Life is pretty simple when you’re young. Everything is laid out for you. There are clear rules to follow and very little responsibility. Of course, in your younger years, you think that you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. However, you don’t think much about your purpose in life and how things are supposed to work. Your mind is on your next meal, game, or homework assignment. The extent of thinking about purpose might be, “Why do I have to take Algebra? How is that going to be useful?” but beyond that, you’re probably not thinking too much about “the meaning of it all.”
The older you become, however, the more you have to think about how life is supposed to work and its meaning. You begin asking questions, searching. What are you looking for? Wisdom. You are looking for wisdom. Where do you find it?
Important to any search is to know what you are looking for. You are looking for wisdom, but what is that?
Some tritely say that wisdom is “applied knowledge.” When one has this wisdom, then he can figure things out. We go to wise men because we want answers; answers about what to do with finances, how to choose a spouse, how to rear children, to understand why a loved one has fallen ill or died, or why life has fallen to pieces. Once we get the answers we seek, we will have wisdom that will give us the ability to control our lives and circumstances. Wisdom, in this line of thought, becomes the means to human sovereignty, the power to control my life, making everything work out to what I perceive is good.
The danger of this lie is that there is some truth in it. True wisdom does give you a limited ability to manipulate the creation to shape your life and the things around you into what is good, true, and beautiful. Wisdom is power; a power needed to see things for what they are, what they are supposed to be, and the ability to shape them that way. We are called to shape the creation with this power. That is what dominion is all about.
The lie twisted up with the truth is that wisdom will grant us all power, complete leverage over everything in my life so I may impose all of my holy will upon the creation. If you are searching for wisdom of this sort for yourself, you won’t find it. There is only one who has this wisdom, Wisdom himself.
Wisdom is about the meaning of life. How does everything work and fit together so as to make sense of the world? Wisdom is about relationships. How does this action relate to that consequence? How does this event relate to that one? How does every particular relate to each other so that there is a common purpose so that they all come together to make what is good, true, and beautiful?
In our search for wisdom, we must distinguish between God’s wisdom and our wisdom. The two are related, but they are not the same.
God’s wisdom begins with an infinite knowledge of his relationships as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father infinitely knows the Son, what is best for him, how he, the Father, should relate to him, and how to accomplish what is best in this relationship. This knowledge is true for each member of the Trinity. Each Member knows that it takes to make these relationships work as they ought, and they do these things in order to maintain these relationships. Everything in God’s relationship as Trinity makes complete sense to him. God has a comprehensive grasp on everything about himself and his relationships.
When God made the world, Wisdom was the Architect and the blueprint according to Proverbs 8 (cf. also 3.19). The impress of Wisdom–or the image of Wisdom–is on the entire creation. God, and only God, knows how it all fits together; how this evil is done to this person at this time in history works toward his good purpose. Think about the cross, the wisdom of God (1Cor 1.18ff.). Only God knows all of these relationships.
We are not left without wisdom. Though we can never be all-wise, because we are images of God who are called to take dominion over the creation, ordering it according to God’s wisdom, God grants us the ability to have wisdom. Indeed, we are called to pursue wisdom.
Our wisdom begins with the fear of Yahweh (Prov 9.10), submitting to God’s revealed wisdom, realizing our limitations, and accepting divine mystery. We don’t have a comprehensive grasp on anything. The wisdom for which we look begins by looking at the creation through the lenses of God’s revelation. With the fear of Yahweh as our starting point, we can begin to understand how relationships work; how discipline relates to happiness and rest, how choices in sexual activity can bring life or death, how what I say and how I say it can promote health or destruction, what causes a society to live in peace or in turmoil, etc.
Wisdom is a non-optional pursuit for those who desire to realize true meaning in life. We need wisdom to fulfill our image-of-God purpose to take dominion over the earth. God doesn’t make it easy on us in figuring things out. Working at discovering what he has concealed is part of the journey to wisdom. We read in Proverbs 25.2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; it is the glory of kings to search a matter out.” We are called to make sense of the world, to understand how things fit together as they ought, and how people are to relate to one another as they ought. We need to make sense out of the world as much as possible so that we can order it properly. The dominion project is God’s great riddle, his dark saying, that he expects us to work at. Solomon wants his son to “understand … the words of the wise and their riddles” (Prov 1.6). Creation, made and sustained by the word of Wisdom’s power (Prov 8; Heb 1.3), is a riddle, a dark saying in which God hides riches that must be searched out (Prov 25.2). We do not live in a simple cause-and-effect world. We live in an enigmatic world. In order to complete our mission of dominion, we must grow out of our immature simplicity and into wisdom. We are to work to build and maintain these proper relationships in the world in ways that are pleasing to God.
Make certain you know what you are looking for, but get wisdom (Prov 4.5).
