THE PATHWAY TO WISDOM by Champ Thornton for Core Christianity
Turn to any portion of Proverbs and you will be confronted with a fork in the road: Will you take the pathway of wisdom or the pathway of folly? Though Proverbs addresses dozens of topics, its thirty-one chapters actually present every reader with only two routes through life: the wise way or the foolish way.
The Pathway of Wisdom
What is the biblical concept of wisdom? A wise person knows how God has made the world to work and skillfully shapes his life to go with (not against) the grain of God’s creation. Proverbs views wisdom as skill in relationships—living in right relationship with the realities of God’s good and orderly, but fallen and chaotic universe. This includes properly relating to God, other people, the created world, and one’s self.
Of course, thriving in these relationships doesn’t happen overnight. The pathway of wisdom is walked, not sprinted. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the process of learning God’s ways in his orderly world has a definite beginning, a desired ending, and many steps in between. Thankfully, God has described these stages for us. Proverbs 2:1–10, one of the most orderly and structured passages in the entire book, maps out this march toward wisdom.
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1. Accept the Wisdom You Have (2:1–2)
According to Proverbs 2, the naive or untrained person must first willingly receive the wisdom of his instructors (parents, teachers, etc.). Notice how in these first two verses, he simply welcomes wisdom from others: “accept,” “store up,” “make your ear attentive,” “apply your heart toward understanding.”
This first phase implies active teaching by the mentor and active listening by the learner. If you are a parent, don’t forget that God has already provided your child with his first building block to be wise: you! This requires that you must be wise yourself—knowing and living in harmony with God’s created and moral order. And to then impart this wisdom to your child, you must talk, talk, talk, teach, teach, teach. The next generation takes their first steps on the road toward wisdom by accepting the wise instruction of others.
