Making sense of wisdom?
8 Feb 2007
At different stages of my spiritual journey, different parts of the Bible that had seemed dull or irrlevant before suddenly started making sense to me. Still, for most of my Christian life, I have struggled with Old Testament wisdom. To be fair, books like proverbs, ecclesiastes and Solomon’s Song contain great poetry, stunning metaphors and disarming humour.
But in my charismatic days it seemed so un-spiritual. Not so much because Ecclesiastes pours out chilling and sobering realism (that would be his definition, mine is more like frustration) on my slightly overheated triumphalism faith, which always hoped that success revival was just around the corner. But rather because the proverbs were about ordinary things and everyday life and not so much about great breakthroughs and making history. In my experience, systematic theologians do not quote them a lot, nor indeed would most fiery evangelists.
Later, when eventually various influences helped me to discover that the Gospel is actually not a formula for spiritual bliss but the story of God and our world and that revelation is unfolding within history, I was troubled by the observation that wisdom literature was almost completely silent about God acting and intervening in history. And I still struggle with the apparent lack of hope in the face of death and thr frutilty of life that Ecclesiastes seems to breathe.
Over recent weeks I took a fresh look at these old sayings that belong to a culture so radically different from ours, and discovered – much to my surprise – that there is a lot to learn (perhaps this is the reason why I scored 67% Jewish and only 18% Christian in an online “test” of Germany’s biggest weekly newspaper about which religion suits me best this week?). Actually, wisdom is all about learning from life. And the fear of God is what keeps us humble and open enough to remain learners for the rest of our lives:
The almost complete absence of abstract concepts started to be refreshing rather than troubling. These people were not sitting in ivory towers of theological correctness – the were actually living their lives before God. Modernity has been obesessed with systems and terrified by disorder and chaos. Here we meet a sense of order that does not develop into abstract theory and foundationalism. These Hebrews did not even have a single term for the multi-layered experience we have come to call “the world†– a single cosmos governed by unchanging laws. But they discovered islands of order in a troubled world. They saw similarities in human relationships and the events of nature. And they knew God as the inexplicable mystery in everything they saw and touched. When our theological, political and personal systems disintegrate, and many of our “principles†turn out to be mere projections, this is where we can start again: Life. The little things. The ordinary and, as philosophers would say, the contingent.
So we can be secure in God’s world even if we cannot explain everything that goes on in our lives and in history as a whole. We do not have to have all the answers, but we keep learning from our experience. Israel was inhabiting (to borrow Lesslie Newbigin’s terminology) God’s story of liberation and reconciliation so deeply that it did not feel the need to refer to the obvious at every opportunity by mentioning God’s name. Now, some might misinterpret this as “secular†because we are suffering from a heavy dose of spiritualism and the enlightenment split between God on one hand and the world of everday life on the other (that had its own rules and had to be understood rationally). The Hebrews were quite pragmatic in their approach. In our days, a possible parallel would be alternative medicine: For example, some doctors I know use acupucture to treat their patients. It works quite well even though they cannot explain the cure with scientific models of modern medicine. They have learned from other people’s experience. But I can remember some Christians who thought, just because science cannot “prove†how it works and the Bible does not mention it, it has to be dangerous. But there is nothing religious about it, no spells, no magic or invocations of some sort of powers and you do not subscribe to a certain worldview (as some fundamentalist suspect). You just have to know where to put the needle in.
Finally, Proverbs gives us a lesson about learning from other cultures. In chapters 22 & 23 it includes some sayings of Amenemope, who was an Egyptian. Truth and genuine human experience are not limited to the people of God. So there is a lot to discover and to learn and God has given us liberty to do just that. We do not have to read only christian books, send our children to Christian schools, watch Christian television, buy from Christian companies and avoid everything else. Reading proverbs can make you laugh at strange humour (like the graphic description of drunkenness in ch. 23), you may frown and disagree emphatically with other verses (like the view of women and the physical discipline of children), sometimes they even seem to contradict each other – like so many of our experiences in life. These Proverbs are not a call to obedience in the first place but an opportunity to learn how to judge ourselves, other people and situations both critically and wisely.
Old Testament wisdom provides not much in the way of material for lofty theories. But if we learn to keep an open mind, to listen to our experiences even if they do not fit our doctrine prejudice, to see what connects us to people of other faiths and cultures because we dare to believe that God could teach us important things through them, ithen the books have served a purpose. And it might even help us create opportunities to include others in conversations about this God who is so deeply involved with our world.
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Comment by steven hamilton
5.00 pm on 8 Feb 2007
unglaublich!
das ist so denn wunderbar. Großer Posten.
i have to admit, my favorite scriptures (besides when i was young and would read through joshua and judges when the preacher got boring…) have been the scrolls of wisdom. thanks so much for that Peter. it almost stunned me when i realized that the value of living…is in living! the details of our lives is indeed where His Kingdom breaks through…
let me share one of the best observations about the scrolls of wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures from a rabbi here in america:
‘do not let your passion for purpose trap you in the pursuit of permanence and your own security…do not let your hunger for meaning blind you to simple beauty…the absence of abstract permanence is perhaps the most liberating, joy-filled insight of all.’
peace and wisdom
Comment by Helen
6.39 pm on 8 Feb 2007
At different stages of my spiritual journey, different parts of the Bible that had seemed dull or irrlevant before suddenly started making sense to me.
It’s fascinating to me that this happens.
When our theological, political and personal systems disintegrate, and many of our “principles†turn out to be mere projections, this is where we can start again: Life. The little things. The ordinary and, as philosophers would say, the contingent.
Yes indeed.
I like this statement from the Bible (although it’s not from the wisdom books) because it’s simple and untheological: ‘choose life’.
Comment by Jim_Rapp
7.26 pm on 8 Feb 2007
Ecclessia et Ecclesiastes
Fun. And provocative post.
I felt thankful and in agreement with the introductory note about the seasonal relevance of different categories of scripture, or, perhaps our corresponding seasonal relevance to the Living Word as the text becomes modulated to us inwardly via the Spirit analogically (Rom 12:6, interpreting “analogia” metrically as “proportion”) according to our readiness to hear and serve.
I dug the humor in the humility of the overstruck words, triumphalism and success (wanna arm wrestle over who has the worst case of these diseases?) – which I take as one function of Ecclesiastes – wisdom to overstrike our mis-proportionate trust through the introduction of healthy mis-trust.
What amazed me was Jason’s confession and continued impression of a non-systematic (a-systematic?) bent in the wisdom literature, and of its relative lack of “abstract concepts.”
I can see how such a reading arises. The literature doesn’t strut hifalutin’ terms: nothing about the axial orientation of the oosphere, the relevance of tyche versus teleology in the Final Cause, and nothing about whether Jean-François Lyotard’s hostility to universals is dissimulating semiotic. The slight reception of wisdom literature by the heavies of systematic theology (I’ll agree; or, take Jason’s word on this for now) reinforces such a reading. I’m guessing that a history of abuse of wisdom 6literature by pollyannaish or bitter moralists contributes to a sense that wisdom is about as dumb and unexciting as a sack of hammers.
I’ll confess my bias against systematics. I love to read the stuff; but, I reassign systematics (as I did with Baudrillard) to the category of testimony, and then relax, sit back, and have fun seeing what I can learn from the café at the edge of someone else’s universe.
I suppose that some spectacular future Aquinas may crack the code to give us a global universal equation, or a formally precise ontology, or coherency criteria that aren’t tied to our variable and irrational desires (logic in service of evil desire or sweet eudomonea), but until then, I say chug beer or sip single malt while reading systematic theology, and respond with the line by Monte Python in “Life of Brian” … “yeah, shut up kid.”
I’m extremely doubtful that theology will lead the way in yielding a prodigious future Aquinas whose system trumps the Deliberately Injected Confusion destroying our systematic Towers of Babel.
I’m guessing that if any discipline succeeds (and I doubt it), then look to mathematics. But even there, I’m with the humility of Eugene Wigner, suspending his systematic bias long enough to admit to the “unreasonable” effectiveness of mathematics – an enormous concession for a neo-Platonist. It works. We don’t know why. Better, there’s no known reason why.
My bias is that knowledge is scaffolded, partial, tied to the utility of our desires, seasonally valid, and what little “pure discovery” is held to exist even by a minority of practicing scientists, is readily admitted to suffer quick misuse and fraud.
Ecclesiastes is my home. My heart-home. That and the Phat News of Mark in the Hippie Bible.
What’s crazy is that my sense of Ecclesiastes is in contrast with Jason’s. I’m not arguing. More confessing. And having fun. I’ve always felt that third chapter of Ecclesiastes is as close to system as we’ll ever get. The pragmatic problem with making a systematic theology out of the total pool of purposed-timed events (dabar) is our limited effectiveness in both control and input into the sum of social causes-effects, especially because God is a part of our society, punctuated by Christ. Niemoller’s bomb didn’t get Hitler. Plus, if we look holistically at the sum of our social existence as an Engineered system (engineered purposed-timed events), and especially if the engineering of our life is a co-op with God, then a simple law of engineering applies to the total pool of our purposed-timed events, namely, that a linear increase in working parts leads to an exponential increase in systematic complexity, so the total information contained in such a holistic system reaches an omega point exceeding our capacity to understand it. We melt down.
Early mid-eastern bedouins could intuit this hifalutin’ insight by observing local family relationships, by raising children who asked just one too many, “but why, dad’s?” or as in the case of Job, by having their moral order upset by the inexplicable and a temporarily non-saying God (“Behold, I go forward but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him, Job 23:8-9).
If we live in any part of an engineered system, and if there is a system that our mind can systematize, then the extremist optimism would have us at least one step behind understanding the system as a system as it’s happening.
Ecclesiastes makes peace with this.
Even if I make war with practical outcomes.
I probably need a bias-check. But, I’ve always held Ecclesiastes as the summit of system – as close as we can get.
Further considering the limits of systematic thinking, Jason makes a great point about scientific medicine resorting to quasi-scientific intervention, like doctors using acupuncture, despite the mechanisms of cure being imperfectly understood. The gist of Jason’s observation seems to be that we humans use what works: even if we can’t systematically justify it. But, this kind of limit on modern medicine happens even without resorting to non-standard medical procedures (like acupuncture, homeopathy, or hemp), because physicians in emergency room settings must often act by a decision-tree, a deciding procedure, before tests come back. The point here is that even if emergency room treatment could be fully systematized and quantized as a systematic science (or at a level approaching omniscience, or trivially differing from omniscience), even then, we might still suffer a gap in time (again Ecclesiastes on “timed-purposed” events) between diagnoses and the need for emergency treatment.
While even a fully systematized emergency room in a hospital is at best a partial metaphor for the kinds of emergency beloved by emergentists in theology, we flat out come up against the barriers of time (even for flatlanders: time to know enough) when faced with emergencies.
I’m guessing (and this is a wild guess) that the degree to which one really is an emergent-theologian is the degree to which one makes peace with this.
I assumed, wrongly, that Ecclesiastes would be the book of choice for emergentists.
If Ecclesiastes doesn’t cut it, then as a part of Jesus becoming human and taking on our condition, there’s an unworked mine of meaning in Jesus’ own confession that even He suffered a limit on his knowledge of times and seasons (“only the Father knows”).
Comment by Eli Dorman
9.42 pm on 8 Feb 2007
Peter,
I am really challenged by something you say at the end of your reflection. You talk about how Proverbs specifically helps us learn from other cultures. In the States at least, I am beginning to see how I have so much to learn from people from other backgrounds. I am a member of the majority culture. I have spent most of my life thinking in major culture ways. Living the standard majority culture lifestyle. Then about five years ago through the lives of about 120 kids from the street in my community that I and few friends in Christ began getting to know all of that changed for me and the whole trajectory of my life and ministry changed. Those kids messed up my life in the most beautiful way. I have learned from them what it means to struggle in deep ways, what it means to fight through despair to a place where you cling to the shred of hope. I have learned to appreciate the simple, the uncomplicated, the ordinary. These kids changed me and I learned that messy people are perhaps the best theologians. We must not limit our thinking about culture to established definitions. Culture can change depending what street your on. Depending whose house your in, etc. Thanks for this challenging post.
Eli
Comment by Paul
8.36 am on 9 Feb 2007
Hi Peter,
great post, not least on suggesting why wisdom might well be wisdom not in the form of answers but in a way of thinking/connecting/expressing? Which might therefore be about the questions, the faith thinking about the life we experience?
I also loved that survey, i wonder what % Jesus would have come :)
thanks v much for sharing your wisdom with us!
Comment by jason
11.53 pm on 10 Feb 2007
this is such a timely perspective. whenever i feel disconnected from the lord as a “charasmatic” i inevitably return to the proverbs where i am once again reminded of the pervasive spirit of God in every little aspect of life. proverbs is such a good counterbalance to so many of our pet theologies. i pray we learn to discover them more.
well done peter!
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