TAB: WISDOM.

This month leading up to the big Birthday we look at the idea of wisdom...please visit the Discuss page to leave your three 'wisemen[women]' votes
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Wisdom and the Bible
C.Coffey.
“the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” 1 Cor 1:24-26

My own relationship with the Bible, speaking honestly, is a fraught one. Sometimes confusing, often challenging I’ve found that the idea of reading 10 minute snippets a day doesn’t really work for me. I could do that with an airport paperback, dip in and dip out, forget where you left it scan back 3 pages and get the gist of the story, but not with something as dense and complex as the Bible. I would rather sit down once a week and read, look up, re-read, phone a friend, but most of the time I struggle to do even that. For me approaching the Bible, when reading it on my own, is a real effort, an act of doing something because I might do me some good, because ultimately I believe it’s important. Occasionally, out of curiosity I pick it up as you might someone else’s diary, turning previously unturned (or forgotten) pages with trepidation, afraid of discovering something more I can’t explain. Bear with me on a short analogy:

You see as a Christian, a follower of Jesus, I’ve joined the ‘company’ (not for profit by the way) without having read every single word of its 1000 page mission statement. Shameful to admit, I know! I joined because its founder was like no other I’d ever met, but for me the mission statement is only a way of understanding the founder better. If my day to day work was just about reading that manifesto, defending it, quoting it to colleagues over coffee breaks as a panacea for all work related troubles then I wouldn’t be doing my job properly – the job of putting it into practice. Likewise if I read some of it in the first week and then tucked it away in a draw, I’m likely to lose my way, to forget why I’m doing what I’m doing. The mission statement is important if the company is built on sound values, but the mission statement isn’t the job, it just helps you do the job. The wisdom occurs somewhere between reading the words and putting them into practice. Or as Jesus said:“Wisdom is proved right by all her children”. (Luke 7:34-36)

What is born out of wisdom will speak for itself. Where we get our wisdom from will be obvious in our actions, our decisions. It’s our responsibility as people looking for truth to ‘test everything’, to look for God’s wisdom (what fits with what we know about God) even in the unlikeliest places. What we see, even what we see when we pick up the Bible isn’t the same thing as seeing what God wants in fullness, and it’s certainly not the same a seeing God fully. But as a Christian I believe that Jesus is the best example we have of what God is like. For what it’s worth that is why I don’t believe that God only speaks through man’s-recorded-history-of-His-interaction-with-the-world (the Bible) but through people and humanity’s gifts or art, music, conversation etc etc. God chose to use the book(s) and the man.
You see I think the purpose of the Bible is multi-layered. On one level it’s about telling the story of God, on another level it is a comforter, on another a challenger. A warm bath or a cold shower. God’s gift. Not an instruction manual for successful living, a lifestyle guide, or a collection of morality tales to keep people in check. A gift, a way of understanding a small ‘some’ of the mystery of God. I personally don’t believe people who say that they decided to become a Christian purely because they spent time rationally exploring the claims of the Bible, testing its validity as a historic text and after watching it under the magnifying glass could find not fault in it. Spiritual truth, in part is about revelation and wisdom is more important than mere knowledge.

I think of it not as a book with all the answers, though some treat it like tarot or a magic 8 ball, or as having all the evidence, hence the confession at the end of John (21:25) and the slenderness of the Gospels, but as we may see one day, what we really needed. Maybe not what we might have chosen for a religious text, but the wisdom of God rarely walks hand in hand with our wisdom. His sense of justice and fairness is different from ours, his sense of worth, his sense of what, as the Christmas story tells us, a rescue plan should look like.

Adventually
C. coffey

What would it take to clean you up this Christmas?
Dust you off, or would you break apart?

Could I get a sense of what it really means? God-down, shuffling around, crying loud and eventually tottering, staggering, walking; then older to step, side by side, shoulder by shoulder, as a godmanTM. Maybe, just maybe, I could buy that.

And you push through the wall of world and baby goo, you come through. They look in awe at a thing too small to pick up its things and walk anywhere at all, too easy to snuff out, and not enough presence to muster a crowd, hold a sword, or scream out loud (apparently no sound he makes).

And they the strangest crowd, the illiterate undercaste, the mystics, the cattle bend down and we are told that not a sound could be heard, not even a mouse. O silent night, oh sweat and smell, oh peaceful scene.

What did they see in you? What kind of peace, what form of rescue, nativity, delivery, were they waiting for? “Unto us” a sign, a son, a king, is born with shoulders too small to balance any kind of government at all.

God comes down
With a whimper not a bang
A bump not a crown
God falls down.

Somewhere quietly, quite unnoticed a cord is cut, a door shut, but unaware, the assembled must have curbed the thought, ‘is this it, as entrances go?’ In a barn, God, clutching at straws.


wisdom for dummies…
From Wikipedia and other places...

Wise:
having the power of discerning and judging properly as to what is true or right; possessing discernment, judgment, or discretion.

characterized by or showing such power; judicious or prudent: a wise decision. possessed of or characterized by scholarly knowledge or learning; learned; erudite: wise in the law. having knowledge or information as to facts, circumstances, etc.: We are wiser for their explanations.

Wisdom is the ability, developed through experience, insight and reflection, to discern truth and exercise good judgment. Wisdom is often considered to be a trait that can be developed by experience, but not taught. Others see wisdom as a quality that even a child, otherwise immature, may possess independent of experience or complete knowledge..

Magi:
1. Christianity.
The three wise men or astrologers from the east who brought gifts to the infant Jesus, guided by a star. Also called the Three Kings and the Three Wise Men.
2. historical
A sorcerer, magician or astrologer in ancient times.
3. historical
A Persian priest in ancient times.
Etymology: 14c: from Persian magus magician.

The Magi was a tribe from ancient Media, who were responsible for religious and funerary practices. Later they accepted the Zoroastrian religion. The best known Magi are the "Wise Men from the East" in the Bible, whose graves Marco Polo claimed to have seen in Tehran, Iran.
Wisdom and Philosophy

A standard philosophical definition says that wisdom consists of making the best use of available knowledge. As with any decision, a wise decision may be made with incomplete information. The technical philosophical term for the opposite of wisdom is folly.
Sources of Wisdom

Freethinkers and others believe that wisdom may come from pure reason and perhaps experience, while others believe that it comes from intuition or spirituality.
Beginning with the ancient Greeks, European culture associates wisdom with virtue. They are outlined in the Hebrew book of Wisdom 8:7. These virtues are praised under other names in many passages of Scripture.
Religious Explorations of Wisdom

Islam
In the Koran the Prophet Muhammed is chosen by God to represent his wisdom.
The Prophet Muhammad said that: "Fearing God in your actions and intentions, and knowing that Almighty God is watching you wherever and whenever you are is the peak of wisdom".

Christianity
Wisdom is represented by the sense of justice by the lawful and wise king Solomon. There is an oppositional element in Christian thought between secular wisdom and Godly wisdom. The apostle Paul states that worldly wisdom understands the claims of Christ to be foolishness. However, to those who are being saved Christ represents the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:17-31)
Judaism
The seventh verse of the first chapter of the Jewish book of Proverbs in the Old Testament states "Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7). The beginning of fear of God is hating evil, the ways of evil, arrogance, pride and a duplicitous mouth (Proverbs).

Confucianism

Confucius stated that wisdom can be learned by three methods: Reflection (the noblest), imitation (the easiest) and experience (the bitterest).
Buddhism

Buddha taught that a wise person is endowed with good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct & good mental conduct
(AN3:2) and a wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results (AN4:115). This is called karma.

Taoism
Practical Wisdom may be described as: Knowing what to say and when to say it.--