Defining Wisdom with the Divine

Dancing With Wisdom

In our quest for wisdom it is vital to grasp that this is much more than simply making better decisions or getting what we think is best for us. Understanding wisdom in all its richness gets to the heart of what it means to be human.

It is as intense as thinking about the wonder of a baby’s birth. While the physiological and genetic details of birth are well understood and documented, a scientific approach does not account for the wonder of bringing a new life into the world. I remember as a medical student witnessing a birth. On one level, this was another of the 130 million born every year into the world. But for me, as a raw eighteen-year-old, it was a profoundly reverent experience.

As the writer Eugene Peterson puts it:

“In the presence of birth we are at the source of life . . . Here is a mystery, but a mystery of light, not darkness, full of goodness, brimming with blessing. Every birth powerfully recalls us to this source: we have our origins in someone other than ourselves, and greater than ourselves.”

There is something of this awe and wonder when we approach the subject of wisdom. It is wisdom that enables us to realise and appreciate we are far more than our own existence and the narrow world we live in with our preoccupations, doubts, fears, insecurities and often petty concerns.

Through wisdom we are invited into an encounter. This is an encounter with the God of the universe – The Ultimate Infinite Intelligence. Not a god of our convenience or that measures up to the best parts of who we aspire to be, but as the One who is more in control than we are and sees way beyond what we can see.

In this podcast discussion with my cohost Elliott Frisby we explore:

• How God is intimately connected to the challenges of our life.
• The importance of getting past our own prejudices and assumptions around who we think God to be.
• God as the highest ideal we aspire for and long to be.
• A definition of God as ” a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness truth.”
• Engaging with a worldview that believes there is no God
• The Biblical worldview and wisdom.
• How we need something more than just our subjective feelings (or as Elliott describes ‘goosebumps’!) to know we are encountering God’s wisdom
• How wisdom challenges our assumptions about life and ultimate reality.

The link to the podcast is below.

You can also watch the conversation on video here.