by Elton Gahr

Created on: April 12, 2009

Intelligence and Wisdom can feel the same if you don't examine them carefully but on closer examination they are two very distinct concepts and one whose importance in our modern world is often skewed far towards the concept of intelligence being important while wisdom is not. This is not new though, from our oldest records the tension between intelligence and wisdom has been noted.

The concept of intelligence is the ability to understand and accumulate knowledge. Memory and learning are connected to intelligence and it is growing ever more important as the jobs of the modern world move away from those that require physical labor to those that require mental labor. We no longer live in the age of the strong back but now live in the age of the strong mind. We fret over our children's schools, we play music for them in the womb, we read to them every night and spend tens of thousands of dollars to send them to college all in the hopes of improving intelligence.

Wisdom is in many ways connected to intelligence and many ways the antithesis of raw intelligence. Wisdom at its most basic is the ability to make correct decisions, often with little or no information. The wise will use their intelligence but not rely on it. They will understand that there is more in heaven and earth than they have dreamt of yet wisely continue to seek understanding. Wisdom, more than intelligence is what allows for a just civilization with laws and good leaders. Yet as a society we spend far less effort making our children wise. It is left up to parents to teach children to make good decisions, to look at the world in a way that goes beyond raw data. We have no test to find someone's WQ as we do an IQ test.

This struggle between intelligence and wisdom in many ways describes a man. The most important decisions a man must make are those in which wisdom and intelligence are at odds. Those times when you know that the smart thing to do would be to abandon your friends, your idea, or even your God but you also know that the wise decision is to stand by, even though the struggles.

Our civilization must also make these decisions. Is it an intelligent decision to help those countries who are poor and starving, or ripped apart by war when we ourselves are struggling with our economy? No, but is it the wise thing to do to reach out to those who would trade their best day for our worst and try to bring them up from the pits of despair. I believe that it is and I hope that our country and each man and woman in it can find that ability to understand the world through intelligence yet move beyond that raw data and it through the eyes of wisdom.

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