Do we associate wisdom with Confucius or Buddha rather than with Jesus and Paul?
If so, we might miss the significance of what Solomon recommends when he writes, “Happy is the person who finds wisdom and gains understanding. For the profit of wisdom is better than silver, and her wages are better than gold. Wisdom is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her” (Prov 3:13-15).
Even if we come to know Jesus as the personification of wisdom, who can say that accepting him automatically makes us good or wise (even though he declares us so)? Christ himself acknowledged that the citizens of the world are often wiser in what they are trying to do than the citizens of heaven are in what they are trying to accomplish (Luke 16:8).
If wisdom, by definition, is the ability to use knowledge to reach a desired goal, then examples of knowledge without wisdom are not hard to find in:
- Controlling or passive husbands
- Angry or mindlessly submissive wives
- Spiritual leaders who lord it over their “flocks”
- Congregations who place unreasonable expectations on their leaders
- A failure to plan for the future while waiting for the return of Jesus
- Partisan political wrangling where everyone talks without listening
Maybe I’m writing this because I’ve made all of the mistakes. Am a wanna be follower of Christ who all too often acts as dumb as an animal. More than I like to admit, I can identify with Agur, the author of the 30th chapter of Proverbs who writes, “Surely I am more stupid than any man, And do not have the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom nor have knowledge of the Holy One.”
Admittedly, wisdom helps us see what we don’t know. Maybe that was part of what was happening to Agur. After all, he wasn’t as foolish as he apparently felt. He went on to ask for something better than gold when he prayed, “O God, I beg two favors from you before I die. First, help me never to tell a lie. Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name” (Prov 30:7-9 NLT).
The book, and eventually the Jesus who gives us such insight are really neither East or West. They come from “the land in between”– the region of the Middle East, which is like an ancient land bridge between Eastern and Western cultures. Just as importantly, the New Testament has more emphasis on wisdom, and the Old Testament has more emphasis on knowledge, than we might think.
Together they leave us with the conclusion that we need knowledge/truth as we need light… and wisdom as we need love. Maybe that’s why the New Testament author James emphasizes how ready God is to give wisdom to those who want to do the will of God (James 1:5)… and why he goes on to carefully and methodically describe what Christ-filled, relational wisdom looks like.
According to James, wisdom is recognizable. It is “pure (i.e. good and loving in motive), then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield (to reason and the truth), full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy” (James 3:15,16).
Why do we so desperately need such wisdom? Because in our present broken state, where everyone, every relationship, and everything around us tends to break and deteriorate, declaring how things ought to and should be– may involve knowledge– but not the wisdom that is needed.
What is called for is the kind of wise heart that James describes in every area of our brokenness. It is the kind of wisdom that requires us to ask God’s help– by inviting the Spirit of Jesus to help us listen to the motives of our own heart…to listen to the words and hearts of one another, and to listen even more carefully to the words and heart of our God– before jumping to our ready made conclusions…
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