Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with having said, “Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used until they are seasoned.” What is wrong with using knowledge? English poet William H. Cowper explained, “Wisdom and knowledge, far from being one, have of times no connection.” Yet there should be a connection, and the link is found in the quote, “Knowledge is power. Proper application of it is wisdom.”
It is amazing how so many people can know so much about so many things, and yet due to a lack of good judgment, a lack of wisdom, often their knowledge not only is useless but sometimes downright dangerous.
This need for knowledge to be seasoned with wisdom must be the reason the wise King Solomon declared, “Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”
There is no doubt that we are living in the last days of which Daniel prophesied that knowledge would be increased. The amount of information about everything has increased and is increasing at break-neck speed, but mankind unfortunately has not acquired the wisdom to rightly use this abundance of knowledge.
For instance the Internet can be a marvelous way to connect and inform, yet it is being used to corrupt the minds of millions. Just as television, radio and films, with enormous potential for education, have instead become the means of appealing to the basest instincts of the flesh, so the Internet has followed the same path. The Internet is not at fault; it is the misuse of it by those with carnal minds.
We have problems in areas that did not even exist a few years ago. Youngsters too young to drive an automobile now know how to create havoc by breaking codes and invading the privacy of millions or by unleashing a virus that can infect and destroy valuable data in computers all over the world.
All this knowledge is unseasoned; all this know-how has been acquired without the wisdom to rightly use it.
Because the knowledge of God is avoided, godly wisdom is not valued. As a result God has allowed new ways to indulge in evil which did not even exist a few years ago.
The outcome is just as Paul predicted: “Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers. God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents: they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”
They have unseasoned knowledge and consequently no wisdom.
Contrast this godlessness with the inspired advice of King Solomon who instructed his son saying, “My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding…Then you will understand what is right and just and fair — every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.” Solomon explains the source of wisdom: “For the Lord giveth wisdom; out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.”
Wisdom brings happiness as Solomon explains, “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. She is a tree of life.. .her ways are ways of pleasantness.. all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.” And in the future, “The wise shall inherit glory.”
We should be so thankful that we have listened to Solomon, who told us to “bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge.” David tells us that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One