Information, Understanding and Wisdom

I am in the middle of reading a 750-page tome… and I don’t often choose to read tomes… entitled Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Pulitzer Prize winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin.  It is a detailed examination of Lincoln’s cabinet and the challenges that he faced in bringing together all of the leading politicians of his era and working with them to lead our country and strengthen the union of the disparate states of America.  Yesterday, as I waited for my car at the Acura dealership in Austin, I got into a discussion of leaders and their advisors with the manager of the dealership.  It was a lively debate about Kennedy… Bush… Lincoln… and Obama which led directly into church leadership, in particular elders and pastors, for James is a very active Christian with a lively faith.  At the end of our discussion, James and I came to the conclusion that what all leaders need… and many do not possess… is wisdom.

The story from our text today is an old favorite from the Bible… one that we and all of our children should know… for it is one illustration of how we, as humans, can please God our Creator.  Before we begin, let me review where we are in the history of the children of Israel.  Solomon’s father, the incredible King David… the lowly shepherd boy who was anointed king by the great prophet Samuel… has just died and Solomon has inherited the throne of Israel. Under King David, the disparate and often contentious tribes of the Hebrews were united… and in the power of their combined might, they have unified all the land that God gave to the children of Israel and secured their borders.  In addition, the enemies of the Israelites have been subdued and defeated.  The Philistines have been conquered.  The Ammonites and the Arameans have been defeated.  All their lands have been added to the land belonging to the children of Israel.  The major trade routes in the Middle East now run through the center of the kingdom.  Strategic seaports provide access to trading ports in other lands.  King David has built alliances with still other kingdoms and powers.  The children of Israel know stability… peace… and prosperity for the first time in their long history.  King David brought the Ark of the Covenant… the holy relic that contains the tablets of the Ten Commandments and is a symbol of God’s presence among his people… to Jerusalem.  God sustains and protects this people, blessing them with abundance and peace.

Solomon comes to the throne not by virtue of the fact that he is the eldest son.  It’s complicated, but there is a lot of palace intrigue that makes for good reading, if you are interested.  For example, David’s eldest son, Amnon, raped his sister, Tamar, and was killed, in revenge, by David’s favorite son, Absalom.  Later, Absalom attempts to usurp the throne and is defeated by David’s forces and killed… though not by David’s command. When David is older and in poor health, another son, Adonijah, also attempts to usurp throne, but is defeated by David’s forces.  David finally secures the right of succession for Solomon, the son of his favorite wife, Bathsheba, by having him publically anointed at a holy place by several priests in front of many witnesses.

When Solomon comes to the throne following David’s death, however, he does not come with the sense of entitlement or with the arrogance of a spoiled child who has lived in luxury all his life. He comes with an awareness of the complexities of palace politics… a comprehension of the challenges inherent in the role of monarch… and a sense of his own limitations…  or finitude… as a human being on the global stage.  Yet, in one of his very first acts as king… his response to God’s appearance in his dream… he pleases God.  How did Solomon please God?  I believe that he pleased God in three ways.  First, he was humble.  Solomon responded to God, not as the ruler of a large and prosperous monarchy, but as a human creature before his Creator God…one creature among thousands that God had created.  He recognized God’s role in his own creation… that he, himself, would not exist if God had not caused it to be.  He also recognized that it was God who had given his father, David, all that he, Solomon, had inherited.  Solomon had done nothing to earn his place.  It was merely by an accident of birth that he came to be the heir and now the king of this monarchy.  Solomon also knew that God could bestow all of this on anyone God chose.  Solomon’s throne was his to lose and he needed God on his side.

Secondly, Solomon recognized the scope of his responsibility as king.  He was not king to sit in a palace… wear nice clothes… and enjoy the pleasures of the wealthy and powerful. He was the person who was responsible before God for all that fell within the boundaries of the kingdom that had been given to him. He was the benefactor of the people… the administrator of land and property… the facilitator of trade and commerce, arbiter of disputes… the protector of the weak… the spiritual leader and exemplar of the faith of the Israelites… and, finally, the intercessor between God and man for all the needs of his people.  His father, David, had been all of these things… and yet, David had been distracted by the need to fight wars to secure his kingdom throughout his long reign.  Even before David came to the throne, he was fighting Israel’s enemies… (you remember the story of David and Goliath)… and David’s dying words to his son indicated that the battles were not over even then.  But, after Solomon took care of the last two enemies of the throne, his reign reflected his name, which comes from the Hebrew root word for peace and completeness, shalom.   That time of peace during Solomon’s reign allowed him to build the great temple in Jerusalem that God had refused to allow King David to build… and to visibly focus the attention of the people on the worship of their God.

Finally, Solomon knew that it would take either an extraordinary man to accomplish all he had to do… or a man who was backed by a strong and powerful God, who was able to provide all he needed when he needed it.  Could God grant Solomon wealth and power?  Of course, he could.  Could God give him good health and long life?  Absolutely.  But could those things guarantee that there would be peace in the land… prosperity for the people… freedom from fear… want… oppression… and death?  No.  Would they guarantee happiness? Unlikely.  What would it take for him to be able to provide these things… in perpetuity… for himself and for his people?   Wisdom… the ability to understand their needs within the context of his time and place in history… and to take the appropriate action to provide for those needs in a way that clearly demonstrated good stewardship of the resources he had.  Solomon needed something he knew he did not have… wisdom.  And yet, he knew that God could give him this and with it, he could provide all that was needed for his people.

            You and I live in an age where the speed of scientific advancement provides a wealth of data that is simply impossible for a human being to absorb and use.  In fact, this is so much a part of our lives that we elevate technology and the data we acquire with it to a very high status within our culture.  Those who can create ways and means for us to acquire even more data at an even faster rate of speed hold positions of high esteem.  Those who have been educated to interpret data and apply it to various situations and circumstances to solve problems are given a great deal of respect and… very often… paid a significant amount of money to keep the rest of us informed.   Yet the ability to use technology to acquire data and the ability to interpret that data and apply it does not necessarily guarantee that we are focusing our attention in the right areas or that we necessarily arrive at the right conclusions.  All of us who have done scientific studies of any kind… or attempted to solve problems within a given context… can tell you that if your underlying assumptions are incorrect, it will skew the data and destroy the possibility of arriving at the most advantageous and stable solution.    All the money and resources in the world won’t change a bad assumption.  It takes more than data.  It takes more than information.  It takes more than understanding.  It takes wisdom… the ability to see the complexities within the detail of the data… to understand how it fits within the scope and vision of the total system within which we operate… to judge and predict the relationships at work in the physical… mechanical… social… ethical… and spiritual realms… to intuit the finite nature of human strength and the unpredictability of human emotion… and to possess the vision and courage to move toward a different outcome for the continual improvement of our environment and the quality of our lives in this world.  That is wisdom… and it is beyond the reach of most of us… unless the hand of God is at work within us.

            Solomon knew that, if he had wisdom, he could do everything that God wanted him to do as the King of Israel.  He also knew that without wisdom, all the tools in his toolbox would be limited in their ability to advance and sustain his kingdom’s stability… prosperity… and his people’s faithfulness to God.  The fact that Solomon knew this before he requested wisdom from God suggests that he already possessed some wisdom.  The question that I pose for all of us today is:  How would our lives… our work… our leadership… our relationships be different if the focus of our effort was not asking God for material goods… or daily needs… but wisdom to meet each day and its needs with God’s help?   The Bible talks about wisdom constantly… and often suggests that we seek it… ask for it… grasp it… and use it.  Entire books in the Bible are devoted to wisdom, such as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.  Yet, these are not books that we spend a lot of time studying in our structured Bible studies.  On the other hand, Jesus often taught wisdom through parables… challenging his disciples… and us today… to consider alternatives to the “traditional” responses to life’s situations and circumstances.  Despite this, we tend to have a “knee-jerk” reaction that takes us down the same paths.  As several psychologists have suggested, it takes effort and intentionality to “think outside the box”… outside the solutions we are used to.  

            What boxes are you in?    How have you defined the limitations of possibilities in your spheres of influence?   Why do those boundaries exist… and when was the last time that you challenged them?   How might new relationships and circumstances change the possibilities that might lie just outside the boundaries of the boxes in your life?  How might you discern new possibilities for your life… and challenge the boundaries of your boxes?  And, perhaps, most important of all, how will you know when what you have is merely information… understanding… or truly wisdom?

My son, Julian, called me this week to inform me that he is stepping out of a plane on Monday.  I asked him where he was going?  He said “Nowhere, Mom.  I’m just taking a plane up in the air and then jumping out of it.”  As a normal mother with some significant concerns about her only child, I questioned the sanity of his decision to do this.  He, however, seems determined to take this course of action.  I guess, some day, we’ll all know whether it was a wise choice on his part.  My only recourse, from this distance, is prayer.

Prayer is also a tool that Solomon used in his reign to seek God’s wisdom and God’s guidance.  He is remembered as a man whose wisdom set him apart from ordinary men.  Let us, too, follow his example and seek to serve our God with wisdom, asking for God’s guidance in every situation and circumstance.  Amen.

1 Kings 3:5-14