Wisdom’s Window

Of the obligations we owe to life is the responsibility to seek that place of wisdom that is identified in Scripture as understanding and applying to life that which comes to us in what is summarized as maturity.  For many persons maturity (wisdom, the human substitute for perfection) provides status to the individual in family and friendships – with persons learning that true and open to self and others leads to maturity.  One of the truisms about maturity is that it is presumed to take a heap a’ livin’ to gain status recognition.  It is not so difficult to recognize those persons who show the attitudes of wisdom – so that wise elders recognize they will find the route, and follow it.  Mentors commonly look for the pattern when they determine they will participate in the formation of the lives of the persons they mentor.  The young person, hoping for successful life and contribution to the nature of life that needs truth for best performance will show in a meekness (a meaningful attitude of competence without arrogance), and humility (an affirmation toward learning) will likely gain the higher slopes of wisdom with minimal baggage of nonsense.  There are many enemies of wisdom, but most of them don’t realize they are enemies.  Wisdom requires some sacrifice, and peace, to be successful.  There are many persons unwilling for sacrifice, and not motivated by thoughts of peace, who may become accidental enemies.  Wisdom slips away to conflict.

Labor and management need each other, but often resist each other.  Genders need each other but often resist each other.  Parents and children need each other but often resist each other.  Pastors and people need each other but often resist each other.  The list goes on and on.  What is the answer to such conflict?  The answer lies within.  Good life is geared to affirmatives – going forward and not backward.  That which is negative invites conflict and dead ends in interpersonal concerns (private ones as well).  What is the good life, and how do we achieve it?  (Remember, it is achieved not found.)  If variant persons can agree to work toward that which is affirmative giving and receiving what is available, they are working in the atmosphere of wisdom.  That atmosphere draws right, fairness, better analysis, and application of that which is available that will lead to even better contexts in the future.  One of the first evidences we will ever have that we are headed to maturity as God would have us mature is to acknowledge that we need more wisdom than we have so together we seek more in the instance at hand, and the way to gain it to travel the road to wisdom’s awards. That road is paved with peace, with available evidence, time for understanding and proof in action that will be supported by the best thinking and attitudes brought to the table of our problems.  Our emotions are not given up if they are sound to our experience, but they do need to be harnessed and made cooperative to wisdom.  Wisdom is not only proved in problem-solving, but in the model of the wise person.  From the beginning, the dedication of personal peace reveals the desire for wisdom, and the achievement of peace shows the genuineness of wisdom with the respect it receives.

We sometimes appear in costume clothing – through which we expect to be taken as wise because of the costume.  Riches may be a costume.  Education is often a costume, challenged only by the costume of age. Parents are to be listened to, but the children may know this is not wisdom, even when they couldn’t give a sensible statement about what wisdom is.  The father who carries a bad habit that affects his health, perhaps also his family is not wise.  He may affirm conduct, even reward his children if they do not do what he does in his dominating habit, but he is not wise.  He invites doubt for other matters that he may control.  How can a person so contradictory be determined wise by those who love him most?  Pastors of some length of experience have seen these examples who may become, without deliberation, violators of what the pastors are trying to accomplish in families.  One father I knew in a church offered quite a sum of money to his son if the son would not adopt the negative habit (smoking) of the father.  The son found the habit irresistible.  The mother of the family insisted the father give the son the promised amount on his twenty first birthday, even though the son had violated the original agreement in that the father created a negative model for the son, making it improbable for the son to keep the agreement.