Dancing with wisdom - chapter 6

As we try to get a handle on wisdom, it’s important to get past some of the myths and fallacies that can permeate our thinking and culture. For this reason, unlearning much of what our culture and society has taught us becomes as important as learning about wisdom. Wisdom is not the same as information, knowledge or even knowing what to do. The popular television shows asking contestants about obscure and often trivial facts are not testing wisdom. Nor do games such as the famous Trivial Pursuit, which tests a person’s knowledge of obscure information, have anything to do with wisdom. Instead, wisdom is the proper application of knowledge. Expressed another way, if science is organised knowledge, then wisdom is a truly organised life.

The first myth is that wisdom is only good, old-fashioned, plain common sense. I have to disagree. Common sense is certainly not just common practice; what appears to be obvious is often later either discredited or not followed through. Think, for example, about how easy it is for any of us to criticise our family about hot doing a certain household chore while at the same time excusing ourselves as we’re too tired or busy!

On a global level, every day we throw away more food in our homes, restaurants and supermarkets than it would take to feed the nearly one billion people who go hungry. We all know we should be able to love and respect one another, but that has not prevented centuries of ever increasing examples of global systemic racism, corruption, pollution, violence, war, inequality and injustice continuing to cause pain right across our world,

Then there is the knowledge-doing gap. It has been described as the greatest gap in the world. "To know and not do is not to know.' How often, if we are honest with ourselves, have we known what we should do but found ourselves unable or even unwilling to do it? True wisdom is knowing what should be done in 3 context or situation and actually following through and doing it. Not talking about it or thinking about it or even feeling positive about it, but actually doing it. It is not enough to have good intentions and feelings unless we are able to act upon them.

A second misconception is that wisdom comes with age and time. Many of us have a picture in our minds of a wise old man with a beard, Gandalf-like, imparting sage-like advice and insight about every challenge or predicament. Or maybe the Zen-like calm of Yoda from Star Wars, with his thousands of years of experience.

While wisdom certainly takes time to develop, simple observation shows it takes more than simply growing older to acquire more wisdom. It is sobering to realise that no one becomes wise by simply accumulating knowledge or information over time. Paradoxically while many people fail to become wise as they age: the nature of wisdom is that it is not possible to become wiser except through getting older over the passage of time. While wisdom comes from experience, it doesn’t necessarily follow that experience leads to wisdom. The distinction is that wisdom needs experience to be evaluated. It’s only when you reflect on what you thought would happen and compare that with what actually happened that you take the first steps along the path of wisdom.

The third myth is that by living in wisdom everything will go well according to our plans or ideas. There is no straight path of uninterrupted progress, accomplishment or success. (We’ll see something like that in the life of Job in the next chapter.) Wisdom is not about a problem-free or stress-free life with no mistakes, and it’s not about a life with no problems or difficulties. Nor is wisdom only for the super clever. I have been struck by how intelligence, in its common understanding of qualifications and academic knowledge, does not necessarily correlate with success and accomplishment in the outside world. There are numerous accounts of people who did well academically at school then struggled to get anywhere once they left the protection of the academic world. I am one of them. At the same time, there are also many stories of those who struggled at school and went on to become remarkably successful and fulfilled once they developed the rest of their lives. For them, Mark Twain’s 'I never let school interfere with my education,' rings true.

The opposite is also true. Being greatly successful in one area of life, for example business, politics or sports, does not mean necessarily that we are living our overall life in wisdom. Francis Chan once said, "Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter".!? One particularly sobering example is the tenth century BC Biblical character Solomon. You may recall from earlier that he has been described as one of the wisest men who ever lived. In the Book of Proverbs, largely written by himself, he wrote,

This exuberant praise of wisdom comes from a man with an annual income of more than $50 million in today’s terms! His father. King David, was regarded as the greatest king in Israel’s history. Solomon inherited a massive fortune from his father, He was also blessed by God at the start of his kingship. In the Bible (First Book of Kings ch3 v5-14) we read how God appeared to Solomon in a dream, He was probably only in his early teenage years when God offered him anything he wanted. Solomon’s response was one of genuine humility, He asked for 'a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong'.

God’s reply was one of extravagant generosity:

Yet, in spite of all his wealth and wisdom, Solomon made some very significant misjudgments and mistakes in his own life, leading to a tragic overall evaluation by God.

As an Israelite king, he would have been well aware of the instructions given to kings in the Book of Deuteronomy.

This included:

In spite of these clear instructions, Solomon failed to obey in three significant areas. First, in direct contradiction of being told to not go to Egypt to get horses for himself, he imported 12,000 of these animals (1 Kings 4:26 and 10:29). Horses were a sign of enormous opulence and wealth, like the limousines or private jets of today. Second, as if that wasn’t enough, he amassed vast amounts of silver and gold for himself from the treasuries of kings and provinces (Ecclesiastes 2:8). Third, he allowed himself to be enticed by many beautiful women who turned his heart astray (1 Kings 11:1-6).

For someone who started with so much promise and potential, that’s such a tragic way to end. The sad verdict on his life by God is of one who had done evil! (1 Kings 11:6).

My friend Howard Dayton has done an exhaustive study of all the characters in the Bible. Apparently, this amounts to 2,930 individuals. We know in detail about the lives of approximately 100. Of that 100, only about one-third finish well. Of the two-thirds whose lives do not finish well, most fail in the second half of life. Even with all the blessing and encouragement of God, it would seem easy to fall away and lose so much of what He has blessed us with.

If that is the case, why bother with wisdom at all? Because it will lead to enduring and lasting success. Wisdom is what will bring security to those nagging questions at the back of our minds which we mentioned earlier:

I think we would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would not want to have solid answers to every one of those questions. The challenge is that there are many different paths promising us ways to get there. We all have ideas and assumptions in our minds as to what the best way to get there would be. Although we like to think of ourselves as objective and rational, the reality is that we are much more driven by our emotions than by what we give ourselves credit for. Many centuries ago, theologian Thomas Cranmer expressed it as 'what the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies'. While walking in wisdom is about living life a day at a time, the bigger question is 'where are we heading?' What is the goal we are aiming for? In Western society, it tends to be a journey to find authenticity—to find our true self and express that as fully as we can. In many ways, that’s a good thing. However, the problem is that it attempts to place us at the centre of everything. We become the judge and arbiter of what is right—we’re the one who decides what wisdom is and what it is not. The reality is that wisdom cannot begin with us, It has to begin with a supernatural and infinite reference point—with God Himself. As I said earlier, this is not a God of our imagination or wishful thinking, but the God of the universe.

We need a map we can trust and rely on. It will come as no surprise that my conclusion is that the best foundation for a life map is the Biblical Scripture comprising the Old and the New Testaments. Based on this, I apply these ancient truths and principles to our modern lives.

The other distinction to make with wisdom is that it is not the same as moral goodness, It may be closely related, but it is not the same thing. There are indeed skills and principles linked to wisdom, but many aspects of wisdom are distinct from the sense of right and wrong. That wonderful source of insight The Book of Proverbs says:

Such proverbs indicate there isn’t necessarily a moral dimension to wisdom. Their insight is what is known as 'common grace', available to everyone regardless of what they believe about God.

Wisdom is also not simply a technique or formula for making the right decision in a complex situation. We looked earlier at how wisdom is the ability to unravel the complexities of life when the rules no longer seem to help.

As we go on this quest for wisdom and look at the examples of lives given to us in the Biblical Scriptures, it’s striking how full of imperfections and idiosyncrasies they are. They are disappointingly non-heroic. We have just seen that in the life of Solomon and there are countless other Biblical examples.

I remember how I realised this for the first time on my own spiritual quest in my late teens. Until then I had known religious leaders who appeared brave and courageous. The admonition, both direct and indirect, was to be exactly like them. Yet in my own heart I knew that I could never match up to who they were. I knew too well how much fear, worry, self-doubt, insecurity and cowardice lurked deep within me. Up to a point I could present a confident external mask, but inside I felt very different. It’s one of the reasons I lost so much hair in my teens!

Compare that to the characters in the Bible. Abraham, for example, is revered not only in the Christian faith but also by Jews and Muslims—​by over a billion people. Less talked about is that when Abraham escaped a famine travelling to Egypt with his wife Sarah, he lied to the Pharaoh about Sarah, claiming she was his sister.

Or Jacob, another widely revered historical figure. This is the same Jacob who cheated his brother out of his birthright and also deceived hs father. Moses committed murder and when chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery, he complained about his inadequacy. King David was guilty of adultery and then murder in order to cover up his wrongdoing. In the New Testament, the apostle Peter denied he knew Jesus not once but three times.

It is not their worthiness or merit that is striking. Rather it is, as Eugene Peterson puts it:

By directing our lives towards God, we become more alive and more human. Who would not want that? Yet we turn away. There’s something in our human nature that does not want to listen to or follow God’s direction. Even after following Christ for over thirty years, I can still see this inclination within me.

The truth is that we do our best to avoid God and would prefer to go our own way. C. S. Lewis picked up on this point around the time a Russian cosmonaut went into space and said he could find no sign of God. Lewis' perceptive response was that understanding how to seek God requires a level of thinking different to what we are ordinarily used to. The analogy he gives is that looking for God by exploring the vast universe is like reading all of Shakespeare’s plays in the hope of finding Shakespeare as one of the characters. What that means is that for God to exist, He would be related to the universe more as an author is related to a play than as one object in the universe is related to another. As the original Creator, He would have to be outside the order He had created. For this to be the case, how could we either reach him or even avoid Him?

Lewis’s reply is a perceptive and penetrating insight on our age:

The challenge for us in reading such a quote is it goes against the grain of what is popular thinking in general culture and the media—and that is essentially the same wherever you look in the world.

Much of popular thinking is often shallow and opposed to asking the questions that really matter. It requires deliberate effort and choice to decide how to think and look at life and the challenges before us.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Himself talks of a broad way that leads to destruction and a narrow way that leads to life. The broad way is the popular path that appears easy and relaxed, yet its destination is one of ultimate pain and disappointment. In contrast, the harder, less popular way of self-denial and personal discipline is the way that leads to ultimate life and abundance. It takes a concerted effort to stand aside from all that is going on around us to seek answers to the really important issues of life—​Why am I here, and Do I matter?

These questions become increasingly significant in a world rapidly changing in fundamental and important ways. Challenging our assumptions is essential if we are going to be grow in wisdom.