On Wisdom

This semester I was invited to write a devotional meditation that could be used by our students as a part of a spiritual formation week. The topic I was assigned was wisdom. 

Below is what I shared with the students.

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Let’s start with sex. And we might as well throw in smoking weed and drinking.

As a professor, students frequently approach me with questions about sex and drug/alcohol use. The questions are always framed like this: “Is this behavior right or wrong?”

My answer to that question has been: “Rather than ‘right or wrong’ the better question would be: Is this wise or foolish?”

In the Old Testament wisdom is the art of living well. Life has a logic to it. Your choices today set you on a path, point you toward a goal, bring you to a destination. Wisdom is forecasting: Where is my life headed? In one year? Four years? Ten years? Fifty years?

When students ask me about sex or drug/alcohol use I want them to forecast their lives. Look at your sexual behavior, honestly, and tell me, long term, where are you going to end up? Where are your choices taking you? Same with drug/alcohol use. Wise people ponder such questions and make their choices accordingly. As I shared with my college-age sons this summer: “Everyone gets to where they are going.”

The reason for this, as I said, is that life has a “logic” to it. Like gravity, wisdom is embedded into the fabric of the universe. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom is personified and declares:

“The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.” (Proverbs 8: 22-23)

Wisdom is the “grain of the universe,” the moral logic God has built into creation. Follow this grain, live wisely, and life goes smoothly. Go against the grain and you’ll cut and wound yourself. As Wisdom goes on to say in Proverb 8:

“Now then, my children, listen to me;
blessed are those who keep my ways.
Listen to my instruction and be wise;
do not disregard it.
For those who find me find life
and receive favor from the Lord.
But those who fail to find me harm themselves.” (Proverbs 8: 32-33, 35-36a)

It’s a serious question: Are you harming yourself with the choices you’ve been making?

In the New Testament, Wisdom becomes identified with Jesus, the Logos or Word who creates and becomes the moral grain of the universe:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1-3)

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created…All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1.15-17)

The moral logic of creation becomes visible to us in the life of Jesus. Jesus is wisdom incarnate, wisdom in the flesh. To live wisely, to follow the grain of the universe, is to imitate Jesus. This changes how we might think about questions of “right versus wrong.” Is it “wrong” to build a house out of marshmallows? Well, not exactly. But it is foolish. The same goes for how you build your life. As Jesus says at the end of the Sermon on the Mount:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

Life is full of storms. You might be in a storm right now. Look at the choices you are making. Are you building wisely? Because you will get to where you are going.