People don’t think things through half as much as they should. It’s the natural course of human events to preoccupy all your thoughts on what immediately effects yourself. We all do this to some extent. Babies are basically born with this way of living. They base everything on what is presently hitting their physical senses. As you grow up, you learn to pay attention to more and more around you, but primarily as it relates or impacts yourself. This is a good practice to learn as a child, as it develops alertness. But in order to gain wisdom, understanding, and knowledge people must grow out of these habits and look beyond what immediately effects your person.

What do you derive your understanding and knowledge from?

This is not natural for mankind. In fact, most people worldwide demonstrate very little understanding of the world outside of their immediate life. People don’t understand politics, crime, family, religion, natural disasters, international relationships, etc. However, this is mostly their own fault.

It takes a effort on the part of each individual to gain knowledge, understanding and wisdom that applies to the world at large. The input that most seriously lack can be found a variety of ways, but most people do so little to obtain it. I want you to consider that wisdom is something that is obtainable for yourself, but to gain wisdom is a life-long process that begins the moment you’re actively pursuing it.

What most consider common knowledge available through the various media outlets and forums is not so much well thought through prudent positions. These streams of information are really just that—information. The news is not really sharing understanding with the news they share, but giving just the facts. Well, that’s what facts are in and of themselves. Obviously, whomever delivers the facts is selecting the facts they wish to share, and giving them the twist with which they wish to give them to you, but besides the positions of the deliverers, the facts are purely knowledge based. The information gives you a broader, more focused, and hopefully more truthful perspective on the real world.

But facts must be filtered by perspective of those facts. Facts are neither objective or subjective. They just are. What determines the significance and ramifications of those facts is how you see them through your convictions, morals, commitments, beliefs, values… your paradigm. The facts have consequences that you judge by what you believe about the world. This is your understanding—a part of wisdom.

Well, if you get knowledge by studying history past and as it unfolds in the present, where do you get your understanding? Are there wiser places to gain understanding than others? Should you get them from the newscasters? Should you get them from school teachers? Should you get it from preachers? Statesmen? Popstars?

What counts as understanding? What is authentically true wisdom? What is the standard of all wise thought? You know what? choose the right basis for your foundation of understanding is the beginning of wisdom. What you choose as the authority platform you determine all other understanding by is the most crucial and critical point of growing in maturity. If you get this point in your pursuit of understanding wrong, then the rest of your wisdom is going to be flaud and foolish because it is not true to the real world. Your ideals, no matter how hard you believe in them, and no matter how strong your sincerity, will misguide you to foolishness if they are founded on lies.

You base every you think about the world around you on some foundational truths. Well, what I’m asking you is where do you get your truths? If you don’t have authority backing what you foundationally believe in, what you basically support you understanding with, do you think that might be unwise in and of itself? Do you think what determines ultimate truth is man’s reasoning? Or… something else bigger than man?

There is no way to escape that ultimately you cannot have a basis for understanding without something you rely on. Wisdom is established through something you have faith/trust in—even when there’s ultimately no hard evidence proving it right in man’s limited perspective (yet, that might not be entirely true…). The only authentically authoritative resource to mankind that by all appearances remains truthful to history, science, law and all other matters is the Bible. Yes, the age old book that Christians swear by.

Without biblical principles, I can’t see how you can have a basis for all wisdom or authoritative view at knowledge. It is perhaps the only form of objectivity in reality.

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