There are a lot of smart people in the world. People who know how to build stuff, bake stuff, and blow stuff up (sometimes on purpose). Almost anyone today can learn new things just by ordering a book, going to the library, or looking on the internet. We know more things than ever before.

But wisdom is something different.

Oh, it helps to know lots of things, but you can get straight As in school and still be foolish. Wisdom is about understanding how the world works and how God wants us to live in the world.

The Bible has a lot to say about wisdom, because the God who wants to redeem us also wants to remake us. And God knows that all by ourselves we are likely to make bad decisions, especially when we are young. So he gives us parents and teachers and pastors to help us. And best of all, he gives us his word.

There is a whole book in the Bible about wisdom. It’s called Proverbs, and it tells us at the very beginning of the book about the very beginning of knowledge: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Later, Proverbs says the same thing about the beginning of wisdom.

It’s easy to be scared—scared of the dark, scared of getting sick, scared of runaway unicorns eating all your ice cream. Okay, maybe that’s not your biggest fear, but there are lots of fears out there. The fear of God is the only thing that makes us wise.

God doesn’t want us to be afraid of him (or of mischievous unicorns). That’s not what “the fear of the Lord” means. It means that we adore God and love God and stand amazed by God so much that we know we can trust him, and we hate to displease him.

If you were hiking in the mountains and feared the edge of a cliff, you wouldn’t hide out in a cave and cry yourself to sleep. You would keep walking. But you would be careful, you would pay attention to the map, you would not climb the guardrails. That’s a good kind of fear. It keeps us safe and keeps us on the right path.

Just like the fear of the Lord. When we fear God more than we fear people, we learn that God always wants what is best for us. That’s the way of wisdom. That’s the way of Jesus. And that’s the way for us.