When you last had to make an important decision in life, what did you pray for?
Probably many of us would ask for God clearly to reveal his best plans for us and our future. Others might ask for the ability to weigh up the pros and cons, so as to be able to come to a good decision. In fact, most of the choices we have to make reflect a combination of the two – God’s revelation and our thinking. The two belong together.
What we are actually asking for is wisdom, which seems to be quite a rare commodity these days, even in Christian circles. But it is a primary concern and quest for the Bible writers. When there is a moral choice between right and wrong, where the Bible clearly teaches the mind of God, we don’t need wisdom. What we ought to do is clear. No amount of praying or discussing will change that. Either we obey God’s Word of truth, or we reject it, and both courses of action will produce their own consequences.
Wisdom from above
But many of our decisions are not morally right or wrong. Instead, the choice lies between two equally acceptable pathways, which means that the call we have to make is between what is wise and what is foolish. Indeed, all of the choices of life which are not covered by the explicit commands or prohibitions of Scripture fall into that category.
There are two Biblical strands here which we need to consider. The first is that God himself is the author and giver of wisdom. ‘For the LORD gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding’ (Proverbs 2.6). This tells us that the divine wisdom is conveyed in the Lord’s speech, which takes us, of course, to the Scriptures as the source of all the insight we need. James 3.17 refers to this as ‘the wisdom that comes from heaven’. This does not mean that the Bible is a sort of spiritual ‘Ask Jeeves’ from which we can read off the answers we may be seeking to the specific dilemmas of our lives in the 21st century. Rather, the verse in James provides us with a context by which we can assess whether a particular decision will embody and reflect the characteristics of the Lord’s wisdom. The verse continues that such wisdom is ‘first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere’. Will my choice illustrate this sort of divine wisdom, or is it rather indicative of the earthly, unspir-itual ‘wisdom’, which James says is of the devil? ‘For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice’ (James 3.16).
More like Jesus
The other strand focuses not so much on the content of the wisdom we seek as on the character of the person seeking it. Christians should be passionately concerned to be wise people. ‘Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom’ (v.13). This is a facet of our growing into the likeness of Christ, as his disciples; a particular and vital aspect of our sanctification. And the emphasis is not on becoming a Christian ‘know-all’, with all the right answers for ourselves and everyone else within range, but on humble, grateful submission to Christ and his priorities. Wisdom wants to be more and more like Jesus.
Jesus the sage
We are accustomed to think of Jesus in terms of his perfect and total fulfilment of the Old Testament offices of prophet, priest and king. Perhaps we ought also to add to these his perfect embodiment of the wise man, or sage, of the Scriptures. Behind his magnificent teaching stands the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament (books like Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes) where the wise man not only speaks God’s truth, which is wisdom, but also exemplifies it, in life and character. Because such wisdom governs the whole of our human experience, its content is ultimately dependent on the nature of the gods men worship, the idols we serve. There is no division between the sacred and the secular, either in the Bible’s concept of human nature, or in its analysis of human folly.
This explains why good Christian people can make so many mistakes in life. If we argue that we will take a certain course of action because the Bible doesn’t say it is wrong, we need immediately to stop and ask also whether the Bible would call it wise. What will it lead to? What sort of character will it tend to produce in us? How does it reflect on the nature of the God whom we say we are serving? When people lament the lack of wise leadership in our country, they are simply noting the effects upon our community of what it worships in its obsessive quest for personal pleasure and fulfilment. The gods we serve will inevitably condition our definition of wisdom.
If we Christians compromise our bottom-line values in life with those of our culture, we must not be surprised when confusion and folly become our experience. We will be wise to march to a different drum-beat.
