There is a difference between being knowledgeable and being smart.

Jan and I enjoyed watching Jeopardy. This past spring, the “2024 Tournament of Champions” took place. In each episode, halfway through the game, each contestant is introduced. The host, Ken Jennings, asked each contestant, “Who would you like to thank for getting here?” Each contestant included in their answer five words in some variant: “… I’ve met some really smart people.” I agree; the folks who make it through the contestant vetting process are “really smart.” Or are they? Maybe not.

Each “tournament” episode consists of one moderator and three contestants. Three rounds are played: Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy. The first two rounds have six categories, with five clues in each category. The final category has a single clue, for sixty-one clues. On a good night, I usually get three or four clues.

There is a significant and expanding time gap in my recall of the clues’ answers. It is not unusual for me to still be searching for a response to a clue while the show has moved three clues or more down the road.

Does that mean the contestants are smarter than me? They may be, but Jeopardy does not prove it. Indeed, they are more knowledgeable than most of us; still, I wonder if they are smarter. I wonder if we confuse the ability to acquire, organize, and recall information with a person being smart. Maybe they are no smarter than the guy at the auto parts store I go to, who seems to know every imaginable part of any auto and where it is in his stockroom. However, he never finished high school.

I began to think about all the smart people I now know and have known. The first two smart people I had a lively personal relationship with were Tommy M. and Lois G. in high school. They were in the top ten percent of their class, while I was not much above the bottom ten percent. Looking back, I think it was more because they worked harder than I did at learning. They sought to thrive while I sought to survive.

The seeds of my eventual evolution were planted in the companionship of these two friends. God used them to shape me, and I am grateful.

In my adult years, Bob Norman, my college pastor and later my pastoral mentor, impacted me.

No one has impacted my “smarts” more than Jan. I am profoundly thankful.

Continuing to recall the smart people who have shaped me, I was surprised to find my dad, Louis Arlington Baldwin, Sr., on my list.

Dad graduated from Jeffersonville High School in Indiana. He entered the Navy near the end of WWII, where Dad was trained as an electrician, specifically in direct current. Though he desired a college degree, he was too busy raising three boys. Eventually, he worked at the Arnold Engineering Development Center between Tullahoma and Manchester, Tennessee. His ability to diagnose and find solutions to the challenges of using DC electricity to affect the airflow in wind tunnels was discovered and rewarded.

But Dad was not “Jeopardy smart.” For me, being smart means having knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge to solve real-life problems. It’s not how much you know but how you apply what you know to improve what is challenging you.

It is one thing to know how to make a baby. It’s quite another to know when it is appropriate to apply that knowledge; that’s being smart.

In his letter to the believers in Rome, the Apostle Paul pointed out the confusion and moral clutter caused by the Jewish leaders of his day. They had a lot of knowledge of the Law but were not very smart in applying its significant purpose.

If our increasing knowledge from the Bible about God does not translate into increasingly being like Jesus, we are not very smart. God is more interested in how you adapt to His “image” than how much you know about His “image.” The truth is that you already have enough knowledge about God to navigate the storm you are currently in. You do not need to know more; you need to listen to Him speaking through what you read Him saying instead of what you think He has said. The smart person will listen to what God is saying, not just what He has said.

It isn’t easy to take what Paul is saying in a single chapter of Romans and suggest a single verse as a reference. I encourage you to read at least the whole of chapter 2. I give you the last verse to spark your imagination.

On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart—by the Spirit, not the letter. That person’s praise is not from people but from God. (Romans 2:29, CSB)

Our lives are more infused with peace and joy by how deeply we know the person of God than by how much we know about God.

Photo – Driftwood on the Pacific Coast Highway, HW 101, in Oregon.