Explor­ing the Wis­dom Tradition

From the Renovaré Newsletter Archive

The selection below is from a March 2004 Renovaré newsletter. Download a PDF of the original newsletter.

The Stored Trea­sure of Human Insight

I am so glad for the Wis­dom Tra­di­tion found in Scrip­ture. It does so many things for us:

— it roots us solid­ly in every­day life and every­day tasks;

— its pithy apho­risms and proverbs give us time­less, portable teach­ers for the mul­ti­ple dai­ly deci­sions that come our way;

— it reminds us that our choic­es real­ly do have con­se­quences and pro­found­ly shape our lives;

— it allows us to learn from the mis­takes of oth­ers with­out hav­ing to repeat those same mistakes;

— it gives us a basic moral ori­en­ta­tion to guide us in all aspects of our day-in-day-out liv­ing; and more.

The Wis­dom Tra­di­tion has giv­en rise to a whole genre of lit­er­a­ture found in our Bible; from Job to Proverbs to the Song of Solomon to the Wis­dom Psalms to the Deute­ro­canon­i­cal books of Eccle­si­as­ti­cus and the Wis­dom of Solomon to many of the say­ings in the New Tes­ta­ment Pas­toral Epis­tles. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these writ­ings have some­times been deval­ued by Chris­tians because they do not focus on the more dom­i­nant bib­li­cal theme of sal­va­tion his­to­ry and because they sound an awful lot like the works of ancient pagan writ­ers. But we reject this stored trea­sure of human insight to our per­il. Indeed, our whole­sale neglect of the Wis­dom Tra­di­tion may well explain why we have so many fool­ish Chris­tians today run­ning after every con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry and suc­cumb­ing to every pro­pa­gan­da technique.

Val­ues of the Wis­dom Tradition

Let me give you four rea­sons why I find the Wis­dom Tra­di­tion so valu­able for us today. First, we real­ly do need a strong dose of ordi­nary com­mon sense in the mod­ern scene today. I’m refer­ring here to what an ear­li­er gen­er­a­tion called ​“horse sense” and what the ancients called ​“pru­dence.” This is real­ly noth­ing more than prac­ti­cal wis­dom applied to life sit­u­a­tions. One rea­son Dr. Phil on TV and Dr. Lau­ra on the radio have touched such a nerve in the mod­ern psy­che is because they dish out exact­ly this kind of ordi­nary com­mon sense, allow­ing for no excus­es. And what aston­ish­es me in all this is that peo­ple are so total­ly out of touch with the Wis­dom Tra­di­tion that they are amazed as if hear­ing some orig­i­nal insight and are gen­uine­ly helped by such com­mon sense coun­sel. Well, may their tribe increase a hun­dred-fold. Peo­ple are so lost today in the most sim­ple mat­ters of man­ag­ing their per­son­al and fam­i­ly lives that we should rejoice when­ev­er proverbs of good sense tri­umph, irre­spec­tive of their source.

Sec­ond, focus­ing on the accu­mu­lat­ed wis­dom that comes from the ordi­nary expe­ri­ences of ordi­nary peo­ple gives sacra­men­tal sig­nif­i­cance to the com­mon­place and the every­day. That faith will have the most mean­ing which touch­es com­mon life redemp­tive­ly at the most points. Gen­uine faith deals more with the home than with the church, more with the office than with the altar. If Chris­t­ian wit­ness is to gain a hold on the life of post-mod­ern men and women, it must find ways of meet­ing peo­ple in the midst of their every­day expe­ri­ences. And this will require a dis­ci­plined and sanc­ti­fied imag­i­na­tion. The Wis­dom Tra­di­tion can point the way.

Third, the Wis­dom Tra­di­tion can help us deal with the infor­ma­tion over­load that plagues our dai­ly lives. The Inter­net, hotlinks, e‑mails, blogs, and more give us infor­ma­tion by the ton. And there is noth­ing wrong with these things, but they can­not give us wis­dom for liv­ing. No, we need times now and again when we will exit the infor­ma­tion super-high­way and turn onto wisdom’s coun­try lanes. Know­ing more and more facts may well be what we want, but it’s not what we need. And it’s time we brought our ​“want-er” into line with our ​“need-er.” Reflec­tion … still­ness … prayer­ful obser­va­tion — these are the things that can teach us bet­ter how to live.

Fourth, the Wis­dom Tra­di­tion stress­es char­ac­ter devel­op­ment through moral edu­ca­tion, and this is an impor­tant ingre­di­ent in the spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion of the human per­son­al­i­ty. To be sure, it is only one piece in a large and com­pli­cat­ed puz­zle. But it is a piece. Teach­ing peo­ple how to make wise choic­es is a good thing. A pithy say­ing that pro­vides guid­ance in prac­ti­cal deci­sion mak­ing is a good thing. Teach­ings that aid us in doing the right thing, for the right rea­son, at the right time, and in the right way is a good thing.

Like I said, this is not every­thing, nor is it even the most impor­tant thing. We most cer­tain­ly must go on to under­stand how ingrained habits of evil can be erad­i­cat­ed by the pow­er of God. We must go on to the sanc­ti­fy­ing work of the Spir­it in the human heart. We must go on to the devel­op­ment of holy habits of right­eous­ness and peace and joy in the Holy Spir­it. And more. But nat­ur­al human wis­dom is a foun­da­tion upon which these fur­ther devel­op­ments of for­ma­tion can build. Just because wis­dom is ​“nat­ur­al” and ​“human” does not place it in oppo­si­tion to the divine work of God; it mere­ly places it in a low­er order. God does not con­tra­dict such wis­dom, but pre­sup­pos­es it and builds the super­nat­ur­al virtues of faith, hope, and love upon it.

Peace and Joy,

Richard J. Foster