Wisdom from Above

Have you ever been in one of those situations when the key to unlocking the problem lay one step beyond your own understanding? One of those times when you’ve laid awake at night waiting for the answer to fall from heaven and woken the next day only to discover that you’d eventually fallen to sleep from mental exhaustion before the answer came. I’ve had a few of those times over the years and I guess I’m not alone.

To many people wisdom is a quality that lies one step beyond knowledge, leaving us with an expectation that its accumulation will at some point deliver the wisdom we need. But what if that’s not the case and wisdom is something completely different to knowledge? I came to think about this after reading the letter of James in the New Testament. He writes, ‘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’. Wisdom, it appears is very different to knowledge.

Knowledge has the ability to educate but not necessarily enlighten hence the reason we often feel in the dark. We live without the lights on.

In brief, the danger with knowledge is that it leads to power and power is not the vehicle through which wisdom is delivered. Knowledge causes us to believe we are invincible, it is a form of power that elevates us to a platform from where we are removed from the very thing that wisdom delivers.

Wisdom on other hand starts in the opposite corner and displays a much greater vulnerability. Take Solomon as an example. He writes that the ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’; and that from a man to whom the cleverest and wealthiest were drawn in droves since he had accumulated so much understanding and exorbitant wealth. Yet at heart, he understood that wisdom is a perspective on the world that falls outside of human ability. Wisdom lies in the hands of the mystics not the educators. It comes from the lips of those who’ve abandoned the power that education brings to those amongst us who’ve contemplated long enough over lives problems to give the alternative view. According to the Bible there is only one pathway to such wisdom and it’s called humility. The two go hand in hand.

As we walk through life we do need a wisdom that will help to direct our paths. In considering again James’s letter, we see it’s not delivered as a formula like ‘James top ten tips to being wise’. Rather it’s shown to be a journey into which the characteristics of wisdom are drawn. He writes, ‘But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.’ It’s almost as if James is saying, take these things into your life, live by their qualities and allow them to shape your thoughts and values and from there you will possess wisdom since wisdom is not the answer to a problem, it’s a way of live that is guided by the values of a different kingdom.

This is the kingdom of God and might I be so bold as to say, whenever you encounter those values, you do in fact encounter God’s grace in it’s various forms, so for those of us aspiring to greater wisdom, therein lies a challenge to be getting on with.