Proverbs 24.7
“Wisdom is too high for a fool; in the gate he does not open his mouth.”
Proverbs 17.24
“The discerning sets his face toward wisdom, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.”
My mentor Francis Schaeffer often spoke and wrote about the tendency of people to embrace an “upper story” view of the world or a “lower story” view of the world. The lower story refers to the physical world and rationality, and the upper story refers to the spiritual world and faith.
In the context of our study of this section of Proverbs, we could describe the lower story as “horizontal thinking,” and the upper story as “vertical thinking.”
The challenge is that people tend to emphasize one to the neglect (and often exclusion) of the other. Lower story, horizontal thinking tends to emphasize the laws of nature and rationality to the exclusion of spiritual and faith, while upper story, vertical thinking tends to emphasize spirituality and faith to the neglect of rationality and the laws of nature.
But it is a grave error to emphasize one to the neglect of the other, especially for the Christian. The rational, scientific worldview appeals to the mind, but doesn’t fulfill the heart. It ignores spiritual truths. Horizontal thinking sounds right but it feels wrong. You can’t live it, because it does not provide meaning or purpose (because it says there is none).
The spiritual, mystical upper story appeals to the heart but does not satisfy the mind. It tries to provide hope and meaning, but it ignores truths of the natural world. Vertical thinking forces people to ignore rationality and cling to cliches and encouraging but empty platitudes and promises.
In the words of Proverbs, it is foolishness to be horizontal to the neglect of the vertical, and it is also foolishness to focus on the vertical to the neglect of the horizontal. God is the Source of all truth: physical as well as spiritual. The reality is that there is no upper or lower story, there is only truth, and all of it is Authored by God.
Sadly, the church in the 21st century is guilty of vertical, upper story thinking to the neglect of horizontal, lower story thinking. The Christian community emphasizes and preaches faith and spirituality, but it shows little real interest in rationality and physical truth.
If the Christian community is to make a significant difference in the 21st century, we must embrace both the upper story and the lower story. Better yet, we should erase the line between the two stories altogether. God calls us to be wise people who think both vertically and horizontally in the midst of a world desperate to see and experience the reality of His truth.
How about you? Do you intentionally cultivate both modes of thinking? Do you trust God and do the work to grow in your faith and your rationality? Do you diligently study and fully embrace the physical truths of your job, and do the same in applying spiritual truth to your life?
Do you live a full Christian life that is both vertical and horizontal?
