What is wisdom?  And are there different kinds of wisdom?

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

When the Queen of Sheba visits King Solomon (1Kings 10:1-10), she is entertained by his answers to all  her questions: this is proverbial wisdom, for which Solomon was justly famous.  The Book of Proverbs gives us a taste of this kind of wisdom, which teaches shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young, and understanding of the words of the wise and their riddles.  The fear of the Lord, however, is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs, 1:1- 7).

Solomon also possessed political wisdom, and used it to make alliances with the surrounding nations by marrying the daughters of many foreign kings.  On one level it was wise to allow his wives to worship their own gods on the mountain tops of Israel, where he built shrines and altars of sacrifice for them, but in doing so he displeased God: he lacked the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of another kind of wisdom, divine wisdom.

Solomon possessed marvelous practical wisdom, what we would call “know-how,” which is somewhat different from savoir-faire–a kind of cultural wisdom: how to do things well.  Someone (Nick auf der Mauer?) once said that Canada has had all the advantages of French culture, British political wisdom, and American know-how, and we’ve ended up with French political wisdom, British know-how, and American culture.  Perhaps there is some wisdom in this too.

Practical wisdom, know-how, is displayed in Solomon’s prosperity, in the magnificence of his palaces and his temple, in the administrative organization of his kingdom, and even in the multitude of his wives (700) and concubines (300).  It must have taken a lot of practical wisdom to operate such a household, and such a kingdom.  But, as Margaret Thatcher said after she became Prime Minister of Great Britain, running the government was no different from running her own household–except, perhaps, for a brief foray in the Falkland Islands. 

We are told that among the gods of Solomon’s wives was Astarte, the fertility goddess of the Sidonians, who was probably worshiped through sacred prostitution.  Another was Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites (1Kings 11:1-9), whose worship required human sacrifice, usually of infant children.  We can see why the Lord was angry with Solomon.  The account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19) is meant to teach that God is not pleased with this kind of offering, though, given the surrounding culture, it would have seemed normal at first that God could ask this, despite its contradiction of the promise of progeny, to say nothing of the pain it cost Abraham. 

Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman

What does Jesus have that Solomon doesn’t?  Jesus has divine wisdom–more than this, he is divine wisdom, he is the Logos, the Word and Wisdom of God.  When Jesus visits northern Galilee and the borders of Tyre and Sidon (Mark 7:24-30), he is close to territory that Solomon ceded to the King of Tyre in exchange for building materials–cedar of Lebanon–and for the help of skilled craftsmen in the building of the temple of Jerusalem.  This is Galilee of the Gentiles, where so many displaced foreigners had been resettled.   Jesus is crossing some religious and cultural borders here.  He goes secretly to the house of a gentile, and wants no one to know that he is there, but of course a Sidonian woman, who has heard of his power to heal, seeks him out.  She comes with her little daughter, who is seriously ill, which she understands as the work of a demon.  She does not seek the help of any pagan god or priest at a Sidonian shrine, she seeks out Jesus.  She falls at his feet and worships him.

Jesus uses the cultural wisdom of his own people to let her know that, in Jewish eyes, she is a dog, an unclean animal.  This is how dogs are still regarded in the Middle East, and in Africa and elsewhere as well.  I once had an experience of crossing a cultural boundary concerning dogs.  We had a couple of young Zambian Jesuits living with us while they were studying at the University of Guelph.  One day after supper I let our dog eat out of my bowl.  One of these young men came to me and said he found that very upsetting.  I told him that the bowl would be run through our high temperature dishwasher and be thoroughly sterilized (trying to impress him with our imported Canadian know-how).  But he said, “No, it’s not about germs; it’s about culture.  In my culture, a dog lives outside and does not eat from our dishes.”  I understood that the bowl had become culturally unclean.  It was one of those “unbreakable” Corelware bowls; I took a hammer and whacked it once, and it splintered into a thousand pieces.  I brought them to him and said that no one would ever eat out of that bowl again. 

Though Jesus insults the pleading woman, she stands her ground and counters with her peasant wisdom to answer back, saying, “Yes, Sir [Kyrie, Lord], but even the little house dogs [the pups that are being raised with the children] eat the scraps the fall from the children’s table.”  “For saying this [for speaking this word, this divine title, Lord],” Jesus answers, “Go–the demon has gone out of your daughter.”

Jesus goes beyond cultural and religious borders to encounter faith and to bring healing.  What frontiers, what visible borders of race and religion, and what sometimes invisible boundaries of culture, do we find ourselves encountering more than ever in our daily lives?  What kinds of wisdom, what discrete charity and spiritual discernment, do we need in order to go beyond our customary zones of comfort to discover faith, to bring hope and healing?