My
youngest son is really enjoying Science at school at the moment. The other day,
he came home and was telling me all about experiments they had been doing using
Universal Indicator. When a green liquid Universal Indicator was added to other
liquids of unknown pH value, that liquid turned green if it was neutral (pH 7);
yellow or orange if mildly acidic (pH 6-3) and red if strongly acidic (pH
<3); blue if mildly alkaline (pH 8-11) and purple if strongly alkaline (pH
>11).
It
was a joy to see him so enthused about growing in understanding. But alongside
understanding, my prayer for my children is that they grow in wisdom. The Old
Testament book of Proverbs tells us
that wisdom is essential in order to be righteous, that is, in order to act
justly, to habitually do the morally right thing even in complex situations or
circumstances where we are put under pressure to do what is morally wrong but
expedient. But in our day, where morality is robustly contested, and ethical
codes are slippery, it can be hard to know whether someone is wise or merely
knowledgeable.
James
gives us an indicator for the presence of wisdom, and that indicator measures
gentleness. The more gentleness a person shows, the wiser they are. A polymath
with a razor-sharp wit that cuts others down and puts them in their place is a
knowledgeable fool.
Gentleness
is under-rated, over-looked, easily dismissed; but it is as essential for our
flourishing as good soil and light rain and the warmth of the sun are for plants
to grow. Wherever it is recognised, its quality is understood to be strength
expressed with love. That is why James describes true wisdom as being ‘willing
to yield’: it takes great strength, and love, to not always need to be right,
to not have to have the final word.
Perhaps
that is why Jesus has a child placed in the middle of the disciples, like a
lamb among wolves, and then takes it up in his arms. The gentleness — the strength
and love — of God disarming whatever brilliant credentials the disciples had
for taking centre-stage. May we also be taken up in his arms today, and learn
to be gentle, and so be found wise.
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