Where Did Wisdom Go?

So much knowledge, so little wisdom.

“Why did you do that?” I asked, before sipping my vanilla latte.

“I don’t know. I knew it wasn’t the right choice,” he said, tapping the table with his plastic straw.

“How did you know?”

“Well, I guess because… ‘the Bible tells me so,’” he said, his voice dropping into that familiar, singsong tune.

I set my coffee down. “That sounds like you know what the Bible says, but maybe not why it says it.”

“What do you mean? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You used a children’s song to dismiss a conviction,” I said. “You knew it was wrong, but you did it anyway. To me, that means the ‘why’ isn’t compelling enough to beat the alternative. You see the rule, but not the reason.”

He frowned. “So, because I’m missing the why, it’s easier to choose the thing I know I shouldn’t?”

“Essentially. G.K. Chesterton once said you should never tear down a fence until you understand exactly why it was built in the first place. We have a habit of seeing boundaries and ignoring them because they’re in our way. But those fences are protective. If we tear them down without thinking, we may find ourselves wandering toward the edge of a cliff.”

He was quiet for a long moment. “It’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom, isn’t it? Knowledge is knowing the fence is there. Wisdom is knowing why you need to stay on this side of it.”

I nodded.

“Where do I start? I can’t keep making these decisions.”

—

I have a lot of conversations like this. If you look at the social world, you can see the lack of wisdom running rampant in a world full of “knowledge.”

It is interesting to live at a time when we all have more access to information than ever before, yet few seem to know how to navigate the world with grace.

The State of the Union address that recently happened was horrible. It felt like staring at a bunch of toddlers bickering about nonsense. I wanted to look around the room and say, “Hey, are there any grown-ups around here? Does anyone have enough integrity, maturity, and wisdom to lead by example?”

I pray for our leaders, but I have little to no faith in them. On both sides of the aisle, it feels like watching my two-year-old fight my five-year-old.

One little-known fact about me is that I enjoy watching competitive Call of Duty. It’s a first-person shooter video game I grew up playing, and I’ve followed the competitive scene for a long time. I enjoy certain players who have since retired, and now they host watch parties. I’ll still tune in from time to time.

Something common in this e-sport is trash-talking and foul language. It differs from traditional sports and is largely a product of competitive gaming culture.

Aside from a few outliers, most players are in their late teens to early twenties. And without fail, the older players who have since retired will talk about how immature they were. They cringe at things they said and did less than five years ago. They still enjoy the banter. They still trash-talk. But they can acknowledge when they went too far or responded poorly.

Many who were fierce rivals during their careers are now close friends.

For them, retirement comes in the mid to late twenties. These kids grow up fast enough to look back and recognize their immaturity. (Most are still quite immature by my standards, but there is a clear distinction between 20-year-old them and 30-year-old them.)

Yet we have people leading nations, shaping culture, flooding social media, and producing our entertainment who have never grown up. The immaturity at scale is staggering.

Without comparison, the primary compliment I’ve received my entire life is that I was “wise for my age.” I never did anything extraordinary. I simply lived at what I would consider the bare minimum of basic moral and Christian ethics.

I grew up in a Christian home that taught the principles and teachings of Jesus. I quickly saw the things my peers were doing and where those paths led. I didn’t have a taste for it. Certain things just weren’t compelling to me.

That had far more to do with how my parents raised me than anything I did to be “wise.” By the time I was an adult making my own decisions, my mind and body had already been trained to think and live in certain ways.

That kind of formation was so foreign to others that, as an immature young adult simply living at the minimum standard, I appeared mature by comparison.

Now, as a father of two sons and a pastor serving over five hundred adults, I can say it plainly: true maturity is rare, and that makes me sad.

Where is the generational inheritance?
Where has the older generation gone, leaving the young without wisdom?
Where are the mothers and fathers?

Where. Where. Where.

The cry of my heart in recent days has been for mature fruit to be born from the tree of God’s people.

We are wanderers in a land we do not know, without the guides we need.

The Kingdom of God has always functioned through multi-generational purpose. If we want to experience all that God has for us, we have to live that way and pass things on across generations.

The young have excess knowledge. What we need is the wisdom of the wise to help channel it.

So let me say this clearly.

If you are an elder, we need you.

We need your wisdom.
We need your guidance.
We need your maturity.

Please do not let those of us who are younger try to navigate this world without you.

Without my parents, grandparents, mentors, coaches, and so many others, I would be a listless, unintegrated, disembodied human. They grounded me. They pointed me toward well-trodden paths. We need the Saints.

I charge you to stand up, stand firm, and go to war for the maturity of the next generation.

We cannot continue to live on spiritual milk. Too many generations already have.

The harvest is plentiful.
The laborers are few.

We need you.

—

Thanks for reading.

—Samuel

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash