Man relies on his own wisdom all the time. From the moment Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, man started craving wisdom. Paul says in Romans 1:21-23, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
When you rely on your own wisdom, your thinking will become futile. These verses say that your heart can even become darkened when you rely on your wisdom instead of God’s. The people that Paul describes even claim to be wise while being fools all along. Anyone who thinks he is wiser than the Lord is incredibly mistaken. He says these people exchanged the glory of God for human (man-made) images.
We do this all the time in society. We exchange the truth of God and His glory for man-made pleasures, for a lie. Sometimes we even do this on a daily basis when we trust ourselves and our own wisdom over the Lord.