The essential importance of wisdom

The undervalued path to using our other gifts well

Solomon was the king of the nation of Israel between roughly 970 and 930 B.C. The son of the legendary King David, Solomon is a revered figure in each of the three great monotheistic faiths. And in contrast with his father, who was a poet and warrior, Solomon is regarded historically for his wisdom. In the Jewish and Christian texts, Solomon was approached by God in a dream and offered anything in the world—and in that defining moment he asked not for wealth or power, but for wisdom. The Biblical text 1^st Kings reads in part:

 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you…”

“Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties….So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings…”

According to the texts, God made good on His promise. Solomon became not just the wisest man in the world, but the richest and most powerful; and his reign transformed his nation and the world until late in life when he abandoned wisdom with catastrophic results. Lately it’s occurred to me just how powerful a text this is.

I’ve been working on a new book on money, and how money can be a good rather than a bad thing in your life. While we almost all wish for and aspire to money, we’ve also all seen how destructive it can be. Sudden wealth without the right mindsets and infrastructure to manage it is often incredibly destructive, as studies of lottery winners and both entrepreneurs and professional athletes have shown. Even generational wealth tends to destroy families over time—leading to loss of focus and motivation, struggles with purpose and meaning, and rises in destructive behavior. And power is similar. Those who become powerful without the right mindsets and values risk becoming ineffectual, or worse, tyrannical. History is littered with tales of powerful rulers who destroyed themselves and the lives of those around them with catastrophically bad or even evil decisions.

That’s the moral of Solomon’s story. Without wisdom, money and power are terrible things. Without wisdom, they are like a gun in the hands of a child, reckless and dangerous. And they are more threatening because the wrong type of unwise person may not just abuse money and power but come to worship them, with even more catastrophic results. Those who know me have often heard me cite my favorite commencement speech, David Foster Wallace’s “ This is Water,” which in part says the following:

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship…is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

I recently had the privilege of interviewing the inestimable Tyler VanderWeele, creator of Harvard’s project on human flourishing, for my book and we had a wonderful conversation about means versus ends, about those things which are intrinsically good (e.g., character, virtue, relationships, purpose, meaning) and those things which are only good or bad depending on how we use them—most particularly money and power but also traits like beauty and intelligence (intelligence and wisdom differing in meaningful ways). Money can be a gift. So can power. So can beauty or intelligence. In the right hands and for the right purpose these gifts can enrich and enlarge humanity. And in the wrong hands, without wisdom, they can be destructive. Power in the hands of George Washington birthed a great nation. Power in the hands of Adolf Hitler destroyed one. Intelligence in Norman Burlaug relieved suffering for billions of people. And in Tamerlane it inflicted untold suffering. Even beauty in the right person can be inspiring and lift our hopes, and in the wrong person it can be used for manipulation and abuse.

None of these things is inherently good or bad (with the possible exception of beauty, a conversation for another time). They are not the intrinsically good things like purpose, love, or charity. They are means, not ends. And their proper use is unlocked by the discernment that comes with wisdom grounded in strong character and proper values. Worshipped alone, they are corrupting. Used in the pursuit of higher callings they unlock flourishing and human potential.

That’s an important lesson for today. We live in a world that quite often values money, power, fame, beauty, and intelligence above relationships, purpose, character, and calling—those truer paths to personal and social flourishing, those intrinsically important things. But wisdom and discernment can unlock the right order for us and help us each steward or other gifts well.