The Beginning of Wisdom
Shouldn't we all want it?
Once, God visited a man in a dream and asked him a question. “What do you want?” he said. “Anything. I will give it to you.”
The man thought for a moment and then rattled off a response. Surprisingly, this response delighted—dare I say, impressed—God. What an answer. He could have asked for anything. Yet, he asked for the very thing God wanted him to ask for.
Can you imagine, impressing God? Don’t you want to know what this man’s answer was? This answer that moved God’s heart?
How many rocks would you turn over to discover the answer that impressed God? And after finding that answer, what would you do to obtain it? Would you get up early every morning to devote yourself to it? Would you work at it during your lunch break or in between picking up your children from school?
What exactly did that man ask for?
Wisdom.
He wanted to be wise.
This story comes from the ancient Hebrew scriptures (1 Kings 3 and 2 Chronicles 1, to be exact). The man in question, King Solomon, didn’t ask for a long life, wealth, or victory over his enemies. He wanted to make wise choices. Which, if you think about it, is the opposite of what we often ask God for. If we are honest with ourselves, we usually spend most of our time, energy, and prayers on money, physical comfort, and our desire to be better than those around us.
But, those things don’t impress God. Shouldn’t we spend more energy on what does? What if we pursued Wisdom above all these other things? Would it please God and, as a result, offer us a good life only Wisdom can bring?
And yet, we don’t talk much about Wisdom much in church. I can’t tell you the last time I heard a sermon about Wisdom. I can’t tell you the last time I preached about Wisdom.1 And yet, Wisdom plays a huge role in Scripture. There’s an entire section in the Bible devoted to it.2
Throughout the entire book of Proverbs (which comes mostly from the hand of Solomon), Wisdom is depicted as a woman. The image teaches us an important truth about Wisdom. "This personification of Wisdom is not a (mere) literary device; it reflects the essential nature of biblical wisdom. Wisdom is embodied. Wisdom is for living. In fact, nothing is truly known until it is lived out in the everyday world,” writes David Atkinson.3 If someone wants to know what wisdom looks like, our goal should be that they find that definition by looking at the way we live our life.
Wisdom shouts in the street,
She raises her voice in the public square;
At the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
At the entrance of the gates in the city she declares her sayings (1:20-21)
One of my favorite scenes featuring Wisdom is found in the first chapter of Proverbs. Here, Wisdom shouts throughout the city, trying to get the attention of the people. Wisdom wants us to not just think we know how to be wise, but to actually live it out.
Is Wisdom shouting at you? Is Wisdom trying to get your attention, but you’re too distracted or busy to listen?
I want to learn to be wise. Do you want to learn to be wise, too? Perhaps you think you’re pretty smart and make good decisions. And yet, if some of you today did an assessment of your life, you'd find that you're constantly putting out fires. You'd find that you're always in conflict. Perhaps you feel like you're careening toward the edge of a cliff and your brakes are shot. And, faced with this mess, your first inclination is to blame the people or circumstances around you. While there are often circumstances in life that are outside of our control, it just might be that the reason you feel like your life is burning down is because you lack Wisdom. You keep making the same mistakes over and over again. You don't learn from your mistakes and you don’t listen to the advice of others. "They just don't understand."
Could it be that Wisdom is shaking you by the shoulders, trying to get you to hear?
If you’re reading this, you’ve landed on the very first post of The Beginning of Wisdom Substack. I’ll be posting a few times a month about Wisdom (or some Wisdom-adjacent topic), in hopes of trying to figure out the nooks and crannies of Wisdom and how to live it out. I’ll be sharing with you what I find, as well as releasing excerpts from my new book The Beginning of Wisdom (coming in 2025). I hope you’ll join me as I pursue wisdom through old books, new books, people, places, and, of course, the ancient faith detailed in the Bible (the source of all Wisdom). I’ll also be putting together an entire framework—a plan so to speak—of how we can integrate the quest for Wisdom into our everyday lives.
The goal isn’t just to be smarter, but to embody Wisdom. Wisdom calls for us, shouts. Will we answer? We will put the kind of effort into Wisdom that we put into other less important areas of our lives?
This Substack is free. If you like what you read, one of the best ways to support me is to subscribe to my posts and share this post on social media or with a friend. I’m excited to go on this journey with you.
But I do plan to preach on Wisdom this weekend!
Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Some even include Psalms and Song of Solomon in this grouping (which, I think, is a good idea).
David Atkinson, The Message of Proverbs (Inter-Varsity Press: London, 2023), 17.