INTELLIGENCE. WHAT IS IT?
We have IQ, Intelligence Quotient, EI, Emotional Intelligence, and now there's AI, Artificial Intelligence.
We have book learning, street smarts, and genius. We also have learning disabilities, sensory disabilities, and motor disabilities that all affect all kinds of intelligence. We have heart sense and gut feelings. And there are clairvoyance and ESP, Extrasensory perception. There are probably other examples you may add. There are many ways to be intelligent, but here is my crucial question: what do these have to do with walking the Jesus path of love? With servanthood? With sharing the Good News? Maybe a lot, maybe not much! What do you think?
The one kind of intelligence in the news this week is AI. You may think you are for or against it. But if you have a smartphone, a smart TV, or Alexa in your possession, you are using AI. Nowadays you can't even get a Coke at some drive-ins without interacting with AI. To be against it is really difficult if you get out in the world or engage with media at all. So, it behooves us to learn about it.
Do check with a variety of sources as opposed to swallowing hook, line, and sinker one reporter's or one expert's opinion. There are a number of scary messages that should not be ignored. Be informed instead.
But now I turn your attention to HI. Yes, that is Humility Intelligence. HI doesn't claim to know it all or be better than everyone else. HI has a lot of that other HI — Heart Intelligence. In fact, they go together like birds of a feather.
Sometimes we just must admit that we don't know; we're clueless. And then other times we discover, sometimes too late, that we were misinformed or fooled, and so we're flummoxed. But there are also those wonderful times when we doubted but discovered we were right after all. Ah!
Now last but not least are those times when we realize we just have to take something in faith. The hope we Christians have in the teachings and promise of Christ can only be taken in faith. There is nothing artificial about it. The authenticity is felt in our heart and our mind and is revealed in our speech and actions.
Yes, sometimes we doubt. We may doubt the how or the why or the when or the truth of something. Faith is the antidote to doubt. And hope is the gift of faith. You don't need a high IQ to get this. You can't get it from AI. EI helps navigate the world of it. But it's your HI (both kinds) that really counts. You don't have to be a smarty-pants to know it.
Here, for your reflection, is part of a poem by Emily Dickinson concerning the resilience of hope:
Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
In Christ's Love,
Nancy+
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