Depths of Wisdom - No. 40
The more I have been blessed to spend time with people of wisdom, the more I see how they consistently return to seemingly simple truths. Many things in our world we view as linear progressions; we start with less, and we work towards more. The more you learn, the more you know. The more you make, the more you have. It is inherent to assume that people of wisdom have lots of it, that’s true, but it’s the wrong way to look at wisdom. Wisdom isn’t something you amass or even acquire; it is something you discover, and then it becomes a part of you.
It has become clear to me that most people have the wrong perspective on what wisdom is. Some people think wisdom is lots of experience, knowing a lot of information, or even having a lot of impressive things to say. The worst perspective is when people assume that because someone is famous or rich, they have wisdom. We have an expression, “hard-won wisdom,” that implies wisdom is what you get from going through hard stuff and having a lot of valuable experience. Our education model is built around transferring information. This can cause us to really struggle to understand wisdom. Wisdom is not information, best practices, high-level philosophical thinking, or even wise decision-making. It is so much more than all of these things.
I would like to share a few thoughts about how wisdom works and is passed along that have helped me immensely on my journey.
Wisdom is cyclical
When we pursue wisdom, we come back to the same truths over and over and find that they have new depths of meaning. Culturally, we have lost the art of pondering and meditating on truth. I think it is because we are not taught to expect new depths of meaning to be revealed to us, the longer we think about a teaching or a story. Marty Solomon, a host of the BEMA podcast and author of Asking Better Questions of the Bible, often teaches that the Biblical authors used storytelling techniques that invited the audience to discover the deeper meaning hidden in each story. The Eastern world of the Scriptures “loved to bury truth,” and listeners were invited to discover rather than being directly told everything.
Eastern traditions saw wisdom as layered, and therefore, it takes time and process to begin to comprehend the deeper truth and meaning. In our Western culture, we prioritize efficiency, and therefore, we want complex things to be explained as simply as possible so that anyone can understand them. In doing this, we cheat ourselves because we think we understand things that we do not actually understand. Similarly, we want other people to do our thinking for us, because if they understand it, then we assume they can explain it to us. Wisdom is not that way; no one can explain it to you and teach you its meaning. If they try, then they are stealing from you the process of discovery and, thereby, turning wisdom into information. Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it is treated as knowledge.
Wisdom must be discovered
We can’t learn wisdom in the modern sense of the world; we must discover it. If we simply read about it and then try to remember it, we are treating it as information. Which means we haven’t personally gone through the process of discovery that makes wisdom personal and real. Wise men can guide us, and books can point us in the right direction, but we must be fully engaged in the process. Our passion and hunger must be what drives us to people of wisdom and keeps us asking them to show us the way. We must seek wisdom, we can’t be pulled there by someone else’s desire to help us see and understand something. Too many mentors try to take students where they say they want to go before the student is truly committed to the journey.
All real learning centers around discovery. Many ancient cultures seem to have understood this more instinctively. It should be self-evident to any teacher or parent. We can tell a child that something is hot, but often they have to feel the burn to really understand what it means when mom says, “Don’t touch that, it is hot.” Every leader has experienced trying to help an employee understand something and eventually realizing they need to learn this one for themselves. These are rudimentary examples because they aren’t really dealing with wisdom, but they do highlight the need for discovery.
When an older man tries to show a younger man what truly matters in life. Most often, the younger man cannot comprehend what he is saying until he discovers it for himself. Often, he must taste the other path and experience failure before they can even begin to comprehend what really matters. Discovery is not simply about trying things for yourself; it is about coming to an understanding on your own instead of just being told the answer.
The process of discovery can take moments, years, decades, and even a lifetime. Fortunately, the more wisdom we discover and embody the more we value wisdom and want to spend our time and energy searching it out. In our education system, when we want to learn something, we sign up for a class, and it has a set time period with an expected learning and testing schedule. Wisdom is not like that, one person may understand something much faster than someone else. The important thing is that we approach our journey as a personal journey of discovery, not a corporate journey to a universal truth.
Wisdom is living and personal
We want wisdom to be universal, unfortunately, it cannot be because it is living. We have a relationship with wisdom, we don’t just remember it and put it into use when we need it. True wisdom changes us, guides us, and transforms us. So while wisdom is never changing and always true regardless of time, location, and person, it cannot be viewed from our perspective as something universal. We cannot know the depth and fullness of wisdom, therefore, we cannot treat it as simple knowledge that can be indiscriminately applied to each person. This is not to say there are no universal truths, there are, and it takes the form of God’s eternal order (See my note Natural Law - No. 33). I am simply making it clear that wisdom is living and information is dead. Information is transactional in the sense that we can use it however we want but wisdom must be approached as a relationship.
If we can treat wisdom as a relationship, with deeper and deeper levels of meaning to be discovered and if we are pursuing it because we truly want it, then we are likely on the right path. Ultimately, the journey of pursuing wisdom is a transformation journey because a relationship with wisdom will inevitably change us.
Wisdom should never be oversimplified
Wisdom is simple in so many ways, but it should never be oversimplified. This is why Jesus spoke in parables. Because wisdom must be discovered, a wise man’s job is to create tension for people to sit in. Mystery and paradox create tension and cause us to stop, ponder, and ultimately discover the wisdom they are speaking to. When Jesus spoke about the sower and the different soil he threw his seed on, we can all understand that pretty quickly on a surface level. But there is so much more here than what we understand at first pass.
When Jesus said, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear,” it was a cue that His words required thoughtful and receptive listening. He was in effect saying, pay close attention, understand, and respond. The response He was calling us to wasn’t verbal. He was calling us to respond to our understanding by living differently. Older men of wisdom seem to know some of the deeper meanings of this parable. They have come to recognize good soil almost instinctively, and so that is where they plant. From business to discipleship and relationships, this simple parable can and should literally change how we think, guide how we live, and lead us to the best use of our time, energy, wisdom, and resources. And yet that is not all the meaning there is to that simple parable. We each would do well to spend our whole lives growing in our understanding of “good soil.” A simple phrase with so much depth of meaning.
Nobody masters wisdom
The more we grow in wisdom, the more we are humbled by how little we truly understand. We can become people of wisdom, and even be called a wise man, but the truly wise men always keep a beginner’s mind. It should be impossible to truly grow in wisdom and become prideful at the same time. Yet we all know people who have grown in wisdom and somehow become prideful. I don’t understand how this happens, but sometimes it does. The greatest men of wisdom I have met are incredibly humble. They are deeply aware of how little they truly understand. More importantly, they know in a real way what matters and what is simply noise.
Nassim Taleb shares a story about walking into a man’s personal library of 30,000 books and asking the man how many he had read. The man said that was the question everyone asks, but it’s the wrong question, because the more you read, the more you become aware of how little you have read. I have found this to be true for myself over the years; the more I read the longer my list of books I want to read is. Often, I realize I have spent years reading tons of books, and I am only just getting started on my reading journey. Wisdom, even more so than books, is a mystery that only gets bigger the more you venture into it. The more you grow in wisdom, the more you understand how little you actually know. But the deeper you go, the stronger your relationship with wisdom grows, and the more value you have for it.
Wisdom Cost You Everything
Many people want to want wisdom but are not nearly hungry enough to actually pursue it. I believe that the pursuit of wisdom will cost you everything in the very best way possible. What you thought you wanted will no longer matter to you. What you think is your identity will turn out to be false. The destination you thought you were heading toward will turn out to be wrong. The people you thought you were running with will often decide they have gone far enough. Pursuing wisdom costs you everything, and even if you end up with everything you thought you wanted at the beginning, it will all turn out to be worthless compared to what you have discovered along the way.
Is not the love of wisdom a practice of death? —Plato
A wisdom journey is a transformation journey, and a transformation journey is a process of death and rebirth. Wisdom leads us to see and recognize the interconnectedness of things. We cannot pursue God without pursuing wisdom, and we cannot pursue wisdom without pursuing God. There is no way to pursue either without being transformed every step of the way. Instead of developing mastery over the world around us, we will grow in harmony with God’s creation and order.
The more I have grown in wisdom, the more I see simple truths that I heard most of my life taking on new and powerful depths of meaning. I have read the teachings of Jesus many times over the years, but they increase in their meaning and impact on me the farther I go on my journey. It is clear that when I was younger, I simply did not truly know the wisdom He was sharing and couldn’t grasp it. Now it’s hard for me to read it without being overwhelmed and deeply touched. This is not something you can explain to someone else or teach them, it is a natural response to growing in wisdom and being able to see the powerful truth in seemingly simple words. Wisdom is best personified in the seeming paradox of the lion and the lamb, the wide grace and the narrow way, the crown and the cross, and the person of Jesus.
My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding—indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. - Proverbs 2:1-5
- John Walt
