Wisdom Calls: A Meditation on Proverbs 9

As I think back across the decades of my adult life, I have difficulty remembering how often any regular conversation has touched upon the subject of wisdom.  Outside churchly circles, the subjects of knowledge, study, facts and data often emerge in the course of discussing any number of things, but wisdom is almost never discussed.  While knowledge can be tied to understanding or knowing specific things (mathematics, engineering, elements of a data set, the temperature at sunrise, the biological systems in a pond, etc.,) wisdom infers the principles which assign value to those things which are known.  For example, it is one thing to discuss how to perform genetic modifications to corn plants, though the methods may be complex—but it is an entirely different thing to discuss why we should or should not genetically modify corn in any given time or place.  Knowledge speaks to the data and the processes, while wisdom speaks to the moral value or character of what we do with those data or processes.  Just as a person may have knowledge how to kill his neighbor, wisdom informs him of the moral consequences of doing so.

Given that distinction, it’s no wonder that wisdom is little discussed in our time and place.  We live in a culture that has embraced moral ambiguity for the express intent of living with very few boundaries.  Hence our schools teach “Sex Education” to elementary through college students, in greater or lesser detail explaining the “what” and “how” of sexual expresion, with very little to say about the moral value of the act.  Our businesses teach “Ethics” courses that describe various actions or processes as either acceptable or unacceptable, but are largely incapable of discussing why one action is ethically superior to another.  The evening news can describe how Planned Parenthood manipulates abortions so as to harvest the most marketable body parts of infants for bio-medical research, but cannot speak to the moral value of such grisly business.  Journalists and activists can describe the event of a police officer firing on a criminal, but cannot seem to find rational basis for moral judgment of the participants.  From business to politics to education, and countless areas in between, wisdom has been displaced by an emaciated form of knowledge, resulting in (or from) a public aversion to declarations of moral value.

Into this morass of knowledge without value, we have poured all our excuses for the sins we wish to remain unchallenged.  If we wish to live hedonistically, pridefully, selfishly, lavishly, greedily, violently, perversely, or simply to follow our own heart’s desires, we find plenty of room and license in a world without wisdom.  I can study the science of money and wealth, without pondering the moral imperatives of caring for the poor; I can study a dizzying array of sexual expression, without contemplating the moral imperatives of natural law in the created order; I can study Machiavellian processes of politics and power, without being troubled by the moral imperative to care for my fellow man; I can study physics, chemistry, and medicine without regard for the moral imperatives to help the world rather than harm it; I can study ways to make myself better, without any consideration of the moral imperative to love my neighbor as myself; I can study to aggregate more titles, honors, and peacockery to myself, while forgetting any moral imperative to humility and service before self.  These, and a countless myriad of variations, show why we naturally flee from wisdom.  We enjoy the vacuum created by its absence, so that we might fill it with our own sinful lusts.

To us, the willfully ignorant and the self absorbed, Wisdom continues to call:

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out

her seven pillars: She hath killed her beasts; she hath

mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table.

She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest

places of the city:  Whoso is simple, let him turn in

hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to

him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine

which I have mingled.  Forsake the foolish, and live;

and go in the way of understanding.

He that reproveth

a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a

wicked man getteth himself a blot. Reprove not a

scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will

love thee.  Give instruction to a wise man, and he

will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in

learning.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of

wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years

of thy life shall be increased.  If thou be wise, thou

shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone

shalt bear it.

He who is all Wisdom and Knowledge, calls to the darkest and hardest human heart.  He urges us to turn from the ways of death and destruction, and lodge where He has prepared a place for us in His boundless mercy.  Through His Only Begotten Son, His very Word and Wisdom made flesh, He has paid the penalty for our ways of death through His death upon the Cross, and thereby restored the path of unity between God and man.  Through this Vicarious Atonement, Jesus has built His House which is His Holy Church, in which He daily and freely gives forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who will repent and believe this good news.

But like a divine law of nature written into the fabric of all existence, Wisdom still speaks of the two great paths open to all mankind, and the inexorable ends of each.  He sends His Word into all the world, calling all people to faith and repentance, and shining forth the brilliant light of Wisdom’s Law and Gospel into the comfortable darkness of our hearts.  To each and every soul He calls, urging all to receive His free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, and to turn away from the path of death.  Though He desires all men to be saved, He bears witness that rejecting Him and returning to the ways of death, can only result in death and hell forever.

And so, He calls to you today.  Wisdom has built her house of salvation by the shed blood of the Son of God, with Jesus Himself as the Chief Corner Stone.  Hear Wisdom’s Word of love and grace to you, o dearly beloved sinner, that you may turn from death to life.  Come, enter Wisdom’s house by faith, where meaning and truth and value are restored to your life, that you may abide by His grace in house of the Lord forever.  Amen.