The voice of Folly in Proverbs speaks at twilight and
into the night to foolish and simple young men who have wandered down the wrong
streets. Foolishness appeals to the
simpleton within us and uses crooked and deceptive speech to lure us into her
traps. Wisdom, on the other hand, could
not be more different. Not only does she
cry out on in the streets and marketplaces pleading with men and women to
listen to her ways, but everything she says is trustworthy, straight, right,
and true. We can trust everything Wisdom
has to say. When we do not understand or
agree with the particulars, we can know that what she has said is righteous and
that there is nothing twisted or crooked in it.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul admonishes them to
meditate on the kinds of things that are true, noble, just, praiseworthy, and
so forth. Hearing Wisdom speak in
Proverbs chapter 8 we learn that all these things turn out to be the voice of
Wisdom. Paul notes that when we think on
these kinds of things the God of peace will be with us, will keep our heart and
minds in Christ Jesus, will lead us through life. And Solomon is just as sure of it – when we
hear the voice of Wisdom our lives will become rightly-ordered.
Everything Wisdom utters is true, and she hates evil: “for
my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips” (vs
7). It turns out that truth valued and
held to creates a disposition of distaste for wickedness. When we long for truth and work for it, we
not only reveal a taste of truth, we create a hunger for it. We may long for an entire well-grilled steak
at its first bite, but we eventually find ourselves full and a little
sluggish. And while truth also creates
that longing at first bite, it is an inexhaustible source of nourishment. We can eat and eat of it and never reach its
end. And along the way we learn to
develop a distaste for wickedness. Not
only will the wise person recognize evil, they will also recognize it for the
pain and destruction it causes in the human life. And because Wisdom loves God’s creation, she
hates its destruction.
All these characteristics highlight the inner landscaping
Wisdom performs in the submitted human soul.
When we listen to Wisdom and when we meditate on these things our inner
lives are reshaped to fit the way God created us and the rest of the
world. When a puzzle fits together the
pieces do two things – they fit with each other and they match the picture on
the box. The way a rightly-ordered
puzzle works is a lot like the way our rightly-ordered souls work. When God’s wisdom has its way within us the
pieces of our lives will fit together and our lives as a whole will fit the
picture of what God created us to be.
So this passage on the voice and character of Wisdom is
not just a story of what Wisdom sounds like, it is the template for what the
follower of Jesus Christ begins to look like.
Is our voice in line with the truth, righteousness, and nobility of the
voice of Wisdom? Are our lives conforming
to that very character, or are we still mired in the simplistic and destructive
ways of folly? Have the people of God
become people of his Wisdom?
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