Wisdom. Or Is It?
January 30th, 2010 by Steve
I’ve been talking to a close friend recently about wisdom and where it comes from. It’s been really cool to think through some of the implications of what happens when we listen to wisdom that doesn’t come from God. Wisdom and foolishness is all through the bible, there is plenty of places we can turn to find out about it but it was the distinction between the two different types of wisdom found in 1 Corinthians 3:18-19 that we were looking at.
The passage reads “18Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight…” It comes in the context of the Corinthian Christians arguing about who they followed. Paul tells them that it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are built on the foundation of Christ.
This passage identifies two types of wisdom. Wisdom that comes from ‘this age’ or ‘the world’ and God’s wisdom. We need to be so careful what we listen to because so much of it sounds like wisdom but really isn’t. Quite often it has the appearance of real wisdom: it’s well thought out or persuasively argued. Perhaps it appeals to another authority (such as experience, tradition or reasoning) to guide its conclusions. It starts to get really dangerous when the conclusions reached are those that we desire in our sinfulness.
The problem is when we put anything above what the Bible says. As Christians the bible must be our ultimate authority because it reveals God’s will for our lives. God has chosen the bible as His authoritative communication medium in this period and so we need to submit to it and hold it over all other wisdom offered by the world. We should aim to fill ourselves with God’s wisdom rather than the world’s wisdom. Or to put it the way the passage does if we think we are wise by the standards of this age we should become a fool (according to the world) in order to be wise.
So, how do we do this well? Any ideas?
