The Wisdom of Fools, and the Problem with NPR

Transcription

1 The Wisdom of Fools, and the Problem with NPR In the passage from first Kings, we find Solomon at a crossroads. David, beloved king of Israel, has died and his son finds himself with a massive pair of shoes he isn t sure he can fill. The story is presented as God granting Solomon with wisdom, as a gift, but as I read the passage I m struck by two very wise things that Solomon did before receiving his blessings from the Almighty. The first thing is this. When he found himself overwhelmed with the task in front of him, Solomon turns first to God and not to the multitude of advisors and councilors that were no doubt at his disposal. I personally found one thousand sacrifices to be a fairly eye-popping number, but I think it shows the depth of Solomon s emotion (and perhaps a bit of his desperation). The second wise thing he does is admitting that he knows nothing, and that his own power alone is not sufficient. I can t help but wonder if God s gift wasn t something more along the lines of Scarecrow s diploma or the Lion s medal. Perhaps it was God simply validating what was there all along, and encouraging Solomon by letting him know that he isn t (and never was) alone in the monumental mandate life had thrust upon him. The Bible then goes on to illustrate Solomon s wisdom with a familiar, and very Old Testament, type of story about sawing a baby in half. However, I think we can actually get a better insight into the mindset of the man a few books later in Ecclesiastes. Thought to be written by Solomon near the end of his life as a sort of diary and confessional, we find in this extraordinary book the collected wisdom of a man who has achieved success and renown on a level that the vast majority of us will only see in our loftiest daydreams... If ever we could expect to see the so called prosperity gospel preached, surely it would be here. You could reasonably expect a sort of ancient self-help book: Get Rich and Stay Rich! The Secrets of Leadership From The World s Wisest Man. But what we get is far more surprising! The tone of the book is neatly summed up in the second verse, and it s accompanying footnote in my Bible. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; Vanity of Vanities, all is vanity, with the footnote cheerfully pointing out that vanity could also be translated as Absurdity, Frustration, Futility, Nonsense. This is the advice we get from the wisest man in the world? Turns out NOTHING MATTERS, and everything you struggle for in life is pretty much worthless! If Solomon is so wise and blessed, what s with all the ennui? While the book is ultimately a meditation on the permanent nature of God, and how that gives us assurance, hope, and meaning beyond the brief candles of our lives, you can t help but notice an at times overwhelming sense of detached world-weariness. Is this what lies in store for those seeking to understand the world? If the path to enlightenment leads me to seeing the world as nothing but vain, absurd, frustrating, futile, nonsense, then why bother trying to get there? Is ignorance really bliss?

2 It is here that I will turn inward for a bit, and reflect on my own journey up to this point. I must admit that lately I find myself more and more relating to Solomon s point of view in Ecclesiastes. As the way I viewed the world, and my place in it, shifted over time, and as my understanding of the Bible and theology began to transform from milk into meat, something curious happened. As I stand here before you today, I feel that I have a more rich understanding of the nature of God than I did. I have grown so much in empathy and compassion, and I feel closer to Jesus and closer to my fellow human beings. I feel that I am finally beginning to see God s plan for my life. I have found a community of like-minded individuals that have shown me what God s love in action looks like (I m talking specifically about the people in front of me right now!). So why do I feel such a deep sense of unease? Why do I have an almost constant sense of anxiety? Where is my peace? Where is the joy that s supposed to be down in my heart? I suspect there a few different things going on here. I think I can apply the classic idea of nature vs nurture, and hopefully give you some insight into my own faith journey. By nature, much like Solomon, I tend to engage with the world and with God on a detached, intellectual level. I will confess to you all that I m not sure I know what God s love feels like. My belief in God comes from a rational place. Christian theology seems to best explain and line up with what I observe in the world and in people around me. If it didn t, I wouldn t believe it, simple as that. And for a long time, I felt a sense of shame about that. I grew up in an evangelical environment, surround by people of intense, unshakeable faith. There was a great admiration for childlike faith, for blind belief, and I felt that there must be something wrong with me for not feeling anything during the hymns, for not getting goosebumps when others claimed to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit right here in this very room with us now! I wanted to be a stone like Peter but I related most to Thomas and his doubts. For years, my prayers echoed that of the desperate father in Mark Lord I believe, help my unbelief! But as I began to be nurtured in a different kind of church community, I eventually came to see my faith in a new light. I realized that it s not only ok, but desirable, to question what is coming from the pulpit, and to continually seek new and deeper meanings in the scripture. Yes we all come into the Kingdom as children, but we are clearly not meant to stay there. I realized that an unshakable bedrock of faith is wonderful to have, but an uncurious faith of blind belief is missing one of the defining characteristics of a Christian life. From the moment we believe until the moment we die, we should be constantly evolving, transforming away from the old, natural creation that we were, into the new creation that God designed us to be. Ever greater understanding, ever greater love, resembling Jesus more and more. Oftentimes when things are too dear to our hearts, it removes our ability to see the thing clearly for what it is. After all, it s a rare sociologist indeed who can study their own culture with any great degree of insight. I now saw that my skeptical, rational nature made me able to

3 consume many different pictures of God and find the truth in all of them. And how wonderful! But here we must come back to the question, if I m truly moving towards a more enlightened understanding of God, what s with all this ennui? I ve been thinking a lot about this recently, and I ve begun to see some problems with approaching God on a mostly intellectual level. For instance, the more I study the Bible, the less sure I am about it s message. I recently watched a terrific documentary series from renowned Egyptologist John Romer called Testament. In it, Romer places the Bible in a historical and archeological context. I was fascinated to learn that (at least at the time of production in 1988), there was no archeological proof that either King David or King Solomon ever actually existed, and that perhaps these were simply mythological figures designed to illustrate certain aspects of the Israelite s relationship to God. This information would have seemed shocking and a bit heretical to a young me, but the me of today simply added this knowledge to the ever more nebulous idea of the objective truth of God. And as I said before, I think that questioning all aspects of our faith is both necessary and good. But I think this uncertainty can also make us timid to engage with the Bible, the very foundation upon which our Christian faith is built. Uncertain can quickly become uncomfortable, and we naturally avoid things that we find uncomfortable. For example, as Presbyterians we rarely talk about the more supernatural elements of the Bible. We sort of glaze over the parts about angels and demons, or about Satan and Hell. We have a lot of different preachers stand behind this pulpit, and I don t recall many sermons drawing from Revelations! And it s a perfectly natural instinct to do so when you approach the Bible from a rational, intellectual perspective. After all, we can t really know the truth about such things. And if we can t be confident of whether or not these things even truly exist, isn t it easier to just not talk about them? But I think this approach is missing out on a valuable aspect of these difficult parts of scripture. Focusing on whether or not The Devil is a literal being is missing the value of Satan as a concept. As humans, we need a visual, an anchorpoint or handle to grasp when we think about non-physical abstract concepts. Remove Satan from the picture and we re left with some vague idea of dark forces or the system as our enemy. When I try to picture this dark force, or the powers and principalities, I end up conjuring an image of a black fog or something. We have to have some sort of visual, or we ll create one on our own. More dangerously, we may substitute a picture of our fellow man as the face of sin. Look at how Donald Trump is depicted in many political cartoons today. Even if he s drawn as a buffoon, there is often a demonic quality in the way he s portrayed. But it is a grievous mistake to make Trump, or the party he represents, our opponents in this world. I must confess that I have very little interest in Trump the man, for as C.S. Lewis so eloquently observed How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors

4 have been; how gloriously different are the saints. We must always remember that as Christians we are here to be a counterpoint to the same status quo that has existed since the beginning of the human race. Even if all mentions of supernatural beings are actually just anthropomorphic pictures to illustrate concepts, they are important because the writers of the Bible chose them to help us understand something about the nature of God and the reality that God inhabits. A reality that we are not yet privy to, but is no less real because we cannot see or touch it here in this life. When we lose sight of this there is a danger of turning Christianity into merely a social movement or political force. We can begin to intertwine our political and spiritual beliefs to the point that we start to conflate being a good liberal, a good SJW, or even just a good person, with being a good Christian. In the passage we read today from I Corinthians, we see the idea that Christian wisdom is seen as foolish by unbelievers, by the world in general. I can say that in my own life I have been very hesitant to share my faith with friends and colleagues. I start seminary in three days, and most of the people I work with still have no idea! And why is that? Partly because I m afraid of looking foolish to people I want to like me. I don t want them to ridicule my faith, I don t want to have to explain or defend my faith against popular culture s conception of Christian theology. You know what I m talking about here: so you actually believe that when you die you ll go to this magic place in the sky and play a harp all day? And even beyond that, I must admit that I feel a sense of shame about the Bible at times. Believe me, if I could go to a couple of choice passages and just sharpie them right out, I would! REDACTED. But we have to be willing to engage with the Bible, with all it s ambiguity, uncertainty, and passages we dearly wish read differently. We must be willing to continually study the scriptures, to seek the truth therein, so that we can be bold witnesses to the love and grace of God. A timid faith, a light that we keep to ourselves, is no good to anyone. We are then the servant who buried his master s investment into the ground, only to receive the master s wrath when he merely gave back what he was given. By no means am I saying we need to run out and start trying to convert the next heathen we see! But we must be ready to live our lives in such a way that Christ s love emanates from our every action. We mustn t be afraid to be ambassadors for Jesus, and we do that by generating the grace that we receive from God into the world that so desperately needs it. Otherwise, what makes us different from any other good person trying to do what s right? There is one final problem I see with an overly intellectual approach to Christianity, and I think it gets at the root of Solomon s melancholy, as well as my own. I grew up as a straight, white, Christian, man in a small rural town in the South. Because of this, I viewed the world as sort of a tough, but fair proposition. But as I left that comfortable

5 bubble and began to get new information and perspectives about the lives of people different from myself, that viewpoint underwent a dramatic shift. Once I saw injustice in one part of the world, I began to notice it in other places. Soon, it was everywhere. The more informed I became, the more the world I inhabited became an increasingly hostile environment. The more I learned about corruption and injustice, the more I realized how naïve I had been, and how naïve I still must be. In an effort to counteract this I became news junkie. I started listening to NPR, I began to frequent news and political websites It helped me gain decades worth of insight into other cultures and value systems in a few short months, and I thank God for the opportunity to grow my empathy in this way. But as the injustices began to pile up, I noticed despair begin to creep in as the enormity of the situation revealed itself. After all, NPR s ultimate goal is to keep you listening, and time and time again we ve proved that no news gets us to pay attention like bad news. We must remember that we are all currently participating in a massive social experiment. No other human beings in history have had access to as much information as we have today. It is beyond the scope of any human experience until this point to be able to absorb this much current news and information. And while I think it s clear that the availability of so many different voices can be a powerful tool for good, it is also clear that we are not designed to bear this much psychic weight on our souls at once. All of this wisdom and information about the unjust and futile nature of our world is good only to the point that gives us empathy and stirs us to action. The act of being informed in and of itself is not virtuous. Simply becoming aware of suffering does nothing to alleviate it! I am guilty of spending hours at a time reading longform articles about some crisis and feeling outraged. Then I close my laptop and slump down in my chair, exhausted. I then often feel as though I ve done something good, something to help. But of course I haven t really done anything at all! Solomon s wisdom helped him see the truth that we aren t able to significantly change the world with our actions, and that is indeed a bitter pill to swallow. But we must remember to temper that cynical bit of real world, practical wisdom with the foolish belief in a risen Lord who will someday set things right. The works of man will indeed all come to nothing in the long run, but we can feel joy in doing the Lord s work, because we happy fools know that God s grace is eternal. Jordan Haywood 08/19/18