Wither Wisdom?

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Tuesday, February 08, 2005
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This week, I'll be speaking at chapel services for a local classical school. My topic is wisdom. This is one of the themes I tackle every summer at Worldview Academy and it gets harder and harder all the time. Why? Because of the futility. And no, I'm not talking about the theme of profound futility that runs like a thread through the book of Ecclesiastes. This is the garden variety, the brand of futility that comes from packing an inexhaustible topic into an hour-long lecture that I, as something less than a wise man, am not qualified to deliver in the first place. It also comes from the knowledge that my audience of high school students has been coached in all the latest fads for discerning and divining the will of God, without the subject of wisdom coming much into play.

According to James 1:5, "If any [man] lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." My natural response to this is to ask, "Oh really?" Because if God is really so generous with it, you would expect us to live in an Age of Wisdom. When I look around, I don't see that at all. The caveat comes in verse 6: "But let him ask in faith, with no doubting..." To be honest, though, I don't think the reason we are starved for reason is lack of faith. It is simpler than that. I believe it stems from lack of asking.

The pursuit of wisdom, because it offers no immediate gratification and is not susceptible to systematization, has fallen on hard times. I've written on the subject of wisdom myself, both here and in my forthcoming book, and it's a frustrating prospect. You cannot reduce wisdom to a set of principles or life habits. It is far too complex and, to be frank, subjective. It requires that elusive quality: judgment. No classroom can teach it, no book can impart it. In the masthead of his excellent blog, Gideon Strauss quotes Calvin Seerveld to this effect: "You cannot teach wisdom, I believe, but wisdom is contagious; you can catch it." Time, experience and exposure to the thing itself are what will make a young man wise. Chapel lectures don't have a prayer.

What I hope to do is not to make students wise, but to encourage them in the pursuit of wisdom. In the time I have I try to sketch the attractions of wisdom. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom and folly are compared to archetypes of the feminine: the good girl and the bad. Folly is easy. She makes herself available. She throws herself at you and tells you the things you want to hear. And in the end, she's worth the effort it took to get her. Wisdom is different. She must be courted. When you see wisdom as "the principal thing," your own shortcomings come into focus. Like a lover longing for his beloved, you sense your inadequacy and yearn to become a better man than you are. You come to value the thing that can only be had through discipline and pursuit, the thing that must be earned.

In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul describes Christ as "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (v. 24). Those fascinating words have led me to see the pursuit of wisdom as an aspect of sanctification. In pursuing wisdom, we pursue Christ. I think some times that it is the way to pursue sanctification, if only because it is such a neglected one. The disciplines of piety, as important as they are, must be tempered by the disciplines of wisdom. It's easy to lose that sometimes when you're bogged down in the middle of Proverbs, probing the depths of an opaque saying. When you step back, though, the pattern is obvious.

Years ago as a child, I prayed for wisdom. I did it with faith, and I believe that God has been generous with me -- certainly more open-handed than I deserved. Still, I feel the vacuum of wisdom (in my own life and in the world around me) deeply, and hope that in some small way these words and the ones I utter this week in that chapel service will help to redress the balance.