How Smart is your Higher Power?

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the chapter, We Agnostics, discusses a dilemma most of us faced when confronted with the reality that we were both powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. “Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn’t duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith……. We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow, we couldn’t quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on Reason that last mile, and we did not like to lose our support ?…… Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason.”
I would suggest that we face some strong cultural biases that continue to influence us and limit our reliance on our Higher Power. In the Christian religion, for instance, when was the last time you heard someone describe Jesus with the adjectives of smart or intelligent? Dallas Willard, a recently deceased professor of philosophy at USC, shocked the religious community when he referred to Jesus as “…the most intelligent man who ever lived.”
Many of us, myself included, stop at the water’s edge when prideful reliance on our own reasoning ability comes into conflict with relying on our Higher Power. My Higher Power might be indispensable in keeping me away from the first drink, but almost inconsequential in helping me to navigate the complicated waters of my own occupation, for instance. But the question is, how can I really turn my will and my life to a higher power whose intellect I value lower than my own, and whose input on weightier or complicated matters I almost treat as irrelevant?
God created us with fantastic reasoning ability, and he expects us to use it. But when we value His intelligence below our own, we enter the character defect of Pride and take over running the show again. We need to humbly ask God to remove this shortcoming and to daily make us aware of his superior intellect in all of our affairs.