Bishop Wright: 0:00
So, when we’re talking about insight and wisdom, that is not me sitting on my couch, you know, staring at the mountain. Indeed, it is part of it. But you know, wisdom tells us we’ve got to have some spiritual adults in our lives who can tell us something about where we are, who can help us purge some of the stinking thinking, invite us to think about some things and ask us why we choose to do some things in a particular way. Wisdom drives us into community.
Melissa: 0:40
Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. I’m Melissa Rau and this is a conversation inspired by For Faith, a weekly devotion sent at Aubrey Friday. You can find a link to this week’s devotion and a link to subscribe in the episode’s description. Hey, bishop.
Bishop Wright: 0:55
Hey.
Melissa: 0:56
This week’s devotion is named Insight and it’s based off of Proverbs, chapter nine, verses one through six, and I love. I love that you picked this passage because I think for the last four years of four people I’m not sure we’ve done a lot on Proverbs.
Bishop Wright: 1:16
Yeah, I think that’s right.
Melissa: 1:17
Maybe just a couple if we’re lucky. Um, and I love it because it’s one of my favorite books of the OT, Um, and so what? What about? This passage grabbed your attention.
Bishop Wright: 1:29
Well, I’ve been a clergy person for 26 years and, in the way that we read the Bible in the Episcopal Church, we have four lessons on any given Sunday, and being around a while, I’ve looked at a lot of those lessons. And so now, and I’ve said a lot of things, and so, just to sort of break myself out of a rut or maybe even just a rhythm, I’m always making sure that I’m looking at all of these opportunities to speak to people through. You know the various scriptures that are appointed to speak to people through. You know the various scriptures that are appointed, and I love Proverbs personally and my own personal devotion, and so I thought to myself, hey, I’m not sure I’ve done one of those. So that’s it. It’s as simple as that. It’s making sure and, you know, for some reason I think the mainstream Christian church doesn’t use the Old Testament nearly enough in my opinion. So, you know, try to harness that wisdom and insight. Right, there’s the title.
Melissa: 2:32
Yeah Well, I’m excited to talk about this today, because what really jumped out to me is the very word insight. And so, just for kicks and giggles, I checked out what our friends from Oxford said.
Bishop Wright: 2:44
There you go.
Melissa: 2:45
Insight is ready. Wait for it. Inner sight. There, you go or wisdom. So how about that? But seriously. Seriously, though, I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about it because, though I’m grateful for the invaluable theological education I have thus far received, I think many people get intimidated or overwhelmed by scripture and therefore only rely on others to tell them what or how to think about it. So how do we hold insight lightly and understand that we all do have kind of an inner compass that we’re born with?
Bishop Wright: 3:23
Yeah, yeah. So one of the ways I mean so, if you zoom out just a bit, I would say that, well, certainly all of us have insight, right, and when I think about the book of Proverbs I think that it’s another way to say Proverbs is mother’s wit, right, and so every community, no matter what part of the world family, the American family you’re a part of, there’s mother’s wit. There’s a good long history of that in the South and in lots of other places. You know I’m out West and you know already meeting people with these wonderful little axioms, you know about how to handle life, and it’s experience basedbased and it’s time-tested, and so Proverbs is like that, and so I don’t think we need the six-syllable theological words to parse that.
Bishop Wright: 4:16
It’s grandma talking to you after she has been talked to by her grandma and she’s been talked to by her grandma. It’s a compilation of people’s insights, experiences, having lived with God and for God for centuries, and then somebody had the good sense to write some of it down. It shapes community. It tells us who God has been and what is our response to God. It helps us make decisions at important intersections, both individually as well as a community. It helps us to take the long view.
Melissa: 4:55
Yeah Well, I love what you said about. Information is about volume, insight is about the depth of knowing. And it’s kind of like, I guess, how you nuance the difference between knowledge and understanding. To me, knowledge is knowing about something, or maybe just going through life and experiencing stuff. But if you lack either the insight or the desire or the motivation to go deeper and to understand, how might we?
Melissa: 5:25
last week we talked about imitation, imitating God, walking in love how do we walk in love, how do we imitate God Unless we’re able to actually know about God and God’s word in order to you know, make sense of it all?
Bishop Wright: 5:39
So I think it’s a pie chart, right, I mean. So it’s my own musings. It’s my own life with scriptures, my own life with quiet and reflection. You know, I’m out here in nature. It’s about quieting yourself. I’m standing at the base of the Tetons the other day. It’s about realizing that God is big and old and far off and yet at the same time close, and you know feeling all the feels, as young people say, about that feeling insignificant and at the same time feeling valued by a God who came among us and has invited us to live differently and to really thrive. It’s a pie chart, right. And you know, one of the things that I think why church is still important is because church is an intergenerational space, right, you got the young ones, you got the ones in the middle and you got the old ones. And you know this book of wisdom is, you know it represents everybody. There’s a lot of conversation partners in this book, and so I think we ought to be talking to people who are older than us. We ought to be talking to people who are younger than us not in a finger wagging way, but in a way that is deeply experiential.
Bishop Wright: 7:04
Here’s a little quick story. I remember sitting with my father-in-law he’s now dead. I was sitting with him and I was talking and I was running my mouth. My kids were young at the time and I was saying probably talking too loud about when they turn 18, they are off. I’m going to launch them and my wife and I we are going to do you know, we’re going to go live our best life. And on and on. I went and I’m sure I sounded like a complete fool and my father-in-law ever gentle said well, rob, here’s what I have learned. And you know, the room went quiet because someone who was older and more experienced was speaking and he said Rob, my experience is, is that it’s the first 40 years of parenting that is the most difficult? Yeah, I had some information. It’s lived, it has a learning. It disabuses us of some things.
Bishop Wright: 8:34
When I was 21, I was so clear. Now I’m 60, and I realize the world is so gray, so so gray, and so this book of wisdom tries to walk us down a road where we can gain some insight. And you know, it’s the wise man or woman who learns from their mistakes. It’s the wiser man or woman who can learn from instruction, compilations of instruction, like Proverbs, or from watching other people make their own moves and take their perhaps even missteps. And so this is the insight piece what do I do at these intersections? Am I all alone? Do I have to make it up all by myself? Is there any support? Right, and so you know, I would say that the book of Proverbs is another way to look at it. Is is that it’s the R and the spiritual R and D center of the Bible. Right, research and development, and this is the product.
Melissa: 9:32
Love that, friends. We’re going to be right back after a short break.
Melissa: 9:55
Welcome back to four people. Bishop, before break, you mentioned that Proverbs was a book, kind of like an intergenerational book. There’s something in there for everyone. Proverbs was a book, kind of like an intergenerational book. There’s something in there for everyone. And I’m also mindful of the fact that wisdom hasn’t stopped and that we are able to synthesize what we read, or at least I think the wise among us are able to synthesize and integrate stuff in a real way, in a contextual way, so that younger people, who may not have had those experience or knowledge, can. What are your thoughts about the intergenerational, I guess, charge to our older generations on behalf of our younger generations? Is there something a charge to them that they are a mantle that they are taking up, should take up, aren’t taking up, et cetera?
Bishop Wright: 10:46
or a mantle that they are taking up, should take up, aren’t taking up, et cetera. Yeah, the book of Proverbs has a clear hierarchy, if you will. It does privilege those of us who are a little longer in the tooth, simply because we’ve lived a while with God for God, fallen down, gotten back up, have something to say about the whole enterprise. But even in that privileging, the book of Proverbs is full of cautionary tales about how to have conversations intergenerationally right, and the emphasis still is on listening, right. So, even if you’ve got years behind you and even if you’ve got a sort of robust life with God, the word from the book of Proverbs is to listen, is to be gentle, is to hold truth lightly, is to take time, you know, is to consider all of your options.
Bishop Wright: 11:58
And so I think it’s a word to both the young and the old. But I think that the word to the young is is that you’re not alone. Lots of people have passed this way before. You know. Here’s some information for you. And why don’t you try it on in the way that we go in the stores and try something on. Try it on for a little while, and I think that’s the best gift is, it gives you something to try on in an utterly and, I think, maybe more confusing world for young people.
Melissa: 12:35
So let’s talk about that, because I feel like the book of Proverbs is a compilation of sound, incredible advice for a specific time, for a specific group of people, and I think our world is very different, and so I’m curious if you think the book of Proverbs were written in today, what’s missing? What might we add as a proverb for today’s crazy productive, move, go, go, go, go go, authoritative and et cetera world that we’re living in?
Bishop Wright: 13:10
You make a really, really good point there. Here’s what I think. I think that insight is different from information, right? Wisdom is different from information. You can be drowning in information and have no wisdom or insight, right.
Bishop Wright: 13:20
And I think what distinguishes insight and wisdom also from information right is timelessness. So I think yeah, I wouldn’t know what’s missing from the book of Proverbs. I think if we rewrote it in modern language, idiom parlance, I think we would end up with the center being still the same center, and that’s because we are humans, right, and we fear and we lust, and sometimes we build our lives on falsehood. Sometimes we’re impetuous, Sometimes we’re too slow, sometimes we’re given to gluttony and greed, sometimes fear, you know, keeps us from life abundant, and so all of these things, sometimes we don’t know how to pick a mate, we don’t know what we should be looking for in his or her characteristics, character, and so all of that is at the core of the book of Proverbs. God is still God yesterday, today and forever, and so those things are timeless.
Bishop Wright: 14:31
Now does the icing on the cake? Has it changed in, you know, 2700 years? Yeah, for sure. Is modern life now made up of some things that the writers of Proverbs didn’t anticipate, sure anything about iPhones or iPads or the technology that you and I are using right now to try to promote a life with God, but the center is the center. Live for God, love God. Let God love you. Love your neighbor, forgive, be generous, outrageously generous, and you will know life Right. I mean, I love this ninth chapter and first through sixth verse that we’re working with today. I mean, what does it culminate in? Lay aside immaturity, live and walk in the way of insight. That’s timeless.
Melissa: 15:20
Yeah.
Bishop Wright: 15:21
That’s absolutely timeless.
Melissa: 15:22
How do we do that?
Bishop Wright: 15:24
Yeah, well, again, you know we talked about this a little bit last week. I mean, I think we’re always looking for some new intellectual enterprise, right? As a substitute for a change of life, right? And so you know, I have a friend out here in Wyoming who’s going to take me fly fishing, and so we have to stop by the store so I can get all the gear, and I’m told by the fly fishermen and folks that, you know, it’s all the gear, right?
Bishop Wright: 15:49
So let me tell you, I’ll be dressed up and I’ll be looking like a dude, right? So let me tell you, I’ll be dressed up and I’ll be looking like a dude who knows something about fly fishing, but I’ll be just an ignorant fool standing in a river. You know what I mean. So I can go into the store and think and spend and do all that sort of stuff, but at some point you’ve got to get in the river, you’ve got to make some mistakes, you, you got to keep on trying, trying, trying, trying. And so there is no new intellectual invitation here. It is. You know, it is what it’s always been timeless, right? The insight is try God on in the real cracks and crevices of your life and do it over time, and that’s the only way to know that you know, that you know.
Melissa: 16:36
Well, and I would add, though, the community factor too right, of course. So insight is so independent, I think, and internal, and yet we’re called to do it in community.
Bishop Wright: 16:47
Oh, my God, let me tell you and I’m so glad you said that because we need to really say that explicitly so, when we’re talking about insight and wisdom, that is not me sitting on my couch, you know, staring at the mountain, right, that may be part of it. Indeed, it is part of it. But, you know, wisdom tells us that we’ve got to check in with some folks. We’ve got to have some teachers in our lives, we’ve got to have some spiritual adults in our lives who can tell us something about where we are, who can help us. You know, as I like to say, purge some of the stinking thinking, invite us to think about some things and ask us why we choose to do some things in a particular way. You know, it’s through the exchange one to the other that we find our healing, that we find new insights, that we find new insights, that we find new thoughts that we didn’t possess. And so you’re absolutely right Wisdom drives us into community.
Melissa: 17:40
Yeah Well, and I love the example that you used of your father-in-law. He could have shamed you.
Bishop Wright: 17:48
Yeah, he could have shamed me.
Melissa: 17:50
But he came alongside you and it was like, even in a spirit of oh, bless your heart, rob.
Bishop Wright: 17:57
That’s right.
Melissa: 17:57
There’s a way. There’s a way of coming alongside people rather than just coming down with them in a judgment.
Bishop Wright: 18:05
And let me say this too he could have shamed me and said boy, I thought you were smart, but you’re really a dummy. He could have said that, or he could have said nothing. And I think too often we either say it wrong or we don’t say anything where I think, because we live with one another and because we’re beneficiaries of one another’s wisdom and insights, you’ve got to find a way I think it’s part of life with God and part of life of community to find a way to gently be beside people. And then here’s one of the things that we know too is that to be gentle is wise.
Bishop Wright: 18:48
And you know, I think in my own journey, I think that is something that is really resonant for me now which is God is gentle in correction, and so must we be man who wants to talk to us always and to invite us to do better, to be better, but also to sort of build better, build better communities by how we engage one another, how I wish that we could reclaim some wisdom in the way that we’re sort of doing state craft right now in our nation, of doing statecraft right now in our nation.
Bishop Wright: 19:38
I mean it is foolhardy to think that we can tear each other down for a couple of For and call it campaigning and then think that just because some candidate or the other stands up with their hand on a Bible and pledges allegiance, that all of a sudden now all the fissures and all the wounds are healed. What would it be like if wisdom could infect our politics and the way that you and I do social media, the way that we do disagreement, the way that we do money. So I think wisdom, the book of wisdom you know 700 years before Jesus, you know all this Hebraic genius is ours for use in real world issues.
Melissa: 20:18
Well, bishop, thank you for sharing that with us and thank you, listeners, for listening to Four People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright. Please subscribe, leave a review and we’ll be back with you next week.
