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Happiness and Wisdom

Some of the smartest people I know aren’t very wise. Your raw IQ is not much help in determining if you are able to make any practical use of the insights you have. There are some very smart people whom the Bible would call fools, because they miss the foundation of wisdom and knowledge which is God. Proverbs 9:10 tells us, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 1:7 states, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

The biblical fool is quite different from the Shakespearean kind. The Shakespearean fool exists to provide comic relief in tense moments. Though they “act the fool” they are quite insightful. For the most part, they are brighter than most of the other characters with whom they share the stage. Often as not, those characters laugh at their barbed witticisms because they don’t understand them, not because they think they are funny. The humour is of an ironic and often sarcastic nature.

The biblical fool exists for his or her own amusement. Whether or not they have accumulated a lot of factual data, they choose to interpret this as if God did not exist. The Bible states boldly that the fool has said in his or her heart “No God!” (See Psalm 14:1) Note that the fools’ atheism is a heart issue. Outwardly, they may appear to be quite religious, inwardly there is no place for God; they place themselves at the center.

I hesitate to suggest that all who would fall into the biblical fool category are miserable. I’m sure that many would take great offense at this, and insist that they are happier than a lot of Christians they know. At the same time, I am acquainted with some biblical fools who are truly unhappy. They aren’t clinically depressed. They are fully functional. But they are not able to rest in God and all He has given them. They are dissatisfied. They are aware of what others have that they don’t have. Because they don’t want to acknowledge God, they are on a constant quest to find other things to fill their lives.

We’ve already seen that a right relationship with God is the beginning of both knowledge and wisdom. We’ll build on this insight with two more wise sayings. Proverbs 3:13 tells us, “Happy (blessed) is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding.” Proverbs 8:34 comes from a passage where wisdom is personified and says: “Blessed (happy) is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway.”

Happiness flows from knowing God and interpreting our reality according to what He reveals to us. As we increasingly understand ourselves and our circumstances the way God does, we can be at peace. Even when things are not going smoothly, biblically wise people trust God. They avoid comparing their lives with others and are satisfied that God is using their environment to make them who He wants them to be. They can handle the subtle contempt of others, their misunderstanding, their jibes and insults because they know that God Himself is held in contempt, misunderstood and insulted.

Conventional human wisdom is unable to help much with this. It typically places us at the centre of our world and makes us sensitive to everything that doesn’t please us, fulfill us, affirm us, and exalt us. This provokes us to negative responses toward those who position themselves against us is some way, prompting revenge, getting even or putting them down. This kind of behaviour which follows human wisdom is mere foolishness because it is not built on knowing God and relating properly to Him.

Happy people pursue God’s wisdom and understand things from His perspective.

Ron Hughes
© November 2007