From Smart to Wise

The tremendous leaders on the top of the world are amazingly smart, clever, brilliant in their mind. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos they are all learners and also acute readers. Smartness and cleverness have been proven to be the indisputable traits for a great leader in most organizations. Yet, does smartness and cleverness are enough to lead people to success in a long run? In the complex and uncertainty in our days, there is a need beyond just clever or just smart in leadership. Smart people can impress, Wise leader can prosper. One of the think that leader need beside being clever and smart is to have wisdom. Smart-person and Wise-person are two separate categories. In a book entitled From Smart to Wise, the author says, "wise leadership success where smart leadership cannot." There is an urgent need for leader to move from being just smart to be wise in their leadership role. The author use the strong word, "evolving". The great leader is not a leader that grow from smart leader to smarter leader. They need to move to a different category, wise, And this realm, transcend the world of smartness or intelligence. 

When we are talking about wise person, some have understood it as a person who has an ability to speak a beautiful and crafty words that can be quoted by others. Thus, to be wise is not just simply talking wise. To have wisdom is like a shifting perspectives. In other words, when people work, they do not merely exercising their functional smart (play within their strength, and tactical) and business smart (determined, ambitious and risk taking) but how they directed all those things, their loaded activities to a noble cause, that's what we call wisdom. The idea of avoiding evil, pursue what is moral and suppress unethical behaviors are the way of wise people. If we agree with the previous definition that to be wise is to able to connects all things to the noble cause, the big question for us to ponder is this. What is the thing called as noble? For most philosophers the noble thing is might be explained, limited in horizontal dimension, an ideal to do good for others or neighbor. To be nice person. Moreover, wisdom is just a matter doing right thing with a particular person at a particular time. And it can be done through practice, experience and continuous intense reasoning. Ancient philosophers also said, the noble things are whatever, or the things that contrary to the wild desire and apatite of man. Ego is the enemy of a wise man. However in the other hands, some claim noble thing is to do good for our own self. How can we reconcile this opposite way of living?

When Steve Jobs was young, his wisdom logic was this, "To put a dent in the universe". It is the pride of him and his company that he set in the fore front of the noble cause. He was succeed in fulfilling his dream. Let us take a short simple test. When we heard the word Apple, we might think of a "real apple" but it can be also, "Apple" products, or even Steve Jobs that comes in our mind instantly. Many claimed Jobs was egoistic. The way he developing new product was using the ego-centered approach. Although he become a better leader while he running Pixar (some says he learnt his lesson gradually), many still disagree with his work ethos. Can we say the way he run the company is not noble? Apple is Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs is Apple. He brought a huge success to his company.  What else we can say? What is noble is quite subjective and very hard to define in humanistic perspectives, and can be in contradiction with each other. To do good for others or to do good for self? Which one is the noble Steve? When he was working in Apple or in Pixar? The answer can be quite tricky and confusing.

In Christian faith, wisdom is definitive. Wisdom the highest way to a noble life. Everyone, regardless of their job, age, status need to pursue wisdom. Wisdom here of course is not the subjective wisdom but the objective wisdom that is grounded in God. Wisdom includes moral but move beyond moral. The wisdom in Christian faith is distinct, although there is a close nuance of the wisdom that can be seen akin to the Ancient Near East (ANE) or Greek philosophy (GP). Yet, as a worldly wisdom, ANE and GP lack of the final elements and foundational ground that is the true and only God and especially Jesus as the true wisdom of God.  To have wisdom or to act wise is crucial. In Psalm 14 we can how the Lord looks down in love, bending over heaven's balcony, looking over all of Adam's sons and daughters. He's looking to see if there is anyone who act wisely. And of course, to act wise means that we do everything with the clear "awareness" there is God. As the Psalms put also in the Psalms 14, the fool (as contrast to the wise). claim that there is no God. Timothy Keller in one of his writing entitled, what is foolishness? explain, "the ultimate foolishness is to make anything the center of our lives besides God. Jesus describes the foolish man whose home is built on sand instead of an the solid rock of Christ's word and wisdom (Matthew 7:14-26)." Wisdom ties strongly to the idea that correspondence to the Holy (das gansz andere) or the intimated awareness of the divine. Apart from God, people will never be wise nor they will never gain true wisdom. IQ is not the exact parameter of wisdom. Even Goleman  once argues, "academic intelligence offers virtually no preparation for the turmoil-opportunity-life's vicissitudes bring." (He shows how the lower-scoring peers have a higher salary and productivity). To be Smart or clever is never enough, and not always correlated with the true success in life!

There are three steps of wisdom in Christian faith in relation to the deep awareness of God. First, is to know God (Jesus). The second step of is to relate to this God. And the third, which is the ultimate is to fear Him, which mean to live in awe, obey His words and commandments. These three steps are connected with each other and we cannot exclude one among them. But still, the emphasis is located in the third. We can see the third emphasis in the Wisdom book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Both books actually portray how wisdom is the greatest things that we need to pursue as long as we live. Proverbs 4:7 says, wisdom is the utmost importance. Ecclesiastes 7:12 says how wisdom gives life to those who have it. If we treat Proverbs as the introduction and Ecclesiastes as the closing in the canon of the Scripture. Here we can get. Proverbs says, fear of the load is the beginning of the wisdom and Ecclesiastes which says, "now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear of God and keep His commandments". From beginning until the end, wisdom which is expressed in the fear of the Lord is determining in our lives! To be a Christian, we cannot just be a smart, clever person. Everybody in the world can be smart, with self efforts. We need to move one step more, to be a wise. To have wisdom from above  (Hokma). Hence, we need to asked God for this wisdom to be given for us, so that we could listen carefully to the instructions of the Word of life and, and with discipline we obey those Words, so that we can have a vivid awareness of God that can guide every micro and macro steps of our lives, and to bring everything that we do to the a noble cause which, once again, God himself. To the Glory of God alone!