By Emilio Kalmera (721News Business & Economics)
“Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it.” ~ Ecclesiastes 7:12 (NIV)
If you had a choice of wisdom or money, I would make an educated guess that 80% of persons would choose money. Why? I think it has to do with the misconception of how persons define money and wisdom.
So I will start by asking what is money and where does it come from? What is wisdom and where does it come from? By getting the “true” answers to both questions I think persons would become much wiser than they would have been before.
So what is money and where does it come from? Although the concept of money is an in-depth topic on its own, which is beyond the scope of this article, for sake of simplicity I will say that money is made by man, and accepted via consensus of man. Money was supposed to alleviate the cumbersomeness of barter trade (lugging around with sometimes heavy objects for trading purposes). And for a while money did serve its purpose.
Wisdom, known also as knowledge or intelligence, comes from the Creator who created all things seen and unseen.
For the sake of this article I will define two different kinds of wealth; financial wealth and skilful wealth. Although both kinds of wealth are different, you will understand their connection and differences in this article.
The first connection as well as difference is that financial wealth is unattainable without skilful wealth. Think about it: if there were no skilful persons to build buildings, cars, airplanes, ships, and other machines, there could be no financial wealth.
Financial wealth thus came into being as a consequence of the use of skilful wealth. But if this is true, one may ask why then are so many skilful persons not financially wealthy? The answers to this can be very complex.
In other parts to this article some of the answers will become clearer. I will draw references from within the region as well as in the Americas and Europe. But I will leave you with two plausible answers from a biblical context.
The Bible says, “fools have no desire to get wisdom so what good is money in their hands?” ~Proverbs 17:16 and “Money in the hands of the wise can be the answer to all things.” ~ Ecclesiastes 10:19.
Money versus Wisdom (part 1)
