Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A Poor Man's Wisdom

While looking into the word nevertheless for yesterday’s post, I came across an interesting story in the Bible that I felt would make a good post by itself. It comes from Ecclesiastes 9:12-18.
This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.

I immediately thought of how this passage applies to writing. No matter how brilliant your writing is, if you don’t have a platform, people will doubt what you say. On the other hand, there are some real idiots who have written books filled with garbage that people read because the author has a platform.

Of a related nature is how this relates to modern Christianity. I’ve heard a lot of sermons from many different preachers. I’ve heard pastors of small country churches with fewer than fifty members that were more true to the word of God than some of the sermons I’ve heard from popular preachers. But so many people will ignore people like that because they don’t have a large church or make a lot of money. Instead, they’ll turn to the guy with a large church and a few bestselling books. Modern Christians have become a bunch of hero worshipers. Instead of testing what preachers say against the word of God, they are rewriting the word of God because some rich preacher with big teeth or more questions than real answers tells them it doesn’t say what it says. We would do well to measure wisdom by truth rather than by how much money a person has.