If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. James 3:13-16
Trying to define, or measure
something like wisdom is much like the tale of three blind men who were
describing an elephant. Their “eyes”
were, of course, their hands. One of the
men stood at the front of the elephant feeling the trunk; he exclaimed, it’s like a tree, round and reaching upwards. The second man stood at the side
of the elephant with his hands exploring the animal’s rib cage; he said, what do you mean, tree…this beast is a wall. The third man stood at the rear
side holding the elephant’s tail. He
concluded, well,
whatever this is, it’s tied up with a rope. Three men seeing the same
animal and giving three different opinions…and all three of them right. Sounds like a board meeting at church,
doesn’t it?
I used to have a somewhat different
opinion than I do now of wisdom. I used
to think wisdom was common
sense that made sense. It was like Ossie and Bobby McDuffie. One was highly educated, the other barely
so. But, when either spoke, their common
sense just seemed to cut through any difficult situation and set a standard you
could count on. I still think they were
among the most clear-headed and Godly men I ever met.
But, my understanding of how you
define true wisdom, especially of the Godly sort, has matured past that
point. It’s like the three men
describing an elephant…their analysis of what they’d felt was correct; it just
wasn’t complete.
James, the half-brother to Jesus,
gives us a more complete, no-nonsense description of true, or Godly
wisdom. The measure of true wisdom is not
taken by merely looking at a person’s words; rather it is the person’s
actions. If you want to measure whether
someone is wise, check the life, and the way others are treated. Do their actions match up with their
words? Is there a sense of honor, that a
person would never lie to you? James
warns that evil and disorder is to be found in selfish ambition, boasting, and
lying. It is the polar-opposite of
honor, which lives in truth-telling.
There are times I’m tempted to
lie. I don’t like being in situations
where I must tell someone a hard truth, and if there is a lie, small, white,
somewhat “harmless”, that would make the uncomfortable moment fade away with
nobody getting shamed or angry, the temptation causes me real internal
conflict. It’s a genuine temptation,
because my desire to not hurt another person is pressing my mind to search for
a way out of the possibility of causing harm. But the honorable, wise person, recognizes
where that suggestion comes from, because it smells like smoke, right out of
the pit of hell. It eases into the back
of your mind with a smoothness that got Eve’s attention in the garden.
If a person is a practiced, skilled
liar, there comes a time when lying becomes, for them, the only truth they
know. They go past the point of even
being able to recognize truth. But the
opposite is also true; the person who lives in truth, being honrable, always
speaks truth, because nothing less will let them sleep.
I served as pastor at a church once
that was falling apart. A power stuggle
had erupted into a full-on congregational split. The music director had moral issues and had
to be fired, and we were in dire need of a music program. News like that gets around, and one Sunday a
couple showed up at church. After
worship the man asked if I’d come to visit them; they were interested in becoming
part of the church. When I visited with
them the next night, he and his wife showed me into their den. On the wall were at least 10 certificates…all
extolling the merits of the man’s muscial talent. He elaborated on each one, boasting how he’d
taken terrible music programs and brought his gift of music to each one. Then he got to the agenda; he and his wife
had just left another church that, in his opionion, had no spirit at all. He had taken six other families with him, and
they were just waiting to find out where he was going so they could follow
him. He then laid out the offer: If
you’ll make me your new music director, you’ll get those other six families; I
just have to give them the word.
Frankly any definition of honorable, or wise,
does not include that!
Let’s
Pray Together:
Father, we would be wise; help us to know it is always found in truth.
For You Today
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.
Have a blessed day! 
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