A Word to the Wise

Every religion that has survived through time has done so because of the wisdom that it contains. Wisdom is not the same as intelligence or even genius. Edison and Henry Ford were geniuses, creators of one invention after another, but I don’t look to Edison or Ford for wisdom.

Conversely, I don’t expect wisdom to help me when I’m confronted by a glitch on my computer or when I’m trying to decide which car to buy. Perhaps the fact that wisdom isn’t viewed as “practical” explains the number of universities and colleges that are dropping courses in the humanities. Philosophy, religious studies, literature courses, and foreign languages are having a rough go in the current educational culture that emphasizes career preparation over everything else.

Several decades ago, the college where I taught asked me to give talks in high schools on the value of a liberal arts education. One of the questions that I would ask when I begin my talk was “Is it important for your dentist to have read Shakespeare?” I would wait a few seconds for the audience to think about the question before I suggested that our first reaction would be to conclude, “No, Shakespeare has nothing to do with dentistry.”

Then I asked my audience to remember that the life of a dentist is more than what happens in her or his office. A dentist in our country is a tax-payer, a voter, and consumer and may also be a parent, a contributor to charities, and a volunteer youth coach. Yes, we want our dentists to know their craft, but as neighbors and fellow citizens, don’t we hope that they are wise?

What then is wisdom, and how can we attain it? One of my understandings of wisdom is that we know it when we meet it. Or maybe it’s better to say that we recognize wisdom when it meets us, when it stops us in our tracks, and when we realize that our thinking will be forever changed by the encounter. That encounter can be with a wise elder, a wise book, or even a wise and often short saying.

Wisdom also has a habit of meeting us when we aren’t expecting it. I had that experience recently when I was reading a biography of Pope Francis. For me, Pope Francis was the epitome of wisdom. What surprised me was that in this book about the head of the Catholic Church, I was blindsided and stopped in my reading by a saying of a 19th century Jewish rabbi, Rabbi Yisroel Salanter. “My spiritual needs are the material needs of the other (person).”

Ten words, a brief sentence, but what a treasure-trove of wisdom. I read it twice, then three times, then more times than I’ve kept track of. The only way we can grow spiritually is, instead of focusing on ourselves, to meet the material challenges of the neediest around us.

Those ten words summarize all the prophets in the Hebrew Bible, known by Christians as the Old Testament. But they also summarize the ethics of the Kingdom of God that Jesus taught, as well as the message of the prophet Muhammad, the Buddha, the gurus of the Sikh faith, and other spiritual giants throughout human history.

Of course, Rabbi Salanter’s saying can be taken as merely a restatement of the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” The Golden Rule, which is found in every major religion of the world, invites us, when we see someone in need, to imagine ourselves in that situation. In a sense, the Golden Rule asks us to see our own reflection, as if in a mirror, when we see someone in need.

Clearly good advice, sound wisdom. But Rabbi Salanter’s advice moves a step beyond the Golden Rule. For Rabbi Salanter, spiritual wisdom is found when we don’t see anything but the material needs of the other person. The secret to spiritual growth is to realize that life isn’t all about ourselves. Abundant life is experienced when we focus on the needs of our neighbor and realize our task is to meet those needs.