This is my contribution to the August issue of the Fishkill UMC newsletter.

Reinhold Niebuhr is credited with a variation of the following:

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

When he became king, Solomon asked God to give him the wisdom needed to make the proper decisions.

The compilers of the Old Testament thought enough of wisdom to include five books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs) devoted to the topic of wisdom.  The wisdom books in the Old Testament offer shift from the historical books that preceeded them and focus on existential questions about God, humanity, Creation, and the nature of evil and suffering.  It focuses on daily human experiences: how is life to be lived?

The wisdom literature of the Old Testament is comparable to other ancient Near Eastern compositions from Mesopotamia and Egypt that reflected on the problems of everyday life.

But this raises the question, “What exactly is wisdom?

Wisdom is the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments.  Wisdom involves an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding, as well as a tolerance for the uncertainties of life. There’s an awareness of how things play out over time, and it confers a sense of balance.

Wisdom is an art.  How do we deal with various situations and achieve a good life?  It is by teaching; the lessons gained from experience and transmitted at various levels, from education at home all the way through traditional education processes.

The task of wisdom is often to ask, “What is the best path to walk?”

But wisdom is not something that one automatically gains.  It requires everyone to act.  You must ask questions.

And therein lies the problem.  We have stopped asking questions.  We have allowed others to tell us the answers without stating the questions.

As I have written before, we have become very good at answering the questions when the answer is in the back of the book.  But what will happen when the question asked comes from a book that hasn’t been written yet.

I see in the discussion of “forever chemicals” the results of being unable to answer such questions.  These chemicals have some value for society, but they do not break down over time and remain in the environment forever.  It would seem that when these chemicals were made, the focus was on what the chemicals could do and not what would happen after they were used.

The discussion of climate change is another topic that demands we, the people, ask questions.  There is, in my mind, no doubt as to what is happening to the climate of this planet but too many people are not willing to ask the questions needed to slow down and perhaps, if it is not too late, reverse the changes humankind has made to this world.

Some people would rather we not ask questions.  They will say that asking questions, especially about one’s faith, will lead to a diminished faith.  But asking questions should help one understand their faith.  Go back and read the Book of Job again.  It is a dialogue between Job, Job’s friends, and God that teaches and enlightens everyone, including each of us.

Many years ago, our ancestors were gathered around a fire, perhaps looking at the stars above or perhaps preparing for the next day.  No doubt, some of the children asked the elders, “Where did we come from?”  And the lesson began when one of the elders, answered, “In the beginning . . .”

Some may be satisfied with that answer, but we are curious and want to do more.  And each question that we answer generates two more questions.  And from this our wisdom grows. 

As we grow in wisdom, we find that God values and responds to our questions and wisdom.