...the wisdom from above...

By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” Proverbs 24:3-4

Last week, in our ResLife leadership practicum lecture, Dr. Tim Muehloff, Associate Professor of Communication, used the above verse to illustrate a communication principle: and that is, how to proceed with the knowledge you’ve gained after you have found out what a person believes, why these beliefs seem right to that person, and made connections as to where you agree. He asserted that after we have gained the facts and information, wisdom, which is “the artful application of knowledge” is necessary. And we artfully apply knowledge in wisdom in order to understand, which, by Dr. Muehlhoff’s definition is the “prioritizing of facts, information and beliefs.”

Out of all of the principles Dr. Muehloff articulated, I think this principle – the procession of the communicator in great wisdom and understanding, baffles me the most. It’s not that I have nothing to say. I usually always have something to say. Whether what I have to say is wise or born from understanding is quite questionable. Recently though I have found I am caught up, or held down, by the post-modern winds and waves when it comes to philosophies of life, philosophies of morality, general questions about right and wrong... It seems my reason, just as much as my emotions can lead me anywhere and everywhere. I know this isn’t entirely true. A cat is often simply black. And a door opens and closes. But ask me what you should do in the depths of your depression – pills or prayer? Ask me if you should marry a guy you love and respect, but don’t necessarily get all ‘Notebook’ over? I can postulate. I can muse over the options, the possibilities, the paths you could or could opt not to take. Beyond this – and even this is lacking – I offer little.

Thus, I have come to the great and lofty conclusion that I am not enough, that I just don’t know everything. So, recently the necessity of God’s revelation has weighed heavily on my mind and heart. There are passages I understand; I gravitate to these. However, there are many that I don’t resonate with as readily. I ask, “Really God?” and then I usually move on. It makes sense I would move on; it’s tiring, and I am tired. It’s often seemingly fruitless laboring over a passage to try to understand more about the character of God that you didn’t already know, or you were not already taught growing up. I’m not talking about the passages I am overtly convicted by; I am talking about the passages where God seems strange, or I think, “If I were God…”

However, if I honestly believe I am fallen, that both my emotion and my reason are perverted and distorted from the way they were made to be, I must seek to understand the character of God as it is, not just as I relate to it. I must be changed by that which I, in my current emotional and mental state, conflict with. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2: 16-17 that, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
If I want to be thoroughly equipped for the good work of communication I need the Scripture that is God-breathed hidden in my heart. I need the wisdom from above. The wise counsel from below (at the tender age of twenty-one, mine being among the least of these) is flawed; it can leave men flailing to and fro with the winds and waves that are the eras of this world – from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to Postmodernism, etc… I want to impart freedom to those in the chains of sorrow, or sin, or pain. But I cannot on my own merit impart that freedom which I too am given by grace. Only God can. The only way in which I have received true freedom myself is through Him – whether in spoken Scripture, or in the mere presence of His Spirit, the unspoken Word. This last principle of Dr. Muehlhoff’s is a tough one – though I think he definitely acknowledges this, and gives great space in his communication philosophies for the ‘wisdom from above.’ Nonetheless, it’s tough because to hear is, yes, a first big step; but to know what to say often seems like a cataclysmic gap that is utterly impassable. Praise be to God for His divine revelation.

P.S. - G. Stump: 100 %