"But wisdom is proved to be right by what it does."
I was reading this morning in Luke 7 - The story of how the churchy people of Jesus' time couldn't accept John the Baptist because he didn't eat and drink like they did. (They said he had a demon.) Then they called Jesus a glutton because He did eat, drink and associate with undesirable (in their eyes) people.They were caught between two things that really don't matter much in terms of what Christ came to show them. And they missed the point completely.
My thoughts wandered to the debates going on in our culture and politics today. Here are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about:
Family Values: There is an obvious disconnect between those who would 'protect family values' and those who believe all relationship boundaries are subjective and flexible. Of course, the GLBT world is excluded by the first group and tolerated by the second. But neither camp seems to realize that the destruction of the American Family Unit is a direct result of people cheating on and betraying the ones they committed to love and be faithful to forever.
It is not keeping gays from getting married (or allowing gays to marry) that protects or destroys anything. It is how every married person behaves in the context of their own marriage that males the word 'family' a meaningful word in our vocabulary - and nothing else. Wisdom is to take great care of your own marriage.
The Federal Debt: Everyone knows there is a debt crisis. Some say stop spending. Some say raise taxes. Of course both sides say that it's all necessary, but neither side really believes that. And the problem is neither spending or taxes! The problem, as with all debt, is wanting something now for nothing (or next to nothing) later.
Americans, politicians, businesses, unions and even criminals all need to realize that this equation is no longer tenable given the position we've put ourselves in. The math doesn't work, and that culture is ending. The question is, "How?" The choices are 1) Anarchy and Chaos or 2) Intelligent, painful but not fatal money management.
We have to ask the right questions in life to get the right answers. And wisdom is a lot more than rhetoric. It is easy for us to avoid the hard questions by debating two points of view that obviously differ. For the debate to be anything more than distracting noise, we need to focus on wisdom and her children, not on winning an argument.
Such is the wisdom of Luke 7.