Watching Daily at Wisdom's Gates: Finding Focus in an Age of Distraction

 Watching Daily at Wisdom's Gates: Staying Focused on the Gospel in an Age of Distraction

Robert Chamberlain is a husband, father, educator, and 'tentmaking' writer about the Bible. He is grateful for the gospel that has helped him recover mental heath and leave prodigal ways behind.

Watching Daily at Wisdom's Gates is paraphrase from Proverbs 8:34. To run with the analogy, I see Wisdom as being a picture of person objectified as a city, along the lines of John Bunyan's Holy War.

The gates of Bunyan's city walls are pictures of our five senses. We need to be careful what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. We mustn't be governed by our senses, yet so much of what we experience is filtered through our senses.

What is wisdom? It's not simply intellectual knowledge. Neither is it simply common sense. 

Here's a Biblical definition of wisdom:

'but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.'

1 Corinthians 1:23‭-‬24 ESV

How counterintuitive! Where the world is distracted by technology such as AI etc., Paul calls us back to the crux of creation: the cross of Christ.

Even with all our technological distractions, we all tend to fall into one of two camps. In Paul's day it was Jews and Gentiles. Nowadays we could characterise it as religious and secular.

A faithful old preacher in the UK, Stuart Olyott, was asked if he had any regrets. He said he'd preached Christ, but not Christ *crucified* specifically enough. If we preach Christ alone, the danger is we're simply preaching religious moralism. 

When we preach Christ crucified, we're focused on the good news.

My subtitle is about staying focused in an age of distraction. Scripture tells us we don't need to be ignorant of satan's schemes, and I suspect one of his favoured plots, especially nowadays, is to distract us. We might talk about apologetics, desiring God, forming a gospel coalition, being defined by truth for life, sharing grace to you, and I, and even 'watching daily at wisdom's gates'. Yet if we're not focused on Christ crucified, we're not prioritising what is crucial. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with anything else, it's just that we shouldn't idolise anything when Christ crucified should be our focus.

I want to share two anecdotes 'from the coal face' about how we can be distracted from the gospel. Furthermore, I'd like to offer my suggestions as to the antidote to such distractions.

The first anecdote relates to the Church of England's policies towards the LGBT+ community. The Church of England has recently voted to 'bless' 'gay marriages'. A colleague whose wife works as a youth worker for an Anglican church expressed his concern about how his local congregation would respond to such a measure. 

My colleague wanted the church to be 'progressive' and 'forward thinking' to stay 'relevant' to young people. I fudged a reply, acknowledging that Jesus calls us to bless and not curse, and that He's a friend of sinners.

On reflection, I was rather less charitable. Progression for progression's sake is foolish: what if we're lemmings progressing off the edge of a cliff? Shouldn't we rather be rooted in the word of God, instead of moving on to the shifting sands of popular culture?

To be fair to my friend, I'm sure a legitimate concern of his was not to alienate LGBT+ young people. We need to express love, yes, but we also need to lovingly proclaim the truth that although the LGBT+ lifestyle is incompatible with a godly lifestyle, Christ died for sinners, including those of the LGBT+ community, so that we can change our minds and be saved from the condemnation we all deserve for all of our sins, whatever they may be.

My second anecdote is about proposals in the UK to introduce a digital currency, which many in my church fear is a precursor to the mark of the beast. 

If the first anecdote was a 'Greek' style secular distraction from the gospel, my second example is more of the 'Jewish', religious, escatological distraction. This second case study is rather more subtle because it seems 'Biblical'. 

If we're to do more of a dig into eschatology however, we'll see that preoccupation with the mark of the beast is also a distraction from the gospel. In Jesus's 'signs of the end of the age', He mentions a lot of scary things that were going through nowadays, such as natural disasters, wars, and rumours of wars.

Crucially however, Jesus says 

'And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.'

Matthew 24:14 ESV

The end won't come through the machinations of Babylon. The end will come as result of the grassroots movement of God's people sharing the good news of God's Kingdom to the world. How do we get to become part of God's Kingdom? Through Christ crucified.

In conclusion, in education, it's always good to K.I.S.S.- keep it simple sweetheart! It's true of life too. The devil would distract us from what really matters, but what matters is really simple really.

Jesus died for secular people, including those in the LGBT+ community who would repent. He also died for religious people, who repent of fear about the mark of the beast, or whatever else might distract them from Christ crucified.

Maybe in your context, LGBT+ and digital currencies aren't such a big deal. Just remember though that whatever your seemingly big issues, what ultimately matters is that a Lamb who was slain is on the throne of heaven, and He will soon call His people home.