"Lord , grant us:
In our work, satisfaction;
In our study, wisdom;
In our pleasure, gladness;
In our love, loyalty."
William Barclay, who spent his life studying, realized that wisdom comes by process. The scripture talks about getting knowledge and then understanding and then wisdom. In America we are long on knowledge but short on wisdom. We educate the head so much better than we educate the heart. So often you hear somebody say, "How can anyone that smart be that dumb?" Their head is smart but their heart is ignorant. The major problems we face today are not because we are uneducated but because we are unwise. We have knowledge but not wisdom. Think about political confrontations that occur. Those are educated men. Those men have knowledge, but I don't see a lot of wisdom. Wall Street scandals are not from lack of knowledge, but lack of wisdom. The Old Testament constantly talks about the heart because wisdom is of the heart, not the head.
One of the most interesting columns I've read in a long time is "the heartless lovers of humankind." It pointed out how dangerous intellectuals are who have theories about the welfare of mankind without regard for individual life. They point out Marx, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, as men who had an intellectual theory about how society should be constructed but each had a horrible relationship with people who were close to them. One of my friends has a cartoon of Linus, the Peanuts character, saying "I love mankind. It's people I hate." These theorists of man's welfare used what they call "useful murders." For example, Mao supposedly killed 300,000,000 people because he was working out his theory of society. Hitler tried it. Stalin tried it. All of these people with theories about mankind based on their intellectual concepts have proven dangerous because they themselves did not love people. They loved power. They used theoretical knowledge, not divinely inspired wisdom.
Graduates of Duke can certainly be proud of Ted Koppel's 1987 graduation address. I was pleasantly surprised to see the seriousness and the analytical ability he displayed when he talked about how "America has been Vannatized, that's Vannatized as in Vanna White." Then he talks about the superficiality of television, finally coming to these surprising statements: "in the place of truth we have discovered facts. For moral absolutes we have substituted moral ambiguity. We now communicate with everyone and say absolutely nothing." Then he continued: "our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach." Ted Koppel then gave a very pragmatic argument for the Ten Commandments. He ended by saying, "Of course the commandments are relevant"
Years later the Federal courts have decided that they are not relevant to the justice system of Alabama and the stone monument upon which they were carved forcibly removed.
Let me quote from T. S. Eliot: "Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries bring us further from God and nearer to the dust."
God made us from the dust to move toward God, but now Eliot points out that we are moving quickly back to the dust. Knowledge is not enough; it is wisdom we need.
As Barkley prays, "in our study, wisdom."
