Wisdom 12 The Bible and Wisdom

[HKHaugan]

Wisdom 12 The Bible and Wisdom

 

It takes wisdom to mature. Our need for wisdom comes from the fact we are not born with it. We have to learn it. Jesus showed this, “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him (Lk.2:40).” The perfect birth gave the perfect ability to become perfect in the perfect Spirit of God.

While tuning into a TV music channel I noticed that on the side of the selection title there was a continual stream of quotable quotes from Socrates to present day authors. Secular experiential wisdom. Each had that momentary sense of insightful reality. They were the kind you’d put on your memory board at home or on a desk. When I see meaningful quotes coming from notable people, many of whom don’t know the Lord, to me it is the grace of God operating in spite of the lack of belief, to keep all of us aware of our limited wisdom and prepared to see Him as the real source of wisdom (“…but He never left them without evidence of Himself and His goodness.” Acts 14:17).

The very fact that people sense wisdom when spoken or written and desire it, proves the ability to be wise was built into us by our Creator. His purpose? To face this immutable fact, He is the personal source beyond ourselves who provides it. It is part of that invisible reservoir of heart knowledge that lies in the Lord’s treasury. Wisdom is a relational gift from the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom. It is God’s relational insight that brings the choice, the decision and a concluding action together. This is the process Jesus went through for us. It culminated perfectly on the Cross and was sealed forever in Jesus’ Resurrection.

The wisdom record is in the ultimate wisdom book, the Bible. It not only speaks to the quality and gift of wisdom, but it is the long spiritual history of the Lord’s wisdom moving through His people. The Old Testament is His wisdom given through leaders like Abraham and Moses and consummated in the Lord Jesus who was God’s wisdom in the flesh. The Old Testament gives us a detailed history of wisdom revealed in spite of human imperfection and progressively emerging until it was finalized to perfection in the person of Jesus. All that was called wisdom before Jesus was verified, assembled and fulfilled in Him. He revealed the true nature of wisdom. His teachings carried everything necessary for us as individuals to mature, “to grow in wisdom and stature with God and man,” Jesus being the model.

Looking at our three histories, secular, personal and spiritual, it is wisdom from God recorded in the Bible that prioritizes spiritual history as the means to make the other two function properly. The difference between the Bible and a secular history book is the Holy Spirit interprets the Bible,

while secular history has no spirit, only the interpretation by a secular historian who analyzes whatever past documents are available. And that historian approaches history with a bias and a tendency to revise it using the excuse that we have more modern tools with which to do that. Also, there are modern historians who write textbooks that have inaccuracies and read into history present cultural values. Secular historians have a hard time dealing with spiritual influences. They just leave them out. So, shaping personal history needs more than our personal imperfection and secular history to function. It needs the Holy Spirit for which we were made. This is one of the reasons for being reborn spiritually. When our focus is Jesus we see everything from a different point of view. We see the influences that formed how a person, an issue and movements, impacted society.

 

The guiding principle for a disciple of Jesus is to understand that, in everything, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience (Gen.1:26).

 

If we approach history and its tripled view, we want to search as much as we can for the spiritual influences in the lives of those mentioned in history books. History is made by people (his story) so we have to ask what they believed, who and what they trusted and what led them to act and behave as they did. At the same time, realizing that we have very limited access to the actual atmosphere that existed, we look for as much reality about human nature as possible. We try and separate myth from reality.

For instance, did George Washington really chop down the cherry tree and, when asked, replied, “I cannot tell a lie, I did,” or was this a story to emphasize the honesty of his character? Other documents by him indicate his Christian faith was part of his upbringing and he was a leader in churches in northern Virginia. Obviously, he was not perfect by self-admission, but those influences were felt in documents from other sources as well. He was a man of confidence and integrity. I would be confident enough, based on secular history, to conclude that it was his spiritual history that made him the man and leader he was.

Historians as well as those who teach history tend to avoid spiritual influences due to political correctness, the evil spirit currently dominating much of society. That issue is a spiritual issue and begs for confrontation in order to bring integrity back to the classroom, the teaching profession and society in general. If I were in charge of the whole educational enterprise, I would institute courses on the spiritual influences in history at every level from elementary to graduate doctoral programs. Spiritual starvation is the worst form of poverty and spiritual correctness is part of our culture’s social malnutrition. One example: a former President said that Muslims had an influence in shaping the early history of our country. There is not one document anyone can find to verify that thought. It’s this kind of unchallenged thinking that becomes false history and is blandly accepted.

I’m not talking about forcing people to be religious. I am talking about teaching the whole of history. If we have any logic in our brain at all it wants to know as much about the unseen as it does about what is seen so the heart can trust and the spirit in us act with confidence. Then we set real goals and devise real plans to accomplish what life is really all about. Documentary evidence is essential in secular history and it is important to our personal and spiritual history as well.

The bottom line for disciples of Jesus is to know the only source for spiritual history is the Scripture. It is the one set of documents that has historic reliability due to its source, the Holy Spirit who is also our personal interpreter and the Body of Christ who keeps us honest in the interpretation process. Scripture has the test of age and application. It is the only source for the heart we can trust. Its witnesses, through the millennia it has served us, speak to its influence. Just as spiritual reality dwelt in Jesus so the living Truth dwells in its printed pages. It is a peek into the mind of the One God and the way of life that is His Resurrected reality among us. Those who have searched for wisdom, found it and lived by it, will tell you the Bible ended the search and started their life into eternity (Gen.1:1-Rev.22:21).