Wisdom pleads its case

Recently, I’ve found my way back to the books of Scripture commonly referred to as the Wisdom Literature. And for good reason; the events of the past year have certainly cried loudly for a healthy dose of Biblical wisdom. The dangers inherent in an over politicized gospel and the desperate need for a common sense biblical application of truth make our return to the wisdom of God a much needed corrective for our disturbing times.

But more than that, the circumstances that surround life, its all- too- painful realities and its sudden if not unimaginable inequities that force themselves into our spaces, require me to return to the well traveled path of God’s book, even if its text is not always complete enough for me, or its God, transparent enough for me, It is my first and best hope of the peace with life and in life that I desperately crave.

Two seemingly unrelated circumstances are behind this. One is the sudden physical demise of a friend, whose only recently diagnosed cancer seems destined to overwhelm his body in a matter of weeks. If I needed but another reminder of the fragility and vapor-like nature of life, I need look no further than to him. And then, if only to highlight our lack of success with easy answers to life, death and circumstances, I just today encountered the words of Elizabeth Elliott’s biographer; who when recounting Ms Elliott’s first year of missionary service to the Colorados, a tribe of Ecuadorian native people, chronicles her year-long effort to produce a phonetic alphabet and thereby provide a link between the intricacies of their own language and what eventually was to become their own translation. The summation of a year’s work in the pursuit of this goal was loaded into a suitcase for safe keeping and committed to transport to the missionaries on the field, when in the course of its transfer was either lost or stolen, and with no copies, lost forever in the South American jungle.

With no easy answers forthcoming, Elliott was left with the questions we all ask, Why, what sense does it all make? Where is the value of that loss, unless, and this is a large leap for all of us, it is embedded in the sovereignty of God and His eternal purposes. This, according to biographer, Ellen Vaughn, was the foundational lesson of Liz Elliott, communicated through the first year of missionary service, that would shape her future and prepare her for the greater losses she would face in the untimely death of her husband, friend, lover, and companion, Jim Elliott.

If ever our culture needed wisdom, it is now, and if ever it needed the truth of God descend upon it, it is in our current culture of death, its quagmire of identity confusion, and its embattled futility of secular education in our schools.

The Wisdom Literature represents, as Derek Kidner has noted, a “distinctive voice” in a bland culture of sameness and simple mindedness. He writes,

There comes a point in the Old Testament when the pilgrim is free to stop and talk a long look around. He has had a well-marked path to follow, and still it stretches on ahead. But now he must relate it to the world at large, to the scene spread out on every side: from what lies right at his feet (shrewdly pointed out in Proverbs) to what is barely visible at the horizon– the dark riddle of how the world is governed (the book of Job) and how it should be valued (Ecclesiastes). ‘Now’ says his guide, ‘you see what sense it made to come the way we did–what false trails we avoided, what deathtraps!’ ‘All the same’, replies the pilgrim, ‘there is plenty that I don’t see; a lot that seems even wrong and pointless. Look at this, for instance… and this….’ In other words,, in the Wisdom books the tone of voice and even the speakers have changed. The blunt ‘Thou shalt’ or ‘shalt not’ of the Law, and the urgent ‘Thus saith the Lord’ of the Prophets, are joined now by the cooler comments of the teacher and the often anguished questions of the learner. Where the bulk of the Old Testament calls us simply to obey and to believe, this part of it (chiefly the books we have mentioned, although wisdom is a threat that runs through every part) summons us to think hard as well as humbly; to keep our eyes open, to us our conscience and our common sense, and not to shirt the most disturbing questions.

( Kidner, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, pg. 11)

Did you catch the end of his thought? … This part of it… summons us to think hard as well as humbly; to keep our eyes open, to our our conscience and our common sense, and not to shrink from the most disturbing questions. It is through this cultivation of wisdom that we make sense of the world; if not always through “the sermon”, which is generally a one-way flow of information, it is in the lessons where asking and answering become the tools for working thing out painfully, even it at times we still come away with many of our questions unanswered and many of our burdens unresolved on this side of heaven.

So, can I persuade you to discover the wisdom of God? It’s found rather nicely positioned in the middle of your Bible, and identified by the titles of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. It’s likely you’ll come away confounded but wiser for your effort and now attending a greater appreciation for God, who continues to love us unconditionally and a Savior who has promised to meet our every need, if not presently in our earthly bodies, yet perfectly in our heavenly state.

Until we meet again,

MJC