Wisdom is not cumulative. It is like manna… it needs to be acquired every day. Like the cross that must be carried and upon which we must daily die, so is wisdom. Knowledge is different. It can be amassed. Knowledge can be increased. Memory comes to play here. This is how we practically live our daily lives. It’s how we get to and from work without getting lost every day. It’s how science gathers data and attempts to apply it to practical living. Not wisdom. You can be wise today and make wise choices now, and wake up a complete fool and do incredibly stupid things tomorrow.
Perhaps this is why the Proverbs portray Wisdom as a person, in this case a female, some say the female persona of God, our Lover. Just as I don’t assume my lover’s love, neither can we assume wisdom will stick with us just because it has to. For me and Lisa to stay together takes daily commitment, work, energy and awareness. I can never assume our relationship. I must constantly die to myself for our love to live. So does she. So, love is death. Jesus demonstrated that.
As soon as our hearts or our minds get hard, then wisdom escapes us. If we would be wise, we must die.
Something I am thinking about blogging about tomorrow: how our righteous demands on people in the church actually betray our anxiety. We really don’t want people to change for their own good, but so that we don’t have to deal with the mess. Our demand for good behavior is actually our unwillingness or inability to love people who are different than we are or live differently than we do. Ya, I might write about that.
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Great insight!! I look forward to your next posting!
Smiles and Blessings!
mp:)
I hope you do write about that tomorrow. It is an interesting, yet complex subject.
“We really don’t want people to change for their own good, but so that we don’t have to deal with the mess. Our demand for good behavior is actually our unwillingness or inability to love people who are different than we are or live differently than we do.”
Yep.
Hagia Sophia… x
hmm, interesting. Will you get into what Paul said about the good that I know to do, I don’t do and vice versa? I am grappling with this at present – just because I know the right thing, and fully believe it, it sometimes doesn’t matter and I then go right ahead and do the stupid/sinful thing I am most trying to avoid. Aaarrgh, so frustrating this life sometimes.
I am not always a fan of Christian rhetoric but I like this blog. Very poetical. The contrast between knowledge and wisdom. Death and living.
My favorite line is “So, love is death.” so final and yet a new opening to something better and more fulfilling.
It reminded me of something Paul said “the letter kills, the spirit gives life.” I remember when I used to be a very “black and white” thinker or when I “lived by the letter.” I also remember how many bridges I burned and friends I have lost due to my arrogance. I felt I was the knowledgable person and therefore the most right person.
Wisdom is the spirit that gives life. It softens knowledge. Someone said to me once, “do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” I thought about that for a long time.
I choose to be happy. (happy being a word full of meaning for me, not just the temporal fleeting moment of a laugh or smile, but a life of contentment, joy and peace)
I have noticed that the people with the most correct doctrince spend more time defending their position, rather than defending other people’s basic human rights.
Wow!
Great post! Lots to think about.
Great comments too!
Loved the first part of the article.
Have a question about the second part. I think I agree with you. But, does God ask us to be holy because he doesnt want to deal with the mess?
Is it possible that we ask people to be holy because God did the same?
I like the line, “shoot them, and put them out of my misery.”
Yeah, right about that tomorrow….
I find much truth in what you say here, David, and am of the opinion, myself, that wisdom is indeed a “person”. James alludes to our need of greater wisdom than we, ourselves, possess. I care not if some would feminize the gender, but do grieve a bit when they refer to “Sophia” rather than just call a Holy Ghost a Holy Ghost and fail to see why most always want to take God’s gifts as personal properties instead of seeing them all incorporated with the Indwelling promised through conversion…..
love is death… love it! great thoughts on wisdom. VIVA SOPHIA!
wisdom is cumulative, at least Myles Horton, Paulo Fierie, and Parker Palmer think so. we had to read them for our educational ministries class. just posted a book review of Palmer’s book “To Know as We are Known” http://toothface.blogspot.com/2008/07/book-review-to-know-as-we-are-known-by.html
NP said: We really don’t want people to change for their own good, but so that we don’t have to deal with the mess.
————So says you. But you don’t speak for all the “we.” You sure do that a lot.
Our demand for good behavior is actually our unwillingness or inability to love people who are different than we are or live differently than we do.
———–What do you mean by “good behavior?”
———–What do you mean by “…who are different than we are?”
———–Somebody once wrote, “Teach them to obey everything I have commanded
you.”
fishon