'I had learnt that wisdom and folly are like different kinds of food. Some are wholesome and others are not, but both can be served equally well on the finest china or the meanest earthenware. In just the same way wisdom and folly can be clothed alike in plain words or the finest flowers of speech.'Augustine is trying to communicate to us in this extract that wisdom and folly can both be dressed in similar ways, they can both be simply wise or simply foolish. Alternatively he says, things can be wise but said so in a way which is much harder to understand and also foolish but said so in a way which would cause doubt and deception as to whether it was foolish or not.
Christians are to seek the gift of discernment and of wisdom, that they may act correctly and avoid foolishness which could cause them to stumble away from God...indeed proberbs 8:11 says wisdom is 'more precious than rubies, nothing you desire can compare to her.' As Christians we must seek a heavenly wisdom and not an earthly wisdom which is not wisdom at all, but the folly which deceives and confuses, the folly covered in the 'finest flowers of speech' (1 Corinthians 2:14 - 15)
Recently I have been reading the blog maintained by writer Abraham Piper; it's concept is simple in that he uses just twenty words to complete every post...no more, no less. It has been wonderfully refreshing as he manages to capture abstract concepts, make pithy observations and provoke deep discussion in a very concise way. Can we say this type of 'simple wisdom' is greater than wisdom which is not perhaps simple, but is nevertheless 'wisdom' in itself?
No comments:
Post a Comment