In an interview on this programme yesterday, the former national security adviser Peter Ricketts; was asked ‘what about that old thing…. Wisdom’? it was in the contemporary context of the war between the US, Israel and Iran. It’s a modern question that echoes the question in the Book of Proverbs: Where can wisdom be found?

Good question. Difficult question. The search for wisdom today is in the context of the escalation of violence in the Middle East, and in the counting of over 60 active state-based conflicts and wars worldwide, the highest number since (records began in) 1946. And in the context of another escalation; the exponential growth in the capability and reach of artificial intelligence, which scientists are now calling the ‘Intelligence Explosion’ predicted back in the 1960s, when human beings cede control of the growth and development of AI.

In both of these enormous endeavours, the speed and scale of revolutionary action is disorientating for many populations around the world. And in both the prosecution of global war, and the ceding of the growth of AI to AI itself, the illusion of human control over events is both inaccurate and has the potential to be ultimately destructive for, well, everyone.

It is a question for our time – what is it in human beings that is served by our need for speed and escalation? As a species, we seem to give free reign to these instincts, sometimes useful of course, but also with the capacity to brutalise and crush us. These instincts leave little room for creativity, kindness and selflessness that take more time than we seem to think we have. But the search for wisdom in Scripture is characterised by the taking of time, by a commitment to restraint, self-discipline, and closely linked not so much to the acquisition of more knowledge but a desire to understand.

Tomorrow, the first woman to be Archbishop of Canterbury will begin her public ministry with prayer, music, silence and the gathering of community in a house of prayer that has stood for 1400 years. In gathering to sing and pray, it might look as if the church is fiddling while Rome is burning. But the ancient liturgies and symbolic actions form a different sort of public statement: that wisdom matters. And that even in the perilous times that we are in, humility and grace point the way to another vision of what it is to be human before God.