I remember as a child watching cartoons on Saturday mornings and hearing commercials about “new and improved”.  That phrase could be applied to virtually anything being advertised:  breakfast cereal, a toy, a game or even some cartoon character.  I remember wanting to throw out some perfectly good cereal because it didn’t have the special ingredient or new little toy that came in the “new and improved” box.  Mom wasn’t having any of it.  She might buy the new item the next time we were at the grocery store but it sat on the shelf until every, and I mean every bit of the old was gone!  I never really stopped to think about whether this “improvement” really was an improvement.  I was told it was and I bought it.

As I get older, I continue to hear the commercials calling with a familiar message.  Now, I am much more skeptical.  Perhaps too skeptical.  While the blind acceptance of my youth clearly had its flaws.  The blind rejection of all innovation is equally flawed.  One critical difference:  blindly rejecting all innovation often times gets called “wisdom” and that is clearly a problem.

The Bible describes and instructs in the ways of wisdom.  Of course, the opposite of wisdom is foolishness.  Wisdom is the Bible often reflects the choice of one thing over another.  Something is BETTER than something else.  Read the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Psalms (all referred to as Wisdom literature) and you will hear this contrast repeated over and over.  Here are a handful of examples: