wisdom justified...

“To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’ For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.” - Luke 7:31-35

Matthew says, “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

First look at this passage gave me the following thoughts. I admit, I did little to study the deeper context and cross references, but I feel what I am thinking about this is, in itself, a good thought nonetheless.

There is a sickness in society today. It’s called shallow thinking. People don’t think things through or think for themselves. They believe what they hear and if they don’t, they don’t go so far as to decide what they believe, they just don’t believe in anything. There’s a playboy mentality rompin’ around our society. I’m not referring to sex or the magazine, although there is that too in varying degrees. I’m referring to the term playboy, as someone who just wants to have fun, find pleasure wherever possible, and not have to think. While there is due justice for people to have fun and God himself says that in His presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, people need to think. 

King Herod wanted Jesus to do magic tricks for his entertainment and when Jesus didn’t oblige, Herod threw a fit and sent Jesus away. Are we, today, in danger of objectifying people in similar ways? Seeing a friend or an acquaintance as someone who can dance or weep to our flute or our dirge? Are we looking for performers to please us? 

In the church I fear that it may play out this way but with a slightly different twist. Are we in the church in danger of judging too quickly, too rashly, with little thought? Do we not think things through and consider the different, the new experience, the person who seems unusual as possibly a carrier of wisdom, of relationship with God? Or do we write them off with little thought because they don’t fit into our mold. When we play the flute, they don’t dance like we want them to, or when we sing the dirge, then don’t cry…. “Hmmm, that’s weird, this person doesn’t fit into my metron of understanding, they must be a kook, a weirdo, they don’t fit into MY Christian mold.” 

Yet wisdom is justified by ALL her children. Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. The first of these two statements speaks diversity to me. The word “All” implores me to accept the new experience, the different Christian, the unusual. God created a lot of people and there are a lot of cultures and a lot of ways to think. People come from different backgrounds and who are we to say that our way of relating to God and “doing” Christianity is the right way. In many ways it is foreign to the Biblical church model anyway. The second statement shows the importance of not judging the different right away. We don’t write people off, we love and accept them, and their fruit tells us the story. What comes from their heart and their lives is the witness to who they are and Whose they are. Whether they have a different set of theological viewpoints, or they just look different (tats, peircings, clothes, etc.) all applies to this.

When our eyes are set on Him and we have a healthy understanding of God’s word and a rich relationship with Jesus, there comes within us a capacity to love the different and the unusual. 

I’ll speak on love’s capacity later…