Cultivating the Discipline of Wisdom

Paul, speaking to the Church at Ephesus, told the community that in order to be authentic followers of Christ, they needed to cultivate the discipline of wisdom.  This, Paul explains in his letters, is because the world's wisdom is actually foolishness, but will appear as wisdom.  Similarly, God's wisdom, which is greater than human wisdom, will appear as foolishness to the world.

The cultivation of God's wisdom and the recognition that human wisdom is actually foolishness, is needed because we remain part of the world, and the world's wisdom seems self evident to us.  In ancient Ephesus, this would have been reflected in the Temple of Artemis, considered one of the seven wonders of the world.  The Temple was within sight wherever you stood in Ephesus, just like the wisdom of the Greeks was so imbedded in everyday thought that it was second nature.

To put it very mildly, the importance of cultivating wisdom in the contemporary American Church has been largely forgotten.  The notion that God's wisdom is foolishness to the world is often considered a license in the Christian community to abandon the need to cultivate wisdom.  The opposite is the case: our wisdom must exceed and transcend the wisdom of the world.  This is the whole point of being the Church: gathering for collective worship, prayer, bible study, and good works.  Through being the Church, we see God's wisdom and the foolishness of the world's wisdom.