Innocence and Wisdom

Innocence and wisdom no longer at odds, 

As if the first must be pawned off for the second, 

Now guiding in harmonious union, 

Intelligence by goodness driven. 

What good is method without a purpose? 

What good is reason with no meaning?  

What a reckoning force  

is sharpness of mind steered by goodness of spirit –  

may evil tremble  

at the sound of a soul  

being conducted to apply  

its every faculty toward universal benefit. 

Cosmic accounts are balanced in such transformation. 

Perhaps  

one of God’s greatest acts of vengeance  

is our very sanctification –  

the costly rug woven from the torn threads of so many lives  

is ripped  

from beneath the once-gloating face of the enemy  

as all the laborious destruction he strived for  

is reversed,  

not only at the moment of salvation,  

but in  

every  

single  

step  

of the reborn soul toward holiness,  

each homeward footfall  

unsettling the comfortable balance he once relished 

when he used to cause  

those same feet to stumble.  

Even through our moments of weakness  

walking in the Way,  

the Father triumphs over the enemy,  

who is informed  

by eons-long experience,  

but is deformed  

by a righteousness-shaped internal void.  

This living darkness,  

who seeks to make us nameless, 

sees the ebb and flow of our burgeoning light  

and is foolish enough  

to believe that waning  

signals a prime opportunity for starker shadows –  

to his detriment,  

for in such a contrast of gloom  

does that light appear  

all  

the  

brighter.  

Background:

For a couple years now, one of the ideas that have been marinating in my brain has been the idea of the alleged conflict between innocence and knowledge. I think we could all say that, in various ways, we have traded innocence for knowledge, whether that is what we wanted or not. Many works of literature have echoed this idea, as if it is a necessary transaction, as if you can only have one or the other. But this is not our original or intended state – rather, it is a result of the fall. I am convinced that God never meant for us to make this trade – hence, “be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves”. We, humanity, were made for innocence AND knowledge, which was meant to grow to wisdom, but we needed to dwell contentedly in innocence first, and we did not. We valued knowledge over innocence and lost the ability to use knowledge well. Now we tend to disdain innocence and often shun wisdom, and glorify knowledge, just simple information, which we often apply poorly, or at worst, cruelly. What amazing beings we will be when we surrender enough to God to retain knowledge and regain innocence, so that we will be truly wise by using what we know for good, glorious, beautiful purposes.

Wishing you goodness without end,

Jess