I’ve had some sort of working definition of “wisdom” for most of my life.  I think most of us have.  As a teenager, I remember joking that it was the ability to learn from other people’s mistakes.  It sounded teenager-wise, but how do I know what’s a mistake?  Later, I read somewhere about wisdom being something like “skill at living life”.  Also sounds useful, but perhaps vague and worldly feeling.  Even later in life, I started thinking of it as “being able to make decisions based on facts, instead of based on wishful thinking.”  This has been even more useful, but which facts do you follow?  How do you choose between two “true” options?  What if you don’t have all the needed facts?

I think my current definition is better: Wisdom is the ability to choose between the path of righteousness and the path of the wicked.  In the Psalms and the Biblical wisdom literature like Proverbs, there is a contrast between these two paths, and the idea that moral decisions are like choosing a route between places.  You can be on one path or the other, and with wisdom, “you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path”[1]

Moving down a path is an action, and therefore, wisdom is about taking the right action, not about what we know, believe, or say.  It’s not about accumulating facts.  Facts matter, but they aren’t wisdom all by themselves.  Adding the context of the Great Commandments[2], wisdom is what tells us how to love God and others actively, and in a way based on obedience that leaves the results to God.  For example, in the book of Acts, Ananias didn’t minister to Saul, the notorious persecutor of Christians, because Ananias thought it would end up well for himself[3], he did it because God told him to, and God knew that future Saul was Paul, the author of much of the New Testament.  Ananias didn’t decide based on the facts as he knew them, but he adjusted the facts in light of revelation from God.  Also, wisdom might sometimes tell you the best action is to do nothing, to not to do something specific.  Sometimes wisdom flashes a red light while others are flashing green.  “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” – Pr. 14:12 and 16:25.

This way of thinking about wisdom explains why the Way, the Truth and the Life must be a Person, not a set of rules or a philosophy.  Truly, only each of us, in our individual relationships with God through the Holy Spirit, can learn wisdom.  Only in a relationship with this Person can we figure out what our purpose and identity in the body of Christ is.  This wisdom is proactive and specific to each of us.  Nobody else’s situation is your situation, and nobody else has the same relationships, abilities, and resources.  Books, advice, and experience can be helpful, but we each need to “taste and see”[4] the Holy Spirit in us, working at our very core where only He can reach, and directing us down the right paths at the right times.

True wisdom will put us on a path that provides us, and this world, a taste of heaven through us.  It is informed by a justice and righteousness – God’s law and Christ’s character – that is not of this world.  With wisdom we can build and create new things on the cornerstone of Christ.  The world might not like it, but the world is not your Creator who is all wise.  Therefore, pray for and seek God’s wisdom as the immensely valuable treasure that it is!

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[1] Proverbs 2:9
[2] Matthew 22:37-39.  In short, love God and love your neighbor.
[3] Acts 9:13
[4] Psalm 34:8