Gaining Wisdom

At the BYU Forum address on Tuesday Mark DeMoss, an evangelical who founded the DeMoss group which is a public relations firm serving Christian organizations, gave a wonderful talk on how incivility and Christianity are not compatible. That’s a basic feature of Living in Truth. When you are uncivil to anyone you immediately cast yourself into the Pit. As I said it is a wonderful talk and if you’d like to read it or hear it for yourself, go here.

In the course of the talk, Mr. DeMoss spoke about wisdom and said something that I really liked. He said that every day he reads a chapter from the book of Proverbs—one of the books of wisdom literature found in the Old Testament. There are 31 books in Proverbs and so if it is the sixth day of the month he reads the sixth chapter or on the tenth day the tenth chapter of Proverbs. By doing this he has read the words of wisdom found in Proverbs every month since he began the reading.

So I decided to try it. I won’t do it all my life, but for a month or two at least I’m going to read Proverbs as he does. I know the value of repetition. I’ve experienced that before when I studied King Benjamin’s great sermon found in Mosiah 2-5 every day for four months. That’s what led to the writing of my book Spiritually Centered Motherhood. It was surprising how much I learned from that experience, and so I am excited to read Proverbs the next few months.

But it also made me think about how valuable it would be to define 31 of the great sermons in the scriptures, the sermons that really speak to my own heart and then read those sermons one a day each day of the month. It would be another great way to learn and study. Maybe I’ll try that next!

Wise Men

Of all the stories associated with the birth of Jesus Christ, the story of the Wise Men raises the most questions and intrigues me most. How did they know about the King of the Jews? How did they recognize the star? What made them come so far? Who were they? Did it take them weeks, or months, or years to arrive in Bethlehem?

I once heard a scholar speak about them and his assumption was that since they were from the East they were non Jewish. But there were many Jewish communities in the East as well as in Egypt. Therefore, my guess is that the Wise Men were Jewish people of the Diaspora whose families had been taken from Palestine during the Assyrian or Babylonian conquests or at least men influenced by Jewish people of the Diaspora.

But there are still more questions. Did angels announce the birth to the Wise Men as they did to the shepherds? Or did the Wise Men learn from scriptures or an oral tradition that a star would announce Christ’s birth? The wording in Matthew makes me think they had scriptures or an oral tradition that they recognized as fulfilled when they saw the new star. All we are told is that they saw the sign in the East and then traveled west to Judea—symbolically they followed the path of the sun. It was a long journey, and once in Jerusalem they began to inquire, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2).

News of their inquiries concerning a king reached Herod, and he sent for them under the guise of wanting to worship this new king. But in fact, Herod was troubled by prophecies that a child would be born who would rule Israel–after all, he was the king of this land. And being a ruthless king he would not let such a thing happen.

After consulting with his priests, he told the Wise Men of the prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and sent them on their way after instructing them to return to tell him when they had found the new king. But being warned by an angel that Herod’s intent wasn’t to worship the king, but to kill Him, they refused the order and after worshiping the Infant King returned to the east without telling Herod.

As the prophecy foretold the Wise Men found Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in Bethlehem, but not in the stable. By then Mary and Joseph had moved out of the stable and into a house. I often wonder what these intelligent, wealthy men thought as they beheld the helpless infant born to such humble parents. They’d had a lot of time to build up expectations as they traveled to Bethlehem. Did they go away confirmed and elated or disappointed and wondering? The decision was theirs to make, but I tend to think they were jubilant. They knew they had found the King of Kings.

Tradition always tells the story of the Wise Men following a star, but really they were following their own hearts. Thousands saw the sign, the star in the sky, but few had studied enough to be able to recognize it and fewer still cared enough to see where it led. No, it wasn’t the star they followed, it was their own hearts that guided them to travel west, to find their Savior, and to refuse to tell Herod. Thus we have a beautiful definition of what it means to be wise; to follow the righteous promptings of your heart.

That is one question the story does answer; the wise men and women of the world are those who follow the path of light to find their King.

Share Your Wisdom

An old West African story tells us that Nyame, the sky god, once gave a spider named Anansi a huge pot filled with all the wisdom in the world. Upon giving Anansi the great gift, Nyame instructed him to share the wisdom with everyone. But when Anansi looked into the pot and saw all the wonderful things it contained, he became greedy and determined to keep it all for himself. But keeping it meant he must protect it and hide it from others so he determined that he would hide the pot on the top of the tallest tree in the jungle. Surely no one would find it there.

Holding the pot full of wisdom, Anansi began to climb the tree, but even with all his arms and legs climbing was difficult while trying to hold the pot. Anansi’s son, Intikuma, watched his son struggle up the tree and shouted to his father, “It would be much easier if you would tie the pot to your back.”

At this, Anansi became angry. “A young spider knows more than I who have the pot of wisdom!” and in his rage he threw the pot to the ground. The pot burst and pieces of wisdom flew everywhere. Many, many people gathered up the bits of wisdom and shared them with their family and friends and that is why to this very day no one person has all the wisdom in the world. Instead each of us has a little piece that we share with everyone else.

The Empty Cup

I love the old Japanese story that illustrates what it means to be humble: Early one morning a wise old monk answered a persistent pounding at his door to find a young monk on his doorstep. Without any words of greeting the young monk began, “I have studied with the best and wisest masters. I know Zen philosophy well, but I have been told that you are the wisest of all the masters and so I have come to be sure there is nothing I am missing.”

The old monk bowed politely and said, “Certainly. But before we begin come have tea with me.”

The two seated themselves and the old monk began to pour tea into the young monk’s cup, but when the cup was full he didn’t stop. He continued to pour hot tea until it flowed over the side of the cup, onto the table, and into the young monks lap.

The young monk jumped and began to shout. “You fool! You are no wise man. You can’t even pour tea.”

The old monk bowed again and replied, “You are as full as this cup. You have no room for more thoughts. When you have an empty mind come back and then you can learn something.”

"Wise in Our Ways"

In 1 Samuel 18:14 we are told that “David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and the Lord was with him.” The word translated as wisely is sakal and it means “to be prudent, to act circumspectly, to have insight, or to give attention to.” When we look at all the definitions of sakal it gives us a better feel for what David did to “act wisely in all his ways.”

Too often we move through our days like water flowing down a stream bed--without really thinking about what we are doing or where we are going. We just go where the stream bed takes us. But if we want to be like David when he was favored of the Lord, we need to “behave ourselves wisely” which means we need to pay attention to what we are doing. We need to consciously choose to Live in Truth and to avoid falling prey to Illusion.

This means we have to learn what Truth is all about and then when faced with decisions or circumstances that habit or tradition or the natural man have previously determined for us, we instead act prudently and with insight and give attention to consciously choosing to Live in Truth. In other words, we decide how fast to go, when to turn, when to stop, and which stream bed to follow instead of simply going with the current of the stream.

It takes effort, but it is worth it because when we Live in Truth “the Lord is with us.”