Q: What is the difference between worldly wisdom and Godly wisdom? Father Mike Schmitz talks about worldly wisdom in one of his videos, and I think it’s fascinating because I always wonder how people who don’t have God manage to live life because some of them are good and seem to live a fulfilling life. They seem to be happy and can give you good advice, too. How do they do that? — Claudia
Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC:
Worldly wisdom in a positive sense can be thought of as a fruit of human intelligence and intuition.
This includes the things we learn from books and from family members and friends and from life experiences.
It’s the kind of thing that one generation passes on to the next, sometimes in one-liners.
“A stitch in time saves nine.”
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
“A man is known by the company he keeps.”
This kind of worldly wisdom can spare us from making big mistakes. Many people benefit from such wisdom and pass it on to others, and they even manage to live outwardly stable lives. In that sense, worldly wisdom can be in line with Godly wisdom.
Human intelligence, however, is limited, and because of original sin, our intellects are darkened.
We don’t always see things clearly. We have our biases. Our pride or laziness can blind us to the truth.
Then, too, we can absorb faulty ways of thinking from society. All of this can skew our reasoning. This is where worldly wisdom can have a negative dimension.
God’s wisdom, on the other hand, is boundless and perfect. He is outside of time and sees everything in an instant. He sees the truth of things. He truly knows the human heart. And he knows what is best for us.
The divine wisdom can sometimes seem inexplicable to our limited way of thinking.
We can be like 5-year-olds who don’t understand why Mom doesn’t want us to gobble down that last piece of chocolate cake for breakfast, or why we have to eat our vegetables at dinner.
We can understand as adults what we couldn’t understand as children.
It’s a bit like that with God. We don’t always understand him at the moment, but we might later. To paraphrase Søren Kierkegaard, life sometimes only makes sense in the rearview mirror.
An example: God forbids the deliberate taking of innocent human life.
Worldly wisdom (the negative kind) might tell a woman that abortion is the way to get rid of an unborn child who is diagnosed with Down syndrome.
But God knows that such a child can do wonders to unite a family and to give the wider community a shining example of the value of all human life.
That’s an obvious example. There are lots of other ways, many of them subtle, where God’s wisdom is apparent over time.
This helps to explain why, despite all our technology and rational “advances,” we see so much depression, addiction, family and societal breakdown, and violence in the world.
God knows the human heart. He knows what we truly need. To follow his wisdom is a path to happiness.
(For related reading on the Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom, see this Aleteia post.)
As for people who don’t seem to think much about God: we’ll find out at the Last Judgment how happy and fulfilling their lives really were.