The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Way back when we were eleventh graders, Billy and I devised an escape from shop class.
After all, we were destined to be professional basketball players so no need to learn welding or woodworking.
Measuring a board twice before you sawed it in half? A half is half, right? Pretty clear just from looking at it.
With all the tools of the shop before us, we each took a long dowel rod and hammered nails in one end. Then we used a grinder to make the end of the nail sharp.
From there, we asked Mr. Toney if we could police the school grounds for trash.
Mr. Toney may have looked at us and thought, “Those two boys are doing a good deed to help the school.” More likely he thought, “Those two boys will be nothing but professional loafers, so best get them out of my shop.”
Either way, he gave us permission to police the school grounds.
We slyly worked towards the old gym on the other side of the campus. Once there, Billy and I ducked inside.
We spent the next hour shooting baskets, more like professional loafers than professional basketball players.
We pitied our classmates back at shop class toiling with welders, cutting torches, or measuring boards twice.
The next day, with sharpened dowel rods in hand, we again petitioned Mr. Toney to police the school grounds.
He agreed. He agreed the next day as well, cementing in our minds that he just wanted rid of Billy and me.
On that third day, Billy was in the middle of one of his patented jump shots off the top of the backboard when Mr. Smith, the high school principal, strolled into the gym.
He didn’t ask what we were doing since that was obvious. He simply said, “Let’s go to my office, boys.”
After we suffered through a paddling, Billy and I never missed shop class again, much to Mr. Toney’s disappointment. The important point to make, however, concerns wisdom.
Were Billy and I wise to fabricate a lie, causing our absence from shop class in order to shoot basketballs? It’s not a complicated question with several possible answers depending on circumstances. No.
When Solomon landed on the cusp of becoming king, he asked God to bless him with profound wisdom rather than more riches or power. God found favor in Solomon’s request, making Solomon the wisest person who ever lived.
Reading 1 Kings 3:9, we find the exact wording of Solomon’s request to God: “So give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?”
Verse 12 provides God’s answer: “Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning heart, so that there has been no one like you before you, nor shall one like you arise after you.”
Think of that. No one before Solomon nor after Solomon equaled him in wisdom. God declared it so.
Wisdom and knowledge are not the same. Knowledge can aid wisdom, but wisdom resides further up the mountain than knowledge.
Yet wisdom is simple. The wisest man in the history of the world defines it: “…to discern between good and evil.”
Wisdom is simply knowing what is good and what is evil—what is right and what is wrong.
Billy and I may have possessed superior basketball skills, but we balanced it out with a complete lack of wisdom. We chose ‘wrong,’ and our posteriors paid a heavy price.
The world also gets it wrong. We live in the age of post-wisdom because relativism has permeated nearly every facet of life. Relativism blurs the distinction between right and wrong.
Now, right is only right under certain circumstances. Wrong can become right if certain circumstances exist. I’m betting Mr. Smith would have laughed if Billy and me had protested using relativism.
After laughing, he would have uttered, “Grab your ankles, boys.”
But this is about you and the easy yoke Christ offers.
If you possess Solomon’s capacity to discern between good and evil, right and wrong, you can know unshakeable peace when you side with what’s good and right.