Walking with the Wise #194: The Map of Light and Life

“Wisdom rests in the heart of a man of understanding,

but it makes itself known even in the midst of fools.”
—Proverbs 14:33

Wisdom is like light. In the wise, the light is as bright as the noonday sun, illuminating everything around it. Fools live in darkness like the darkness at midnight, but even in the midst of the darkness the moon can give a slight light. Fools are fools, but wisdom can still be seen and recognized when it appears.

The greatest light of wisdom is found in the Bible. The Bible is a map that shows one how to forge one’s way through the perils of life. Everyone uses some type of map, whether it is one of their own creation, or someone else’s, we all try and find our way by some sort of guide. Some use maps given to them by their parents, teachers, or friends. Some go further seeking guidance from self-help books, the so-called experts on talk shows, and perhaps the most unbelievably foolish are those read the witless and fanciful moronic ramblings of those who seek to determine one’s life direction by which way the earth is tilted!

Utter nonsense! One might as well seek to order one’s life by where their dog relieves himself in the yard! Those who truly seek to grow wise will follow the map of those who have gone before as C.S. Lewis wrote,

“In a way I quite under­stand why some peo­ple are put off by The­ol­ogy. I remem­ber once when I had been giv­ing a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten offi­cer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a reli­gious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him out alone in the desert at night: the tremen­dous mys­tery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat lit­tle dog­mas and for­mu­las about Him. To any­one who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedan­tic and unreal!’

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had prob­a­bly had a real expe­ri­ence of God in the desert. And when he turned from that expe­ri­ence to the Chris­t­ian creeds, I think he really was turn­ing from some­thing real to some­thing less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turn­ing from some­thing real to some­thing less real: turn­ing from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admit­tedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remem­ber about it. In the first place, it is based on what hun­dreds and thou­sands of peo­ple have found out by sail­ing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of expe­ri­ence just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a sin­gle glimpse, the map fits all those dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences together. In the sec­ond place, if you want to go any­where, the map is absolutely nec­es­sary. As long as you are con­tent with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than look­ing at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, The­ol­ogy is like the map. Merely learn­ing and think­ing about the Chris­t­ian doc­trines, if you stop there, is less real and less excit­ing than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doc­trines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the expe­ri­ence of hun­dreds of peo­ple who really were in touch with God-experiences com­pared with which any thrills or pious feel­ings you and I are likely to get on our own are very ele­men­tary and very con­fused. And sec­ondly, if you want to get any fur­ther, you must use the map. You see, what hap­pened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was cer­tainly excit­ing, but noth­ing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is noth­ing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion-all about feel­ing God in nature, and so on-is so attrac­tive. It is all thrills and no work; like watch­ing the waves from the beach. But you will not get to New­found­land by study­ing the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eter­nal life by sim­ply feel­ing the pres­ence of God in flow­ers or music. Nei­ther will you get any­where by look­ing at maps with­out going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea with­out a map.

In other words, The­ol­ogy is prac­ti­cal: espe­cially now. In the old days, when there was less edu­ca­tion and dis­cus­sion, per­haps it was pos­si­ble to get on with a very few sim­ple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Every­one reads, every­one hears things dis­cussed. Con­se­quently, if you do not lis­ten to The­ol­ogy, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones — bad, mud­dled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trot­ted out as nov­el­ties to-day are sim­ply the ones which real The­olo­gians tried cen­turies ago and rejected. To believe in the pop­u­lar reli­gion of mod­ern Eng­land is ret­ro­gres­sion — like believ­ing the earth is flat”—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

Which map are you using? The wise follows God’s map the Bible, but the fool is guided by his own map of right and wrong. The very principle of wisdom is the application of knowledge to real life situations. The truly wise are students of life who have observed the experiences of others and can accurately learn from them—whether for good or for ill. Are you wise? Or are you a fool? Live the truly wise life by the illuminating light and map of His Word and you will never walk in darkness. Amen.