Knowledge vs. Wisdom

‎"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." ~ Peter Kaye

Every father should remember that one day his son will follow his example and not his advice. - Anonymous

Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord. - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pg. 34

Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out. This was not foolhardiness. They knew what they were doing. They had counted the cost. They had measured the risk. They were well aware what the outcome of their actions would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact he did.

But these things did not move them. Once they were convinced that their stand was right, and that loyalty to their God required them to take it, then, in Oswald Chamber's phrase, they "smilingly washed their hands of the consequences." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pg. 30

"When despair for the world grows in me, and I awake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and childrens' lives may be, I go lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief....For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." - Wendell Berry

“There is no shadow of a doubt that the rakish society of the Restoration began by tolerating indecency for the sake of wit, and ended by tolerating dullness for the sake of indecency.” - Agnes Repplier, on the famously raunchy stage comedy of the English Restoration

"We should avoid ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden we ourselves ought to bear." - George Washington

"The real question of the moral life, at least as far as philosophical 'warrant' is at issue, is not whether one personally needs God in order to be good, but whether one needs God in order for the good to be good." - another from David Bentley Hart

"Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a greater, as an episode in the endless epic of power." — David Bentley Hart, from The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics Of Christian Truth

“I often wonder about people who live in tropical destinations. What do their screen savers look like?” - comedian Derick Lengwenus

"Children are like wet cement; whatever falls on them makes an impression" - Dr. Haim Ginott

Not so Great Moments in Faith...

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." - C. S. Lewis

“A prophet’s task is to reveal the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, the national myths as well as the little lies and delusions of control and security that get us through the day.” - Kathleen Norris, from her book The Cloister Walk

“The Incarnation is the most dramatic thing that ever entered into the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment.” - Dorothy Sayers

"Agnosticism, when it becomes an ear-stopping dogma, may be as bad a mental handicap as superstition." - Herman Wouk

"Experience is a slippery slope philosophically and spiritually. It’s a fog in which all sorts of worlds can bump together. Now, no one wants to go to extremes. Some lines are drawn in the sand. For example, no one in their right mind would endorse mass murder. But we need to follow a path of wisdom and have standards. When you come into the life of the Church, there is a way of life followed there. There are codes of conduct. It’s like when you come into someone’s home. You take off your muddy boots when you enter the house. You don’t take tea and pour it down someone’s back. There are standards in how we live together. Experience needs to be affirmed, redirected, and rebuked by God’s authority. Because of our propensity to self-deception, we constantly need to check against scripture, whether we are allowing the word of God’s grace in the gospel, and God’s reaffirmation of us as made in his image, to validate what is in fact an idolatrous and distorted form of humanness. When, through letting scripture be he vehicle of God’s judging and healing authority in our communities and individual lives, we really do “experience” God’s affirmation, then we shall know as we are known." - N.T. Wright

"The Bible is here to equip God’s people to carry forward His purposes of new covenant and new creation. It is there to enable people to work for justice, to sustain their spirituality as they do so, to create and enhance relationships at every level, and to produce that new creation which will have something of the beauty of God himself. The Bible isn’t like an accurate description of how a car is made. It’s more like the mechanic who helps you fix it, the garage attendant who refuels it, and the guide who tells you how to get where you’re going. And where you’re going is to make God’s new creation happen in his world, not simply to find your own way unscathed through the old creation." - N.T. Wright

"Our assumption is that Church is where you say the things that have to be said. So people will speak but say, "Oh, I wouldn't say that in church." Well then, where would you say it? To me, it's the place where you would push it the furthest. A faith community should be the place with the most honesty and vulnerability and prophetic culture—calling things what they are. So when I hear people say, "That's nice but you really couldn't do that in church," I can't even fathom that. My understanding is it would lead the culture in reality." - Rob Bell

"I think that's one of the most warped ideas—that God just can't wait to bless you. God blesses you so you will bless the world and if at any point I keep that for myself, then I am in trouble." - unknown

“The problem with our churches today is that the lead pastor is some sissy boy who wears cardigan sweaters, has The Carpenters dialed in on his iPod, gets his hair cut at a salon instead of a barber shop, hasn’t been to an Ultimate Fighting match, works out on an elliptical machine instead of going to isolated regions of Russia like in Rocky IV in order to harvest lumber with his teeth, and generally swishes around like Jack from Three’s Company whenever Mr. Roper was around.” - Mark Driscoll

"People who know their God are before anything else people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers....Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God's cause - energy indeed which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channeled into such prayer - and the more knowledge, the more energy! By this we may test ourselves. Perhaps we are not in a position to make public gestures against ungodliness and apostasy. Perhaps we are old, or ill, or otherwise limited by our physical situation. But we can all pray about the ungodliness and apostasy which we see in everyday life all around us. If, however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 28

Those who know God have great energy for God. In one of the prophetic chapters of Daniel we read, "the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits (11:32 KJV). RSV renders thus: "the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action...While their God is being defied or disregarded, they cannot rest; they feel they must do something; the dishonor done to God's name goads them into action." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 27

"The question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is a plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness that we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about him." - J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 27

"Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God." - J.I Packer, Knowing God

"How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into a matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God." - J.I. Packer

"To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude, and pray to be kept from it. As we saw earlier, there can be no spiritual health without doctrinal knowledge; but it is equally true that there can be no spiritual health with it, if it is sought for the wrong purpose and valued by the wrong standard." - J.I. Packer

If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it is bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited. - J.I. Packer

"Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose you soul."- Charles Spurgeon

"And whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh there is in contemplating Christ a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in the immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trail as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead." - Charles Spurgeon