I am beginning to understand the sometimes vulgar imagery used by prophets in conveying the raw heart-speak of God, for I have just felt one such outpouring from God’s raw heart. It goes something like this:

You Christians have not pursued wisdom as a lady worth pursuing. Instead, you have treated her like a whore - you have stripped her, packaged her vulgarly with rags that leave nothing to the imagination, and you are selling her cheaply on the streets as something convenient to be had anytime anywhere for your greed.

You ought to instead pursue wisdom - clothe her, honor her, pursue her with awkward love and humility, pursue her with your very lives and lifetimes, not as something you can own or have, but as someone who chooses to be with you for a season. Therefore cherish her as an honored guest, desperately desire her to make her home in your life.

For God watches your hearts, and sees your arrogance and pride and greed.

The above imagery came unbidden to my soul the other day as Alexis and I were driving back from church. It didn’t come with exactly these words. It was a sense, a vision of sorts, an emotion that could not be quite captured succinctly. The raw sense was more powerful, the words ended up being “merely” shocking.

Here’s the thoughts that the above triggered in my mind afterward, and there’s a wordsmithed “tamer” version at the end:

As I read the prophets in the Old Testament, including the words in Proverbs, I find the imagery used by them to be shocking, striking, and disturbing at times. One imagery in particular that stands out is the contrast between the role of a woman given to various characters in wisdom literature. The familiar one is that of the “adulterous” woman in Proverbs, who ensnares and lures, and the admonition is to not go after her.

The one that may be unfamiliar is that of “wisdom” in Proverbs, who is also referred to as a woman, but this time a woman worth pursuing.

I find this to be remarkable - that what many allege to be a masculine God in a masculine Bible did not portray wisdom as a wise old man in the streets asking people to follow his teachings, but rather that God chose to portray wisdom as a lady to pursue. To those who get uncomfortable with thinking of God as a woman, I point out the many verses in Proverbs that have him being portrayed as exactly that - a lady worth pursuing.

If wisdom is a lady, then the “adulterous” woman could be called many things that are the opposite, which I’ll simply term the “unlady”.

If wisdom dresses like a lady, you can probably imagine what the “unlady” might look like.

This got me thinking - the image of the “unlady” is one that promises instant gratification, dressed in a way that leaves very little to the imagination, making it clear that the “unlady” is someone you can have, easily, cheaply, conveniently, anytime you want. The “unlady” gets treated not as a person but as a thing, a commodity to own.

As many men will attest, though, and as many women already know, the pursuit of the “unlady” image is one that does not fulfill. It gratifies our own desires for a moment, cheaply, for sure, and immediately too. But afterward it leaves a bitter taste and a sense of void longing.

And this is not even a deep spiritual truth - it is a recognized piece of human nature, a piece of God written on hearts everywhere, finding its way then into the stories we tell of the passionate pursuit of true love versus cheap commercialized passion-for-a-price. See, for example, the powerful movie “Pretty Woman”. Q.E.D.

So, the early version of this post had an edited version of the imagery I first receivd in my heart, an imagery of what God felt in his heart about how he saw things. I couldn’t help wordsmithing it, I was afraid - it felt safer for me to say something like this instead:

We Christians today are not pursuing wisdom as a lady worth pursuing. It would be quite bad enough if we simply ignored her, but what we are doing to her is far worse: we are instead treating her like an unlady - we have stripped her of her fascinating mystery, then packaged her vulgarly with cheap imitations of pseudo-parables in a manner that leaves little to the imagination, and are selling her as a cheap, easy, convenient thing to be had anytime anywhere, devoid of personality, commercialized and exploited as a commodity we market for our own greed.

We ought to be ashamed of our perversion of wisdom. We ought to clothe her, honor her, and pursue her with unabashed love and humility, pursue her with our very lives, for our lifetimes, not as someone we can own or have, but someone who has the freedom to not be with us anytime she chooses to, and therefore someone whom we value highly as a cherished guest who blesses us with her presence and whom we want desperately to stay with us.

For God watches our hearts, and he knows our arrogance and pride and greed.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced this is why the message is so shocking - this is really how God feels in his heart about things. This is why the message of the prophets was so shocking - the sense of recoil and deep hurt one feels when one hears those rough words that are so personal, words like “you have stripped her” convey the deep sense of injustice, anguish, and cheapened loss that capture the brokenness God himself feels about what we have done with His wisdom and truth.