What is wisdom? Does it have something to do with whether or not you put tomatoes in a fruit salad?

Wisdom is a key Biblical concept, undervalued in the modern day. I rarely hear preaching about wisdom, for all it’s at the root of the problem of Eden and therefore we might assume also involved in the atonement. We are waking up again to the importance of spiritual formation, and maturity, which is the same thing in essence. At the core of maturing is growing wise.

The famous quip that knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit and wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad isn’t entirely off. Wisdom is understanding, rather than knowledge. Wisdom is ‘know-how,’ earned typically through experience and habit. The Bible tells us that the experience most apt for the teaching of wisdom is suffering (Romans 5). It is not pastorally wise to tell certain young men whose pride is all over their faces, but unknown to them, that what they really need to do to grow in Christ is be broken like bread; there is some truth to it, nonetheless.

Please don’t ask me how I know.

There’s a connection here, between pride and wisdom. They might not immediately seem like opposites; strictly they aren’t. However, if the sin of the garden is pride but involves eating from the tree of wisdom we should expect there to be a connection. The eating of the fruit of wisdom’s tree was an act of grasping, taking what should have been waited for. Wisdom comes to us but cannot be grasped.

But what is it? There are a number of ways to answer this with reference to certain branches of philosophy (we might speak of tacit knowledge, for example), but perhaps it’s better to take a step back and speak in broader brush strokes.

Wisdom is a glimpse of reality and the sense of how to live in the grain of it. Wisdom is living in accordance with what is real.

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