Crystallized Intelligence

18 July 2026  Micah 2:1-5

“In the morning light they accomplish it, when it lies within their power.”  

(Micah 2:1) 

It is tempting to think that the people who were committing the crimes Micah describes, the coveting and seizing of fields, the cheating and taking of inheritances, were older men, the kind who have risen to power and rule massive criminal organizations. It is far more likely that they were young.

According to Arthur Brooks, the majority of Nobel Prize winners in the hard sciences did the research and made the discoveries that won them their prizes when they were in their 20s and 30s.

But then there is also crystallized intelligence, the ability to put large amounts of acquired knowledge into an even larger context, and describe what it all means. Crystallized intelligence often doesn’t begin to appear until your 40s and 50s, and often peaks in our 60s, 70s, even 80s.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, was a billionaire at 31. Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Herman Melville wrote the books that made them famous before they turned 35. Even the most accomplished criminals hit their peak as young men – Al Capone became boss of Chicago at 26, Lucky Luciano took over the New York mob and formed the Commission at 34, Adolph Hitler wrote Mein Kampf at the same age. Brooks says that by their early 40s the overwhelming majority of people have passed their creative peak, and have accomplished most of the things they will ever accomplish (From Strength to Strength, pp. 1-16). So, if you’re looking for the “influencers” in Micah who were finding creative ways to steal the livelihoods of unsuspecting people, you’ll find them in the same age group as today – 25-34 year olds; “In the morning light they accomplish it, when it lies within their power” (Micah 2:1)

British psychologist Raymond Cattell identifies two types of intelligence. The first he calls fluid intelligence, defined as the ability to think flexibly and solve novel problems. It is the native intelligence of the gifted young. They learn fast, focus hard on what matters, and come up with solutions that sometimes change the world. The problem with fluid intelligence, however, is that we can’t sustain it as we age. But then there is also crystallized intelligence, the ability to put large amounts of acquired knowledge into an even larger context, and describe what it all means. Crystallized intelligence often doesn’t begin to appear until your 40s and 50s, and often peaks in our 60s, 70s, even 80s. Call it wisdom (see Brooks, op. cit., pp. 23-41).

Who is training the fluid intelligence of the gifted young? Many public school systems have pension plans that push teachers out when they are in their early 50s, right when they are starting to become wise. Many churches complain that there are so many gray heads in their pews, and fail to ask those gray heads what they have learned along the way, how what they know, what they read, and what they pray makes sense of the world. Intense pressure over long stretches of time is heavy and hot, but it also creates gems that too many churches neither value, nor seek.

We are living at a time when many of the gifted young are beginning to suspect that their fluid intelligence, powerful and creative as it is, is not enough, and are seeking the crystallized treasures that they were once taught by fellow influencers were a waste of time. In 2016 the Royal Society of London held a conference called New Trends in Evolutionary Biology, Philosophical and Social Science Perspectives. It was held because the best science today is aware that materialist explanations for the emergence of sentient life on earth have proven insufficient – the math simply doesn’t work. So they’re broadening the conversation to include older perspectives, once scornfully dismissed: “Tell us again what philosophy and religion say.”

Crystallized intelligence. Churches should take the hint.