Living Skillfully

Study Proverbs or Ecclesiastes long enough and you’ll begin to realize that Solomon really was the wisest man that ever lived. The guy boils down all the peripherals and puts them in one short idea: fear the Lord. The opening to Proverbs (1:1-7) and the closing of Ecclesiastes (12:13-14) state what all of life is really about. When you cut the crap, when you scrape past the nitty gritty details of life that seem to blind us far too often there is this left: fear the Lord. How do you keep from sin? Fear the Lord.

Proverbs 1:1-7 seems to lay this out pretty clearly. Solomon does not pull any punches in laying out his purpose for the book. He starts by talking at lenght about knowledge and discretion, and wisdom. Knowledge and discretion both seem to have a cognitive aspect. They deal in some respect with the head and with knowing what to do. Then you have wisdom. Wisdom has this idea of skill in living. It involves the application of that knowledge and discretion to situations encountered in daily life.

Knowledge and wisdom are the two most basic requirements in life. The young must know what to do, while the old must do the things they know. All of life is learning what to do and how to do it. You will always be struggling with one or the other, or maybe both. The starting point for both knowledge and wisdom: the fear of the Lord.