I’m preaching again on Sunday and the scripture readings this week have a lot to say about wisdom and truth and where we might find them.
I’ve always had a suspicion of authority. I like to think that it is a healthy scepticism but it has landed me in trouble on more than one occasion. One thing I have learned to be true is that your boss doesn’t really like criticism!
Blogging and wikis hold a strange place in our world of experts and fact. Blogs are all about opinion. Wikis are editable by anyone. Truth has become subjective.
The church must, by its very nature, struggle with a world where truth is subjective. We have spent the last 2 thousand years telling anyone who would listen (and lots of people who really didn’t want to) that Jesus is the Truth. The result of that claim has led many Christians to the point where the Bible has become their truth and I have a problem with that. I had an interesting conversation with JohnO last night about this.
I believe that Jesus is the truth, that he is God’s ultimate revelation. The Bible is an account of that revelation and charts the journey of the people of God working out who God is, who they are as his people and what that means. Am I wrong?
This weeks Gospel reminds us of this. Jesus is our Truth. That Truth doesn’t change but we do, our circumstances have, and we need to apply that truth in different ways. The passage from Proverbs for this week (you don’t get enough of Proverbs in the lectionary!!!) gives us an insight into wisdom. The Holy Spirit is wisdom. The wisdom the Holy Spirit brings helps us to understand and to apply the truth. Simple really!
My (un)healthy cynicism makes me wary of people who proclaim to have the truth. I’m much more attracted to wisdom.
People with wisdom engage in conversation and discussion rather than dispensing truths. People with wisdom are willing to learn. People with truth know all they need to know. People with wisdom seem to me more spiritual.
The thing is even though Jesus was the Truth he acted with wisdom. He engaged people and had conversations. He dispensed truth in the form of parables, often leaving people to draw their own conclusions rather than giving people an easy straight answer.
Wisdom leads us to truth. Wisdom reveals truth.
What do you think?
I’d like to hear you on this! I always felt that dogmatic insistence was a real turnoff – and not just in religious matters. Leaving room for growth and reappraisal is vital, and I’d say it was a denial of the importance of Jesus to try to pin faith like a poor dead butterfly in the thought-patterns of the past. But I’m in danger of straying into another area here .. so I’ll resist! :-p
I’ll maybe post the sermon in my box (the blue box on the right) with some of my other ones. I’ll wait and see if anyone throws anything first!!!