What’s Your Wisdom Story?

“Wisdom wasn’t part of my family’s talk. We’d seasonally sing of Christmas wise men, but we’d never imagine biblical sages as mentors for living.”

Moreover, my generation echoed this wisdom absence within my family (or was it the other way around?). An occasional children’s tale might lament the “old city of wisdom” in disrepair with “no one to set it right.” (The Phantom Tollbooth)

But wisdom repair rarely surfaced in our songs, shows, schools, or workplaces, and nothing within my heart considered these wisdom deficits problematic.

My Papaw would say, “Don’t get too big for your britches.” Kansas sang a hit song from Ecclesiastes. But like lint in my pocket, if wisdom traveled with me, I didn’t know it.

In my youth, the hero of our cultural story was knowledge produced factually, quickly, efficiently, and productively, not wisdom. The truth is:

“Wisdom has, on the whole, not had an easy time in recent centuries in the West. It has often been associated with old people, the premodern, tradition, and conservatism in a culture of youth, modernization, innovation and risky exploration.” —David F. Ford

A Wisdom Absence in Church

My church experiences mirrored this “uneasy time” within my family and culture.

Preachers were prophets, not sages. If someone said, “A sermon is a wisdom text,” we’d say, “Huh?” We didn’t ponder Jesus’s description of his communicators as “prophets and wise men . . .” (Matt. 23:34)

• Theologically, Jesus wonderfully fulfilled Old Testament offices of prophet, priest, and king, but one greater than Solomon (Matt. 12:42), the fulfillment of wisdom, and wisdom itself (I Cor. 1:30; Col. 2:3) wasn’t taught.

• In our apologetics, we answered doubts like the problem of evil by debating Epicurus’ syllogism, seemingly unaware that Jesus addressed this anguished question with a wisdom story. “Once upon a time, there was a farmer” (Matt. 13:24-30).

• I tasted Jesus’s “wisdom of the cross,” knowing him as the savior of my sins, Lord of my life, and friend for my loneliness. But not as creator, sustainer, and pre-eminent expert regarding every piece of reality, seen and unseen, anywhere, any time (Col. 1:15-17).

The result is that a whole batch of us read the Bible, created art, did our work, made decisions, managed time, cultivated relationships, and answered cultural questions as a people severely undernourished by the Bible’s Wisdom Literature (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom Psalms), with little thought of the Bible as wisdom literature, and with no daily awareness of Jesus as our wisdom.

Having to Admit I Am a Fool

This meant I was able to become a ministry leader with no one crying out:

Get wisdom, nothing you desire can compare to her . . . Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have . . . (Prov. 3:13-18; 4:7; 16:16, NIV)

The absence of this kind of talk and training meant I was shocked the first time I read the African church father, Augustine. In his Enchiridion, he said any Christian aspiring to faith, hope, and love must become wise.

Sadly, I was years into my life and ministry before I ever cried out.

I

am

a

fool.

I lay on the floor, heaving beneath shelves of Jesus books, behind a desk on which an engraved ordination gift announced my job and name, “Pastor Zack.”

But being Christian and spiritually gifted doesn’t make one wise, and I hope you’re beginning to see I’m not just talking about me, but perhaps about you.

“What would it mean about the conditions of our living rooms, workplaces, worship spaces, neighborhoods, and media platforms if most Christians today are engaging family, church, and culture out of a wisdom deficit and all the while blind to it?”

Why Repairing Our Wisdom Story Matters

For example, glance at five basic life environments.

1. Personal Life: how you relate to your body and soul

2. Family/Friends Life: including being parented, single, married, or parenting others, along with births, deaths, holidays, disagreements, and celebrations.

3. Work Life: how you relate to my aspirations, skills, education, role, colleagues, bosses, effort, rest, ambition, and money

4. Neighborhood Life: how you relate to strangers, foreigners, other religions, national tragedies, cultural movements, philosophies, laws, hard questions, and the physical environments of beauty and artistry in God’s creation

5. Congregational life: how you relate to worship, worship spaces, church people, church teachings, and its leaders

“Biblical wisdom teaches students to discern that being wiser in one area of life doesn’t mean we’re wise in all areas of our lives.”

For example, a skilled pastor wise with the Bible (church life) can simultaneously prove naïve with women (personal/family/friendship life), foolish with fellow workers (work-life), and a scoffer with other-than-Christian people (neighborhood life). Or a parent is wise with co-workers and neighbors but foolish with children and naïve in marriage.

Could the wisdom deficit in our familial, ecclesial, and cultural stories help explain why scenarios like these still shock us?

What if Sages Aren’t Our Kind of People?

 As for me, and I’m not alone in this, I’ve had to admit that biblical sages simply haven’t been my kind of people.

• A biblical sage finds it no waste of time to orient her gaze toward a star; to stare hours at ants, a field, a lily, or a bird, as if created things can teach us God-given truths.

• A biblical sage believes that God prizes truth and equity and that falsehood, injustice, and evil exist.

• A biblical sage will quote what is true and good, regardless of who said it. They’ll light up the dark with their candle even if a fool provides the match.

• A biblical sage often speaks with first-hand experience from inside the way things are. They say things like: “Come let us get drunk with love,” or “I hated life.” They talk about pain like those who howl and vomit. They talk about beauty as those ravaged by pleasure or who wish they could be.

• Not all loves are wise. A person can believe rightly and act skillfully while naïve at home, foolish with workers, and a scoffer in the neighborhood.

• We locate the wise not by recognizing those who say the most accurate sentences doctrinally, as important as true sentences are, but by noticing whether one’s way of relating to emotions, people, seasons, hardships, joys, and God corresponds to wisdom from “below” or “above.”

• Biblical sages believe saying “There’s no one path” reveals one path chosen.

Wisdom isn’t just a worldview but also a skill set. Not just a skill set but a manner of relating. Not just a manner of relating but one kind of craving in contrast to others.

“Ultimately, when we ask for wisdom, we ask for a person. His name is Jesus. He is our worldview, skill set, manner of relating, and craving.”

What About Your Wisdom Story?

By “wisdom story,” I simply mean your experiences with wisdom. The minor, major, or absent roles the wisdom of Jesus and the biblical sages who foreshadowed him have played in the scenes of your life.

Consider your family, the artistry, media, and talk of your generation, or your experience with school, church, or work.

Think of each life environment. In which ones do you experience greater or lesser wisdom?

 If, like me, you’ve not grown up as a child of wisdom, take heart. Wisdom’s house has set a table and says:

Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who lacks sense, Come, eat of my bread . . . (Prov. 9)

This post is a modified excerpt from Zack’s forthcoming book, Wiser with Jesus, to be published by Christian Focus.