdom. 

That wisdom, in turn, will reach out to others that they may also come to find their strength in Jesus Christ, and then the world will be changed.

Go out and have a wise week! Find Jesus at work, not just in the words of Scripture, but in the world around you. Amen.