Today’s readings touch on choices, decisions and wisdom. In the first reading, the apostle Paul does what he does best – drawing from his familiarity with greek philosophy to use opposites to contrast God’s wisdom with human wisdom. The whole exercise enables Paul to show the profound superficiality of much of what we humans see as indicators of our wisdom. Much of that pretended wisdom is indeed nothing else but vanity upon vanity, just plain shakara!
In the Gospel reading, Jesus resorts to a parable to bring out the limited rationality of much of human decisions, especially in the example of the servant who buries his talent and therefore and thereby forecloses its possibility of growth and development.
We are, most times, like this third servant in our decision making and in our choices. We arrive at decisions and choices by prioritising faulty and flawed parameters and assigning weights to these. We then reach a position based on the defective considerations that follow from our earlier prioritisation process. This position we have now taken must be the right one, must always be the right one we delude ourselves into believing. We tell ourselves that every other person’s views are inadequate, not well thought out and lacking in social depth, contextual sensitivity and intellectual rigour. We resist every effort to make us see otherwise and we resort to a broad range of strategies including doubling down, trivializing and ridiculing alternative views and voices. Hubris would already have kicked in at this time making us effectively victims and prisoners of our pride, our imperfect analysis and our unconscious biases. We become “Amarachalam ihe uwa jere je kuola nda Onyemachi nwa”.
The readings today invite us to reflect and make real wise choices and take sound and rounded decisions which are based on a full consideration of the total circumstance involved – the actors and persons in the constellation of that decision making as well as the long, medium and short term consequences of our choices, decisions and actions. They also challenge us to examine the ethical and moral implications of our choices and what Kantian categorical imperatives would suggest as the best line of action in the situation we find ourselves in.
May divine wisdom invade us, possess us, flood us, overtake and overpower us and thus equip us with the necessary wisdom and balanced emotional intelligence that we need to engage with the world and those around us.
Ka Chineke mezie ukwu, isee!
Noel Ihebuzor
(written in the departure lounge of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, whilst waiting for a rescheduled flight)
Reflections 