Watch an infant begin to make sense out of the new stimuli that floods into him from the surrounding world outside of the womb. At first, he reacts automatically to cuddling and to discomfort, but he slowly moves on to following objects with his eyes, recognizing the thing in front of him is a hand that somehow he begins to control. He begins to fit everything together and make sense of it all, and eventually, consciously begins learning and framing how he views the world, himself, and relationships.

At this conscious level, a child’s character begins to form, and it is at this level that wisdom for living life well must be inculcated. But this part of learning does not come naturally. A child must move beyond the mechanics of living life and begin developing wisdom for how one builds on the mechanics.

A child must develop a penchant for learning wisdom at an early stage of life. Therefore, Solomon addresses his teachings, as it were, to a child still under his parents’ influence. The process of learning moves from the innate to the intentional. But if sin bends the soul away from wisdom, then parents must provide guidance and discipline to bring a child in line with wisdom. While the goal is to become wise, the actual training objective is for the child to develop a lifestyle of learning wisdom, to bend his soul back toward desiring to “increase in learning” and to become a mature adult who continues to “acquire wise counsel” beyond what parents provide. We want him to seek “to understand” wisdom in its many forms (in the ancient world, wisdom was sometimes conveyed through the use of riddles, to exercise and to test one’s understanding and insight).

Living right and well in this world depends on recognizing that our natural learning inertia is twisted in the wrong direction away from God, the one in whose image we were created. Rejecting Him is like dismissing the “manufacturer’s” instructions. We must build our knowledge of the world on belief in the One who made the world, and therefore “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” He made the world, and He made us; a right view of living in this world must begin with humble submission to God. Anything else is like building a house on a foundation of sand.

Lord, I submit to You as my most fundamental decision to pursue right living.