"Many people thing that what's written in the Bible has mostly to do with getting people into heaven-getting right with God, saving their eternal souls. It does have to do with that, of course, but not mostly. It's just as concerned with living on earth-living well, living in robust sanity. In our Scriptures, heaven is not the primary concern, to which earth is a tag-along afterthought. "On earth as it is in heaven" is Jesus' prayer.
Wisdom is the biblical term for this on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven everyday living. Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves. It has virtually nothing to do with mere information or knowledge. A college degree is no proof of wisdom. Nor is wisdom primarily concerned with keeping us out of moral mud puddles, although it does have a profound moral effect on us.
Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes towards others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God.
Proverbs concentrates on these concerns more than any other book in the Bible. Attention to the here and now is everywhere present in the thousand-plus pages of the Bible. Proverbs distills it all into riveting images and sound bites that keep us connected with holy obedience to the ordinary."
(I did this post, especially, for those of you who are taking my challenge to read through the book of Proverbs once a month throughout 2009. God bless you.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment