Proverbs 14:33 ESV
Wisdom rests in the heart of a man of understanding, but it makes itself known even in the midst of fools.
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Wisdom is recognizable. Even the most foolish of men occasionally has a good idea; even the most foolish can recognize wisdom. We are, after all, made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28), He who is Wisdom Himself (Prov. 8:22-31). As with beauty (to which it is a brother), we have an innate sense for true wisdom. Unfortunately, we also have a sin-born antipathy to it, a hatred of wisdom, a set of desires which urge us towards the ease of foolishness rather than the rigor of wisdom.
Man refuses wisdom regularly. The Jews of old refused the wisdom of Christ in His parables, and of them Christ said, “… their eyes they have closed” (Matt. 13:15). They heard the parables, but they refused to understand them. Because they would not understand, they could not; their foolish hearts were darkened (Rom. 1:21). Man despises the truth. Did not Pilate mock (John 18:38)? The truth of God is terrifying to the un-Godly; it is a declaration of coming judgement. As Romans 1:22 states, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” Man seeks the appearance of wisdom, true, for the appearance of wisdom makes him a great man among men, but he despises the true center of wisdom, its fountainhead, and so turns from it to his own damnation.
This is only one side of the truth, though. Man refuses wisdom; God created man so that he would do so. He “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (Ex. 7:13) so that the king of Egypt would not see self-evident wisdom: letting Israel go was absolutely necessary to the well-being of his kingdom. This refusal to see was Pharaoh’s will in action, but it was his will as God had created and molded it for the occasion, molded it into an instrument of His glorification by the exhibition of His wrath. Man despises wisdom, and in doing so he leads himself into destruction. In other words, by despising it, man demonstrates its necessity, demonstrates the greatness of the God in whom wisdom finds origin.
In man’s God-ordained refusal of wisdom, of the character of God (for wisdom is apprehension of His character and application of that apprehension to relations with Him and His world), he has several courses to take. The two simplest are denial and anger- and they are complementary, not exclusive.
Man can deny wisdom (1 Sam. 6:6). He can choose foolishness, refuse to consider his ways. Very often, this course is not explicit so much as the course of laziness, of never actually considering his own ways, of putting of introspection, retrospection, and prognostication (self-sight, thinking on the past, and considering the future) for another time. He can also assert his own foolishness as wisdom. This in particular is a common course. False religions (and their kin, ideologies) are built this way; the philosophies of history are by-and-large efforts in this direction. The philosophers see God’s world, refuse His wisdom, and try to replace it with their own foolishness, naming it wisdom. Some of them even include a little bit of the truth in their foolishness to give it strength.
Man can also choose to rage against wisdom. He can choose bitterness, to hold anger in his heart against the God who made him (Ps. 2:1-3). Why should everything work so-and-so? Wouldn’t it be much better if it worked this way, not the way it seems to? For some, this metastasizes even into attempting to impose that preferred pattern on the world (as certain brands of Marxism and Critical Theory intend to do). He can also choose the more blatant path of anger: knowledge of the truth coupled with conscious denial of God’s right. In a sense, this is the path of every man, of course, but some are more obvious about it than others.
A different path, one not inherently vicious, does exist. That path is the path of repentance. It is the path of saying to God, “You are God and I am not,” of saying, “Your will and not my be done,” of turning to His wisdom and not our own. These are sentences and ideas hard for all men, even Christians, to say and mean and understand. “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God tells us (Is. 55:8). We don’t understand the mind of God; we cannot empathize with Him as we can with the finite minds of man. His perspective and being are different; we are the image of God, and the image cannot recreate his Creator. He, however, is God. He rules in the heavens; He rules on the earth. The only course for man to have salvation, therefore, is to repent, to acknowledge sin, to despise it, and to turn from it, by the grace of God (Acts 8:22,11:18). Then, by God’s grace, faith will accompany that repentance, faith which will in time grant to all Christians to ability to say, “Your will be done,” though that full bliss will only come in perfection in the New Heaven and New Earth He has promised.
God Bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
