Deschutes National Forest, Oregon
Wisdom is a path rather than a door. It’s a left/right/left/right/left rather than a couple of days spent with a self-help book. Here are five practices that will make you wise:
1. Know God: Find ways to pound it into your heart that He is absolutely committed to you. As someone else has said, you would be no more loved and accepted by God if you were to obey for 1,000 years than the day you first believed.
2. Know yourself: Since wisdom requires that one be in touch with reality, wise people know they are broken and foolish. One must be prepared to engage in “ruthless yet non-traumatic self-examination.”
“What I’d like to understand,” said the Ghost, “is what you’re here for, as pleased as Punch, you, a bloody murderer, while I’ve been walking the streets down there and living in a place like a pigstye all these years.”“That is a little hard to understand at first. But it is all over now. You will be pleased about it presently. Till then there is no need to bother about it.”
“No need to bother about it? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“No. Not as you mean. I do not look at myself. I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began.”
C.S Lewis, The Great Divorce
3. Know your friends: The fool is an individualist; a wise person is always asking for help and advice. Wisdom comes through community.
4. Know God’s “best practices”: You’ve got to master, take into your heart, and meditate and reflect on Scripture. Every day of every week of every year.
5. Know trouble: Do not despise or reject suffering.
The cross is the beginning of wisdom. It is upside down to what the world says: you win by losing, rule by serving, obtain wealth by giving it away.
Source: Tim Keller sermon “Training in Wisdom”