A New Year’s resolution for us all

Conflict and despair accounted for many of the most memorable challenges of 2021. Our perspectives became more polarized on issues ranging from politics to COVID-19 to family formation. We learned the grim news that more than 100,000 people had died due to drug overdoses during the previous year. The suicide rate continued to rise to startlingly high levels. As these and many other problems persist into 2022, there are no simple answers—whether at a personal or policy level. We need wisdom.

Wisdom calls the world back to a flourishing that it can’t generate on its own. In a society with fragmented ideas about what it means to be human, wisdom points the way toward coherence. To love and serve our neighbors this new year, Christians should resolve to seek wisdom. We should ask God for wisdom for us and our leaders (James 1:5; 1 Timothy 2: 1–4). We should act to cultivate it in ourselves and others (Proverbs 4:5–13).

Wisdom is about character, worldview, and the know-how to act well here and now. Our character ought to reflect the character of our Creator and Redeemer. Our worldview should embrace the truth about God, created reality, and ourselves. Wisdom also includes the know-how to act well in this moment, however unfamiliar or unprecedented it may be. It is true knowledge rightly applied to the complexity of the situation at hand. Wisdom brings our character and our discernment about the changing circumstances around us into alignment with the way God has made the world for our good and His glory.

Proverbs emphasizes our action to get wisdom (4:5). To pursue wisdom is to look to the Word of God, the works of God, and the lessons of experience.

True wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, Proverbs tells us (9:10). That means hearing and heeding the Word of God. Scripture should not just be the object of an inquiry to find answers for life; it also needs to shape us as subjects to be rightly related to God and those around us.

Wisdom is also found in the works of God. When Proverbs tells us to consider how ants labor, it reminds us that God’s wisdom is woven into the very fabric of creation. Nature reveals His wisdom. Observing the world around us in this way teaches the habit of looking for purpose and design in all God’s works of creation and providence. It grounds us in the conviction that we live in a world of coherence and purpose, not chaos and pointlessness.

Experience teaches us wisdom as well. The buffeting of life makes us learn the limits of our created nature. Respecting such limits allows us to flourish.

Human beings are situated in a reality that God has created and designed. But all around we see effects of being dislocated from that design. At an individual level, the dislocation appears in personal struggles with issues like depression or addiction. At a social level, some of our most serious policy debates challenge truths about what it means to be human—truths taught from the beginning in Genesis. These include the truths that we are created, in the image of God, male and female, made for each other in marriage, made for a right relationship with God, our fellow human beings, and the world around us.

Even knowing how to engage across differences in our cultural debates requires wisdom. Developing character, worldview, and prudence prepares us for such conversations. These habits of wisdom also equip us to act well in circumstances familiar or unforeseen. We need that readiness to respond to the challenges of our generation in the year ahead.

Whatever other resolutions may be on your list for 2022, consider the counsel of Proverbs 4:7: “Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.”