With a college English professor “word-nerd” for a father, our kitchen table became a playground for words and etymologies. Meanings of words were regularly parsed and carved up more thoroughly than an Angus steer at a slaughterhouse, all packaged with origin, inflection and tense labels. So, my words and I stepped into some embarrassing faux pas from time to time. “I’m excited to be a sophomore this year,” exclaimed 15-year-old me. I knew by my dad’s chuckle and grin that I’d stepped into a linguistic manure pile that was about to fertilize the dinner-time conversation with fruitful and uncomfortable dialog.
“Sophos is the Greek word for wisdom,” dad explained. “Moros, where we get our word for moron, is the Greek word for fool. So, the freshman knows he knows nothing, and the sophomore, with a year under his belt, was, tongue-in-cheek, referred to as a wise fool, for thinking he knows everything!”
I knew best to simply accept the sophomore label and continue to eat my country style steak and mashed potatoes!
Humankind’s relationship with wisdom has always been sophomoric. God, the Creator and sustainer of all things, did not leave an old set of construction plans laying around with details of how He made everything, nor did He leave the answer as to why. Adam and Eve’s progeny spread throughout the earth, using their natural, all-be-it, God given intellect, to try to figure out how and why we are here. Not until God selected Abraham did revelation begin to speed up, and perhaps in Moses through the written Word did we begin to see behind the curtain the answers to life’s great mysteries. We learn that we are broken creatures, designed originally for representing God on the earth as we maintain its glory, by walking daily with Him. We were given Godly characteristics like language and the ability to rule. As creatures, we were also given the ability to multiply, learn and grow in time and space with God and with each other. And then, in Adam, our “headwaters” were turned, corrupted and polluted. Suddenly, we became creatures turned in on ourselves, self-absorbed, narcissistic, and self-worshiping.
This week we will soak in a counterintuitive thought: the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of humans. We all combined have our degrees, our science and the omniscient Google at our fingertips. We teeter on the precipice of intellectual greatness as we begin to access the new god of our age — AI, being applied to an increasing number of fields of study (and no, this was not generated by AI!). The goal of the people of Babel, so it seems, represents humanity in all epochs. We are much more like Corinth than we care to admit. We sit at God’s table and declare, “it is such a great time to be alive! I’m excited to be a sophomore!”
One would think that the answer to a lack of wisdom would be to acquire more wisdom. But our counterintuitive and loving Father is about to mess with our categories. Notice, as you draw close to God this week, the true nature of Godly wisdom. Notice also, that when you seize that wisdom for yourself, basking in its greatness and stabilized by its Author, that you will look foolish to the rest of the world! God’s children are in an amazing situation throughout the earth. The ALL-WISE God lives in each of us. We don’t need to strive like the people of Babel or the people of this age. In fact, if you memorize and meditate on 1 Corinthians 1:30, you will begin to grasp a counterintuitive wisdom that will set you apart for eternity and embrace something far more satisfying than country style steak, mashed potatoes and the wisdom of man!
As you prepare for tonight’s home group, look back over the devotions from the past week. Which devotions were most meaningful to you and why?