Holding onto Wisdom

Here, in week 3, we find Wisdom personified. She cries out in the streets, pleading for us to listen, but we turn away time and again. Doesn’t she sound so over it? Can you blame her? The personification of Wisdom is a rich treasure from the Old Testament literature. Here in Proverbs, we have Wisdom personified at the bookends: (1:20-33 and 31:10-31). Elsewhere in the apocryphal literature, the wisdom of God is given even more direct agency in acts like the creation of the world. The common takeaway here is that wisdom in itself is given intrinsic value, much like love from the first passage in our series. Our authors do not wait to see if advice is good before lifting it up. They don’t wait to see who comes out on top in work, school, or business dealings to decide whether wisdom- or love- is worth listening to. Wisdom is just plain good.

In the desperate cry of Wisdom from Proverbs 1, we find a fascinating exercise of justice. Wisdom has gotten a little bit sassy here, especially in verses 25-26. She has given us all the second and third chances she can stomach for now, so it’s time we feel the consequences of our ignorance. We should feel a need for wisdom that goes beyond “because she said so.” I know, I hear myself, this doesn’t sound very Christian of me… Where are Jesus and Peter and the commandment to forgive my neighbor seven times seventy times? They’re still with us, but we must be careful not to confuse the call to wisdom with the call to holy living. They are related but not the same.

There is a certain freedom that comes to Christian discipleship when we let down our guards enough to be honest with God and ourselves. Sometimes, we ought to tell God that it’s totally fair for us to eat the consequences. When we do this, we aren’t neglecting the seven times seventy occasions of forgiveness; we are actually placing even more confidence in those words of Jesus than we otherwise were. When we dare to be honest with God and ourselves, we recognize that our actions have consequences, but grace has the last word. But even better than this, wisdom and grace together make possible our sanctification. Wisdom might get frustrated with us, but she is a faithful friend. In next week’s passage, we will find numerous examples of how Wisdom herself has been with us all along, paving the way for our good lives. The warnings she offers against being simple, hating knowledge, and scoffing are mission-critical, but she needs us to understand that for ourselves. Ancient philosophical thought is riddled with expressions of this idea. Lovers of wisdom have always held to the belief that doing thoughtful good is much better than mindless or reluctant observance of instruction.

I’ve been drawing on navigational images for the last few weeks to offer suggestions about what Wisdom Literature might do for us. In this passage, I think Wisdom is begging us not to forget how to use a compass. She knows we need turn-by-turn directions sometimes, but she also knows that the inability to discern north from south is disastrous. When she says she will mock our calamity after our years of ignorance, she’s telling us that she dares to be the shotgun passenger who says, “I told you so,” when we get ten miles into a neighboring state before realizing we’re headed in the wrong direction.

I enjoy the opportunity to comment on this imagery because I, Tripp, am blind. When I was younger, I had a little bit of sight, and I’ve actually remained quite a visual thinker in my years of blindness. I learned from a young age that it was much more important to learn the layout of an environment and picture it from an aerial view than to memorize countless unique routes between points A and B, B and D, C and E, and so on. For this strange reason, I actually adore the infamous Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The terminals are consistently and intuitively designed so that observant passengers can know where they are. If you depend exclusively on overhead signs to point you in the right direction, you will be immensely frustrated. But if you learn the designs and distinguish north from south, you’ll have wisdom that’s useful in any situation. This is what Wisdom is begging of us. “Don’t just wait for me to tell you what to do,” she says, “Watch how I do it, trust in my helpfulness, keep your eyes and ears peeled for my signals. Then you’ll have a clearer view of the world around you.”

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Rev. Tripp Gulledge is a provisional elder in the Alabama—West Florida conference and a pastoral resident at Highland Park UMC in Dallas, TX. He graduated from Perkins School of Theology with highest honor in May 2023.