Wise Guys vs Wise

When I think of wise guys, I think loud, rude and crude.  The kind of people I would labe wise guys tend to be very boisterous, bloated and boastful.  Wise guys are not so much full of wisdom as they are full of themselves.  And, far from being a fount of wisdom, my experience with these fellows is that while they are never in doubt, the are seldom correct.  Additionally, I find them to typically be agressive in their attempts to press others to agree with them.

The individuals I've known and experienced as wise seldom lose any sleep over whether another agrees or not.  Their goal is to share insights with those who are interested and show graee to those who do not agree.  They feel no need to inflate their ego, knowing their wisdom is a gift of God delivered through the experiences of life - especially the painful ones typically brought about by one's poor use of personal choice.  In other words, acting stupid.

The wisdom from stupid actions is achieved when one is able to embrace his/her stupidity, admit the need for a course correction and make the appropriate changes in word or deed.  Embarassment is a temporary flushing of pride before an onward and upward moving forward in life.  Wise men can easily embrace their mistakes without losing face becasue their face is preoccupied with a smile or a grin of insightful humor at their mistake.

Wise guys do not tend to learn from their mistakes as they seldom will admit to them and so often deny them or try to place the blame on someone else.  Wise guys generally speaking are weak men whose egos cannot bear the weight of their poor choices and the shame that comes from simply admitting a foolish outcome.

There really are two kinds of wisdom in the world, one coming from earthly man and the other coming from the Man of Heaven (Jesus).  Earthly wisdom is marked by the "unspiritual and demonic attributes of envy and selfish ambition (Js 3:15, 16).  While, "wisdom that comes from heaven is pure; then peace-lovig, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit" (Js 3:17-18).

Can you see the stark contrast between the two kinds of wisdom?  Wise guys, depending on earthly wisdom, are self-focused and therefore unable or unwilling to admit mistakes, therefore learning nothing from them.  They can never grow much as they use their energies denying their mistakes and blaming them on someone else, never learning the lesson to be gained and doomed to repeat the mistake and continue in their foolish thinking.

Wise guys walk around in a circle of their own making, stepping into the same messes over and over again, blaming others and defending their stupidity, often with agression.  Wise men break that circle as they embrace their failure and look for a new and better path.  Instead of trying to put a better spin on their mistakes, wise men seek to change for the better.  

Another way to put this is that wise guys take the "broad path that leads to destruction" (Matt 7:13), while wise men choose the "narrow path that leads to life" (Matt 7:14).  In the simplest of terms, wise guys stumble in the dark while wise men follow the Light (cf. John 3:20-21).  Jus' Say'n.