16 August 2022
Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Oh, yes, you are wiser than Daniel. He was a noble Jew who was deported to Babylon as a youth. The pagan King Nebuchadnezzar was so struck by Daniel’s wisdom that he made him “chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon” (Daniel 2:48). Nebuchadnezzar’s son and successor, Belshazzar, likewise praised Daniel for his “brilliant insight and extraordinary wisdom” (Daniel 5:14). The next King in line, Darius, was also impressed by Daniel’s wisdom. He even “considered setting him over the entire kingdom” (Daniel 6:4). Nevertheless, despite all his accolades and all his wisdom, Daniel lived 2,500 years ago. He never studied any physics, chemistry or biology like you did. His knowledge of other scholarly disciplines was primitive at best. Above all, Daniel never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, you may apply Ezekiel’s words to yourself: “Oh, yes, you are wiser than Daniel” (Ezekiel 28:3).
Be that as it may, the only thing that makes you wise is the truth. Absent the truth, you can have no wisdom whatsoever. Don’t forget that. Whether you have worked hard to find the truth, or you have encountered it casually, either way, the truth is something you can only discover. You don’t put it there yourself. You find it, accept it, and adopt it as your own. That is why, when Christ said “your word is truth,” he was not addressing you at all.