Back to the School of Wisdom

Scripture: Proverbs 4.5-7, Luke 14.25-33

Have you heard of the show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? It’s a quiz show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. The contestants answer general knowledge questions, like any other quiz show, except that the contestants are competing against a fifth-grader. My son and I watched this show together once and enjoyed trying to answer the questions along with the contestants. When we got one right we pumped our fists and felt superior to the contestants on the show. But here’s the thing, it’s okay for my son, who is in the fifth grade, to feel good about getting right answers.

I’m forty-two years old. I have a masters degree. Is this the best I can do, be smarter than a fifth-grader and feel good about it?

Many of you have, of course, heard about the Miss Teen USA Beauty Pageant contestant from South Carolina who asked to answer the question, “Why aren’t more citizens of the United States able to identify their country on a world map?”

Miss South Carolina’s answer started out with “I think this is so because many people do not have maps. . .” and then she started mentioning education in South Africa and Iraq and it just continued to go downhill from there. It was a pretty dumb answer, even by beauty pageant standards. And it got noticed. A video clip was posted on YouTube and has been viewed over thirteen million times! We love to make fun of other people’s stupidity. Never mind that if we had to answer questions like that in front of a millions of people watching on tv, standing in our swimsuits, we probably wouldn’t fare much better.

And that illustrates the fact that though we live in the Information Age, we haven’t necessarily gotten smarter. There is so much information at our fingerprints that anyone, really, can access with minimal effort, its perplexing that we don’t seem to be wiser. In fact, the opposite may be true. Maybe we are dumb and dumber.

What is clear is that information doesn’t equal wisdom. Here’s a word that is hard to define. What is wisdom?

It’s been said that the greatest distance between any two points is the distance between knowing the right thing to do and actually doing it.

For example, I know that my vehicle’s need oil added on a regular basis, and at least a couple times a year they need the oil changed. But I’m too embarrassed to tell you how many times I failed to follow through on that common knowledge – times when I heard the engine wasn’t right, but you know, I just turned the radio up louder.

Wisdom may be defined as “knowledge combined with goodness”. You might also add “knowledge combined with goodness put into action.” And by this standard we can accurately see how wisdom-poor our lives can be at times. I’m not talking about whether we can correctly answer game show trivia or not. I’m talking about more important stuff, the stuff of our daily lives. When we look at our relationships, our attitudes, our decisions, our successes and our failures, we notice cracks, background noise, in our family, our work, and our relationships. No amounting turning up the radio can drown out the roar that cannot be ignored.

Our lives don’t work anymore. And so we quit, or we divorce, or we live in a slow, cold, agony. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Life doesn’t work simply because we’ve forgotten a basic rule of living –pursue wisdom.

“He taught me, and said to me, ‘Let your heart hold fast my words; keep my commandments and live; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Get wisdom; get insight. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” Proverbs 4.4-7

Notice the truism. To be wise you have to get wise.

The Bible is about more than information or knowledge. It is meant to communicate through the Holy Spirit’s power, wisdom that changes us into wise people who live life well.

What are known as the wisdom books, Proverbs, Ecceliastes, Song of Songs, are particularly meant to describe a life well lived. Proverbs is direct and practical.

“If you don’t plow you don’t eat.” Proverbs 20.4

“The Lord hates cheating and loves honesty.”

What part of that isn’t clear? And we are in need of wisdom for living..How else to explain all the warning labels and signs that come with our lives these days, gems like:

“Don’t collapse the stroller while baby is still in it.”

“Warning, this coffee is hot.”

“Don’t use this blow dryer underwater.”

We are so informed and still unwise. Where can we find wisdom, this combination of knowing and goodness applied rightly to our lives?

Three streams of wisdom are available to us, all of which we will speak more of in the coming weeks:

The Scriptures - we have to know one book people. That’s it. We don’t have to read a whole library. We don’t have to get advanced degrees. Just one book to read is all God asks so that we can live life well. Does the Bible answer every question we might have? No. But it does have the power to transform us and our living. Is it a hard book sometimes to read? Yes. Is it impossible? No not for anyone. We can do it.

Other People – God’s wisdom comes from heaven but is disseminated , passed along through wise ones in our midst. We learn from each other in community. If you isolate yourself you get dumber. If you learn to live with others in community you get smarter in the School of Life.


The Spirit of Jesus the Teacher - God’s desire is that we will be transformed into good and beautiful persons who are ready to be free in his kingdom. He wants to be able to set us loose in the Universe and be co-laborers and co-creators with Him. God is working hard to help us get wisdom and to apply that goodness and knowledge in our living.


The Apostle Paul tells the Galatians that he is in agony “Until Christ be formed in you.” (Galatinas 4.19)

There is a new life at work in us to form our lives from the inside out.

“Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 4.13

Wisdom costs something. It doesn’t happen by accident. Jesus asks are we willing to pay the price?

“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Or what king, going to meet another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes with twenty thousand? So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14.28-33

Would you consider that Jesus has something to teach you about living this life? Are you willing to do something to pursue this wisdom in your life today?