Whose Eyes are You Wise in?

The year was 1983; I had just gotten glasses for the first time and was trying, very unsuccessfully, to achieve Farrah Fawcett’s “wings” with my hair. None of it was pretty.

When school started that fall, I found myself in an advanced math class. Again. If you know much about me, you know that was a mistake. For two years I’d been complaining – begging, really – to be put in a regular math class, but due to my over-achieving personality and anxiety, I always managed get through the advanced classes with an A. But I knew it was bound to catch up with me.

I found myself in this class – maybe you’ve heard of it – called GEOMETRY. Oh, geometry, I blame you for so much!

Now, just so you know, I honestly did fine in Algebra, most of it actually made sense to me. But geometry – this was a different animal altogether. And the weird thing about it was, I really felt like I should understand it.

I mean, I had all the knowledge I thought I should need to blow through geometry; I knew how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide; I knew what obtuse and acute angles were, I could name and explain all the shapes. And as far as the theorems go, I knew and could explain what a theory was – how much harder could theorems be? I mean, isn’t that what geometry is all about? Apparently not.

No matter how hard I tried I absolutely could not apply the knowledge I had already obtained to this beast called geometry. All the compass was good for was poking a hole in my graph paper – or poking a hole in my finger; the theorems were like Greek to me; and nothing I was asked to do with angles or shapes made any sense at all. I was lost – and I mean dropped-with-no-food-or-water-in-the-Amazonian-jungle lost – hopelessly lost.

This kind of reminds me where we find some of the Corinthian Believers in the first chapter of I Corinthians. Paul, after his usual greeting and some compliments to his friends in the Corinthian church, goes right into some of the issues he saw in the lives of these Believers – and it all seems vaguely familiar.

Paul was dealing with two different groups of people in Corinth: first, he had the Jews, who had a real problem with Jesus being the Messiah, due to the fact that He was crucified. The whole crucifixion thing was shameful and humiliating – nothing that the Warrior-Messiah they were looking for would ever have to go through.

Then you had the Gentiles – made up of mostly Greeks. The Greeks believed that higher knowledge – yeah, let’s go ahead and call it humanism - was paramount, and, sorry, the whole crucifixion thing and simplicity of the Gospel just didn’t make any sense to them.

The one thing these two groups had in common was this other thing you also may have heard of: pride. Both of these groups thought they knew more and better than God Himself, what kind of Messiah they should have and how to figure out how to be saved. Can you believe it? I mean, no one I know would ever try to lean on their own understanding where God is concerned! Um, OK, that is absolutely false…

Now, just in case you think my geometry example is a little juvenile for you, how about this,

“God, I’ve thought a lot about this and I really think my friend who is dying of cancer should be healed and live. I mean, she has two daughters she wants to see married, her husband needs her, she was so healthy before cancer and is so young. If I’m in remission, she should be too. There – I said what I said.”

Ever been there? Ever been through something you just didn’t understand in your own wisdom and decided the knowledge you could apply to the situation should be enough? I have; many, many times.

Take a look at what Paul has to say about all this in I Corinthians 1:20-25,

So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never know Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Greeks say it’s all nonsense. But to those who are called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

Basically, our strength and wisdom are no match for God’s and it’s just silly and prideful to think otherwise. God’s plan to save us through Christ’s death was always God’s perfect plan, even though we may not understand or even agree. Just like when our lives take twists and turns that we don’t understand or even like, we must trust God that He knows best and will walk with us through whatever comes our way. As Isaiah 55:9 says,

So My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Just like my experience in geometry, there will be many times in this life that our prior knowledge and/or learned wisdom will never be enough to understand God’s plans – and when we try to understand God through human effort, we’ll be in over our head every time. Let’s commit to trusting God, spending time getting to know Him, and being willing to lay down understanding in exchange for the security we find as God’s children, held in the very palm of His hand. It’s not always easy, but always the right decision, in the end.