The Value of Wisdom

The scriptures referred to are Proverbs 9:1-6, Ephesians 5:15-20, and John 6:51-58.

When I first preached this sermon, an upcoming starlet had just had scandalous pictures of herself posted on the internet. And while I don't remember the actress involved or the details, I can guess what happened. Either she let her boyfriend take the pictures or she took them and emailed or texted them to him. Then either somebody hacked her account and posted them or else she and her boyfriend broke up and he released the pictures. The specifics really don't matter because the whole problem wouldn't have happened if the pictures hadn't been taken in the first place. Nowadays, anybody should know that. Even non-famous people have had this behavior backfire on them. But you would think that this would be obvious to famous people, folks constantly followed by paparazzi, who are eager to get pictures of celebrities misbehaving. They have to know that there is a huge market for this kind of thing. And, sadly, once these photos hit the internet, they will exist there forever.

This is another example of how our incredibly smart technologies are used in incredibly stupid ways by people who should know better. Sorry. Maybe instead of the word “stupid” I should use the word “unwise.” Because what happened between the woman and her boyfriend did require some technical smarts to use these tools. What such actions didn't require, unfortunately, is wisdom.

Wisdom is not the same as having a lot of knowledge. It's knowing how to best use the knowledge you have. There are different kinds of wisdom. What I was talking about at the beginning of this sermon was common sense, the “well, duh!” kind of reasoning that most of us are capable of. Like “Don't smoke while pumping gas.” Or “Don't text people while driving.” Or “Don't expect loyalty from someone who wasn't loyal to their previous partner.” These are no-brainers but apparently common sense isn't as common as we might hope.

Another type of wisdom is what we call “street smarts.” These are shrewd observations about how people act. For instance, “Making something forbidden or exclusive makes it more desirable to some people.” Or “You'll be more popular if you tell people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.” Or my favorite: “If you want to predict how an organization will act in a situation, imagine it's being run by its worst enemies who want it to fail or at least look bad.” Some of these are counter-intuitive because they are based on what people actually do as opposed to what they ought to do or what they say they do.

These two types of wisdom are practical. They come from making good observations and from using good judgment. They are derived from experience but more importantly, from experience that's been correctly perceived and evaluated. For instance, I knew a man who was in a car accident in which he was thrown through the windshield because he wasn't wearing a seat belt. The car then caught fire. Though most people thrown through a windshield are killed or seriously injured, and despite the fact that cars rarely burst into flames in an accident, because he miraculously survived he concluded that not wearing a seat belt was safer than wearing one. That's an unwise conclusion to draw from a freak accident. If I hadn't been wearing a seat belt during my accident I probably wouldn't be here. As it was I broke both legs, both arms, broke my sternum, collapsed a lung and tore up a lot of internal organs. I'm glad I wasn't also thrown onto the road to be run over as well. My experience taught me that seat belts can save lives even in the worst of accidents. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has studied the matter, has estimated that between 1975 and 2017 seat belts have saved 374,276 lives. But one guy out there trusts in his extraordinary experience instead.

Another problem is that each individual's experience is somewhat different. Any cop knows that if you have 4 eyewitnesses, you get 4, or possibly 5, versions of what happened. The witnesses all have the same experience but they all notice different things and they see or experience what happened from different perspectives. A smart cop knows that some of what they say they saw may be wrong. He also knows that some details were left out of their accounts, either because they weren't considered important, or because they weren't noticed, or even because they were embarrassing. So experience is not on the same level as reason. Like rocks brought up from mines, experience is the raw material which has to be sifted, evaluated and refined before it is useful as wisdom. And wisdom doesn't depend on your personal experience alone. You can learn from the experience of others, like how being polite helps a coworker get better tips or how doing drugs messes up the life of someone you know. Wisdom is the product of all kinds of data, reasoning and good judgment.

A third type of wisdom is the subject of our lectionary texts. It's spiritual wisdom and it seems to fly in the face of common sense at times. It is more than counter-intuitive; it often finds truth in paradox. For instance, Jesus says, “He who wants to save his life will lose it and he who loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Mark 8:35) And “Many who are first will be last and the last will be first.” (Matthew 19:30) And “For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” The last comes from today's Gospel and caused many of his followers to turn away from Jesus. It confused and, I daresay, revolted them. They didn't get it and walked away from Jesus. (John 6:66)

Understanding spiritual wisdom requires God's help. It is far from the obvious wisdom of common sense or even the “this is how the world really works” wisdom of street smarts. We need the illumination that the Holy Spirit provides. That means prayer and a willingness to listen and learn. It means studying the Bible. It means talking with other Christians about the things you and they discover through prayer and Bible study. Because God can speak through other Christians as well.

Spiritual wisdom usually requires personal experience as well, especially the experience of doing things on the basis of faith and out of obedience to God's commandments. That's why spiritual wisdom seems like nonsense to non-Christians. They can't understand the relationship of faith to wisdom, often because they think that faith goes against all logic and clear thinking. And so they don't try it. But it's like driving on ice and going into a skid. It doesn't seem reasonable to turn in the direction of the skid. But if, like me, you've done it both ways, you will find that turning in the right direction, though it seems to go against common sense, actually works.

Spiritual wisdom is often at odds with worldly wisdom, especially in matters of dealing with others. Though we pay lip-service to the maxim “Honesty is the best policy,” we more often practice the policy of “What they don't know won't hurt them.” Or more honestly, “What they don't know won't hurt us!” Worldly wisdom says, “Look out for Number 1!” Spiritual wisdom puts the love of God first, followed by loving our neighbor, neither more nor less than we love ourselves.

Worldly wisdom says, “The end justifies the means.” In other words, if the goal is good enough, then it's OK to use any method, no matter how evil, to achieve it. Spiritual wisdom says, “Goodness is the path as well as the goal.” Winning the Olympics is a worthy goal, but if you cheat to win, you won't really have proved you were a better athlete than the others. In fact, you will have invalidated the first place ranking you “won.” The means of doing something must be in harmony with the end you want to achieve. If your goal is becoming good, you can only achieve it by actually being good.

Worldly wisdom says, “Your worth depends on your position, your power and your prosperity.” Spiritual wisdom says, “Your worth is based on the fact that you were created in the image of God and on the fact that Jesus Christ died to save you.” (Genesis 1:27; Romans 5:8) Since our worth is based in the love of our unchanging God, not the changing opinions of mortals, everyone has value.

In fact, one of the chief differences between worldly wisdom and spiritual wisdom is the question of values. Oscar Wilde once described a cynic as a person “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” That's a fairly good description of the worldly wise. This bottom-line mentality explains why we tend to use the price of something to indicate how much we value it. We see the way big companies has analysts who work out whether it is cheaper to recall defective products or to simply pay out settlements to those injured by them. This reveals that they value money more than the lives of their customers.

What we are willing to pay shows how much the values of this world diverge from God's values. We pay movie stars, pop singers and sports figures—people who merely entertain us—thousands of times what we pay teachers, cops and nurses—people whose jobs are to make life better. Just 15 years ago we were paying $94 billion a year to fight a war in Iraq, that is, to kill people in a different country, but we were arguing whether we should pay $100 million, just 6% more, to improve healthcare in America, that is, to save lives in this country. And we Americans were buying 80 million copies of a fiction book called The Da Vinci Code but only 30 million copies of either In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? or The Purpose Driven Life. So the highest ranking Christian books on the list of all-time bestsellers were apparently of equal value to us as The Valley of the Dolls. (On the other hand, the number 1 bestseller of all time is the Bible, with between 2.5 and 6 billion sold. Ironically, it is also the book most frequently shoplifted! And I'll wager that it is the least read book in most households.)

To paraphrase Einstein, what counts can't always be counted. Spiritual wisdom recognizes that the most valuable things cannot be quantified—things like love, faith, character, hope, peace, justice, humility, self-sacrifice, and even wisdom itself. The world values cleverness over wisdom. Unfortunately, the people who make the most trouble in the world are often some of the cleverest people. Being clever is not the same as being wise.

What we need is to seek and respect wisdom more. We need to teach our children that a more important question than “Can we do this?” is “Should we do this?” More essential than “How will this benefit me?” is “How will this benefit others?” More vital than “Will this make me look good in the eyes of my friends?” is “Will this glorify God?” I know such a question sounds old-fashioned but it's not. C.S. Lewis wisely noted that whatever is up-to-date is eternally out of date. Wisdom is timeless. Proverbs 8 tells us that from the beginning, God made the universe with wisdom. As the body of Christ, working towards the new creation in Christ, we need his always fresh, ever relevant, eternally valuable wisdom.

This was originally preached on August 16, 2009. It has been updated and revised.