Knowledge and Wisdom

“Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” – Proverbs 28:26

We were in a bible study group once, preparing to study the passage in which Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac, and the leader asked us to share the thing about ourselves that would be hardest to give up. Some people said their ethnicity, or a physical ability, but for me it would be my mind. I remember taking care of a patient with brain cancer once, and the process in which she lost her ability to think without having insight about what was happening struck me so much I wrote a piece about it called “Losing Your Mind.”

The fact is, I rely on my mind quite a lot. I count on my ability to list-make, analyze, discuss, reflect, or research whatever comes my way. And in this post-Enlightenment, information age, don’t we all? Isn’t that our first impulse? There’s always another book or article to read, another expert to consult, another angle from which to analyze the situation.

None of that is bad, but this proverb states quite baldly that if we primarily live by trusting our minds, we are fools. The first and second half of this verse are cataclysmically different. They exist in two different paradigms. The second half talks not at all about thinking but about walking: he who “walks in wisdom,” it says, not “thinks in wisdom.” We can think all we like, but in the end trusting our minds will not really tell us how to walk out our lives. That requires wisdom. And wisdom is seeing that we need deliverance. We don’t need to try harder or get more information: we need to be saved. We need to pray. We need to ask for help. This is not to say wisdom does not include knowledge, but it is something far more than that.

And so I ask myself: how much do I rely on what I think or research, and how much do I rely on prayer? How much do I sit and stew about the possible outcomes, and how much am I willing to just take the next wise step forward? How much do I think it’s really up to me, and how much do I trust in a God who delivers? Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.