Understanding in Search of Courage

Scripture: James 3:13-17

Over the years, the New Yorker magazine has featured a number of cartoons with a common theme. These cartoons depict a guru sitting on top of a mountain. He is bearded, gaunt, and sparsely dressed. In front of the guru sits a truth-seeker, some poor soul who has struggled to the top of the mountain in order to hear the sage’s words of wisdom. And, of course, that’s where the cartoons get funny.

In one, the guru offers this advice: “You do the hokeypokey and you turn yourself around—that’s what it’s all about.” In another, the guru asks this of his student: “If I knew the meaning of life, would I be sitting here in my underpants?” I love the cartoon where the guru is glaring at the student and saying “If I told you the secret of making light, flaky piecrust it wouldn’t be much of a secret anymore, now would it?” But my favorite is the guru who shares this jewel of enduring wisdom with the disciple who has come so far to hear it: “All outdoor carpeting can be indoor carpeting, but not all indoor carpeting can be outdoor carpeting.”

We laugh at these cartoons because they correspond with our experience. We seek after wisdom. We usually find something else.

The importance of seeking and finding wisdom constitutes one of the major themes of the Bible, and particularly the Hebrew Bible. Scholars use the shorthand phrase “wisdom literature” to refer to the books of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. And wisdom has a central place in some of the stories we find in Genesis and Exodus and in the verses of many of the Psalms. The Hebrew Bible tells us that wisdom is worth more than gold or silver or rubies and that it is “a tree of life and a blessing to those who lay hold upon it.”

The Hebrew Bible also provides us with a figure we have come to think of as the very embodiment of wisdom—Solomon. Indeed, Solomon’s name has become so closely associated with wisdom and good judgment that we tend to forget that the scriptures express considerable ambivalence about some of his decision-making—for example, his construction of shrines to the gods of foreign nations and his use of forced labor to support his elaborate building programs. Those of us who revere Thomas Jefferson as an inspired architect of political freedom, but despair over him as a slaveholder, know what it means to have such conflicting sensibilities about someone we want to remember as wise.

Wisdom also plays a significant, if less conspicuous, role in the New Testament. In the parables of Jesus, it is the wise man who builds his house upon a rock and it is the wise bridesmaids who bring oil for their lamps as they wait for the arrival of the bridegroom. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus describes himself as one “greater than Solomon.” And in First Corinthians, Paul calls Jesus “the wisdom of God” itself.

Yet, for all this, neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament has much to say about what wisdom is. The scriptures tell us we must get it, but tell us very little about how we’ll know it when we’ve got it. Wisdom comes across as a valued, but vague sort of thing.

In the same vein, great thinkers throughout the centuries have struggled in their efforts to define wisdom, and, as a result, have described it in very different terms. The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero described wisdom as the capacity to discriminate between good and evil. The nineteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant said that “wisdom is organized life.” The twentieth century philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined wisdom as the ability to “recognize the significant in the factual.” And the idea that “true wisdom manifests itself through our instincts” was expressed by that prominent twenty-first century philosopher Oprah Winfrey. Just about everybody has an opinion about how wisdom should be defined.

But wisdom seems to elude definition. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once famously said: “[P]erhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly [defining hard core pornography], but I know it when I see it.” Maybe the same holds true for wisdom.

All of which brings us to the book of James—a book that scholars have described as falling squarely within the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible. But James’s writing is remarkable because he does not simply praise wisdom—he attempts to give us some sense of what it is, and what it is not. In the process, James tells us several things about wisdom that are surprising, revelatory, and immensely useful in our quest after this precious virtue.

Let’s start here. James tells us that wisdom is not “envious,” “boastful,” or “selfish.” Wisdom, he says, is “peaceable,” “gentle,” “willing to yield,” and “full of mercy.” Now, this is deeply interesting because James chooses words that we do not ordinarily associate with wisdom. The words do, however, have a familiar ring. They bear a striking similarity to Paul’s words in I Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.” Wisdom, it turns out, looks a lot like love.

This tells us something important about the nature of wisdom. Wisdom must have compassion. Indeed, the idea of "heartless wisdom" is oxymoronic.

And this also tells us something important about the nature of love, at least as our faith defines it. For, just as James describes wisdom by using words we usually associate with love, so Paul describes love by using words we usually associate with wisdom—as you’ll remember, Paul goes on to say that love “rejoices in the truth.” Love is not warm and fuzzy and soft and mushy and cuddly and gelatinous. It has more spine than that. Certainly, love means caring about others. But it means caring about the truth as well.

James also tells us that wisdom does not consist simply of an internal thought process. Wisdom must show itself. It must make itself known through the “good fruits” of our “good lives” and our “good works.” Wisdom acts. It engages with the world. It does not sit on top of a mountain in splendid isolation. It does not wait around for things to change.

Perhaps you’ve heard the joke about the couple who had their first child and were very excited to hear him speak. Unfortunately, the child said absolutely nothing for the first year, or the second year, or the third year, or the fourth year of his life. Then, one day in his fifth year, the boy looked down at his breakfast plate and said “The toast is burned.” His parents rejoiced that he had finally spoken, but asked why he had chosen this as the occasion for his first words. “Well,” he said, “everything’s been pretty good until now.” Wisdom isn’t like that. Wisdom isn't passive.

I think that James tells us something else about wisdom, although he makes this point less directly. In my view, James also tells us that wisdom cannot act, cannot engage with the world, and cannot make a difference without courage. Think about it. James tells us that a life of wisdom is one “without a trace of partiality.” That requires us to put aside our comfortable biases and familiar prejudices. And that requires courage. James tells us that a life of wisdom is one without “hypocrisy.” That requires us to put aside our easy compromises and to embrace a life of integrity. And that requires courage.

Perhaps this explains why the great hymn of Harry Emerson Fosdick prays for God to “grant us wisdom, grant us courage.” Wisdom without courage is pointless intellectual self-absorption. And courage without wisdom is an unguided missile.

In reflecting on this over the past few weeks, a phrase kept running through my mind that I think has some utility here. The phrase, in its original Latin, is “fides quaerens intellectum.” It is St. Anselm’s definition of theology, and it means “faith in search of understanding.” It occurred to me that this may suggest a potential definition of wisdom, a definition completely consistent with what James tells us here. Wisdom, I propose to you, is understanding in search of courage.

So, would you be wise? Well, there are your marching orders: just stop being selfish and ambitious and boastful and false and earthly and unspiritual and partial and hypocritical; and just start being good and peaceable and gentle and merciful and righteous and pure. Does anyone have any questions?

Well, that leads us to James’s final point: wisdom—true wisdom—comes “from above.” It comes from God. We know it exists. We know that because we see it and sometimes we are the beneficiaries of it and occasionally we even have it. And we know we can’t achieve wisdom on our own. We know that because we know a bit about ourselves and about what human nature is like. That much wisdom, if no more, God has already conferred upon us.

So this passage from James can lead us to a better understanding of wisdom and can help us know it when we see it. I’d like to demonstrate this by telling you a story that is somewhat obscure in this context, but makes the point. As many of you know, I teach law school classes and am an enthusiastic student of legal history. So here’s a story from that history for you to consider.

A number of years ago, a suspect was arrested and charged with committing a serious crime. The defendant was tried and convicted without much ado, because there was no question of guilt. There was also no question about what the law required. The crime was a capital offense, so the defendant was sentenced to death and brought before the judge for the imposition of that punishment. The judge prepared to announce the sentence, but before doing so paused for a moment and offered these words to those who had come to observe: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

There you have it. Wisdom. Not boastful or false to the truth. Not earthly or unspiritual. Not envious or selfish or ambitious. Not partial or hypocritical. Just peaceable and gentle and merciful. And pure. And courageous.

Of course, we are a frail and faulty species. So we will spend more time going up the mountain than sitting on top of it. We will spend more of our hours seeking wisdom than finding it. But we can take some consolation from knowing that there is wisdom in the search as well. In this connection, it might help us to remember that there were once three wise men who went on a quest; that they were wise even at the beginning of their journey; and that we therefore do not call them wise because of what they found, but because they had the understanding—and the courage—to go looking for it.

Let us go and do likewise.

Amen.