"Then you will understand what is right and just
and fair—every good path.
10
For wisdom will enter your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
11
Discretion will protect you,
and understanding will guard you."
-Proverbs 2:9-11
The title of Proverbs 2, at least in my version, is "The Moral Benefits of Wisdom." Chapter 3 (which we will look at tomorrow) is titled "Further Benefits of Wisdom" and then Chapter 4 is titled "Wisdom is Supreme."
I don't know about you, but I think Solomon is trying to tell us something here....
You wouldn't think that Wisdom needs such a pushy sales pitch. After all, when we hear the word "Wise" it generally conjures up warm fuzzy feelings of hoary-bearded grandpas and wide-eyed owls. Wisdom is generally a respected ideal. However, I've come to realize that I haven't always actually valued wisdom. I've valued being smart. Being right.
Smart is loud. Wisdom is quiet. Smart is proud. Wisdom is humble. Smart seeks to be right. Wisdom just seeks to understand.
This is such a tough one for me. As an academic, it's become intertwined with my sense of identity. It's so difficult to turn off the knee-jerk reaction to be "right" and flip the switch to "understand." Understanding takes time. It takes patience. It takes a willingness to give up what I want in exchange for accepting what's best.
My husband and I jokingly call our cell phones our "argument solvers." We get into meaningless little spats over facts and inevitably, someone pulls out the smartphone and googles the answer to settle the matter. In the age of the internet, it's easy to find the "right" answer. Or even justification for what you believe is right. But google has yet to reduce wisdom to 1's and 0's in a search engine.
True wisdom comes from God alone. Time to be a patient seeker of wisdom, rather than a snappy know-it-all.
