The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Be careful how you live: not as unwise people but as wise.These days are confusing and present temptations all around, so don’t be foolish, learn the ways of the Lord.
What exactly is wisdom, as we see it unfold in Scripture? The first thing we see is that wisdom has to do with being able to see the whole of creation that God made - made up of course of so many parts spread across time - and how to orchestrate each of those parts of the created world - people, animals, time, the physical environment we have - to achieve the goal God has of being in perfect relationship with all the parts of his design. Wisdom is also different from knowledge. Wisdom includes having the power to know how to move each of those parts to achieve one’s desired goal. We can think of God responding to Job’s inquiry as to why he is suffering. Job has no idea that God is overthrowing the arrogance of the devil who thinks he can ultimately destroy humanity by getting people to turn from God.
God knows better what he is doing and says to Job: “were you there when I created the world, were you there when I designed all its bits?” Of course, we are aware that Job cannot see what God is doing with Satan just as so often we are as blind as Job himself. God says to Job instead: “do not try to judge as if you’ve made the world because you do not have my wisdom. Instead, taste the Word of God. That is, dwell on the Word of God. Let it nourish your body, form your thoughts, your responses, and quell your suffering and your fear. In this way, you’ll be taken up as part of God’s orchestrating power, to find relief and comfort even in your trials.” This is of course something reiterated by Paul; "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and untraceable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has ever first given to Him, and has to be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen." (Rom. 11:33-36)
What Paul is saying is that God's wisdom is something you and I cannot obtain. We can’t plumb the depths of God and so we cannot stand in his place to judge one another. We can only enter into his embrace so we can learn to be a part of his gathering love, especially when that is challenging, exhausting, or frustrating to do (think about Paul’s letters from prison, his persecution and those of the early Christians, think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a modern Paul). God’s wisdom is perfect, even if we can’t understand it, even if we can’t understand why something is or has happened.
One implication of this is that we need to be careful not to cave into the temptation to doubt God in the face of what seems brutal suffering or evil: the loss of spouses or children or parents, war and violence, cycles of abuse, our loneliness, our declining health. God is not the cause of suffering and evil. To remove these things would require removing every cause and effect of suffering and evil, and so of every part of creation; something God promised after the Flood, that he would never do again. Why? Because God could not then reconcile all things to himself in perfection.
A second implication of God's wisdom is that whatever your life is like right now, God is wisely and sovereignly ordering your circumstances to do something in you, through you, in your marriage, in your family, in your work, in your witness, and in your worship that could not be accomplished any other way. This might be hard to receive when we are in the midst of suffering or seeing those whom we love suffer. And this is why it is so vital that we soak ourselves in God’s wisdom poured out as self revelation - a food and drink that satiates our hunger and thirst - in the stories of Scripture.
Think for a moment: Everything about God's plan to reconcile us through Christ looked doomed to fail. An unwed teenage girl, pregnant, giving birth in a stable, who by law, ought to have been stoned? A carpenter's son who might well have been stoned? And then consider the disciples Jesus chose to whom He would delegate His cause. Not exactly your top-of-the-class group. How many failed prophets and kings misled the Israelites, betrayed God and their neighbour just like Peter and Judas? Paul in prison. The God-man arrested, given trial and executed on a cross.
And yet God in his foolishness is still the perfection of wisdom. The most foolish move of all was the crucifixion. "For since, in God's wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom … God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached. For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom. AMEN
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