WISDOM, IGNORANCE, AND FREEDOM

No one has an excuse for ignorance. Why not? We are surrounded by wisdom. It is a tree filled with fruit for the taking:

• Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: "To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense. Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right, for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to him who understands, and right to those who find knowledge. Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate...My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries.” (Proverbs 8:1-13, 19-21)

If wisdom is so precious, why don’t we snatch it up by the truckload? Because, even though it is free, it comes with a price. It can hurt by revealing things we don’t want to know or see. It reveals the truth about ourselves and humbles us. However, unless we are first humbled to see ourselves, we cannot see anything else.

Humility is the cloth that removes dust from our lens. It teaches us self-control by revealing our foolishness. However, many reject the voice of wisdom but might later lament:

• "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I am at the brink of utter ruin..." (Proverbs 5:12-14)

Wisdom is a dictator. It tells us what to do and what not to do. It is a disturbing alarm, an uninvited taskmaster, and we find many ways to reject it. 

Some have embraced the idea that certainty about such things is not possible. In this way, we find freedom from the counsel of wisdom. Others find their “freedom” in the shadows of postmodernism, which denies that truth and wisdom are either knowable or existent.

However, real freedom lives within its limitations, as a fish lives within the limitations of water, which maximizes its freedom. The mountain goat remains on rock-covered mountains, free from its predators.

Wisdom and truth provide the water within which we must remain to be free. Serving our Maker and Lover is a game with rules to be followed. As long as we follow the rules of a chess game, the game is meaningful and satisfying. Once we reject the rules in favor of “freedom,” and insist that we should be free to move the pieces wherever and whenever we want, the game becomes meaningless and unsatisfying.

Instead, we were created for relationship, for love, but for a love which has rules. To reject the rules is to reject love and the very meaning of life. Instead of freedom, we condemn ourselves to eternal homelessness.

CAN WE FIND SELF-KNOWLEDGE FROM WITHIN?

It is undeniable that we can find truth by looking within ourselves. We can detect our pains, tight muscles, and feelings. We also have the capacity to know right from wrong. As many agree, we are wired to know moral truths. However, can we attain wisdom and accurate self-understanding by looking within?

Here is where we encounter great differences of opinion. The highly acclaimed spiritual guide and mystic, Ken Wilber, comes out in favor of finding the truth within:

·       The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation…the whole point is to re-member, re-collect, and re-discover that which you always already are. Indeed, the soul's duty in this life is to remember. The Buddhist smriti and sati-patthana, the Hindu smara, Plato's recollection, Christ's anamnesis: all of those terms are precisely translated as remembrance… And so, the soul that finally remembers all this, and sees it however vaguely, can only pause to wonder: How could I have forgotten? How could I have renounced that State which is the only Real State.

Any self-knowledge depends on remembering, but are we able to do this without bias?

In “Stillness Speaks,” mystic and New Age Guru, Eckhart Tolle, suggests that wisdom and self-knowledge are attainable merely through stillness and self-observation:

·       Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.

Although, self-knowledge is theoretically available from within, these writer claim that it is not so easy:

·       “Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.” (Jodi Picoult)

·       “The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” (Voltaire)

·       “The author concedes that humanity had the fatal tendency to shape truth to our beliefs rather than beliefs to the Truth.” (Frank Turek)

Why do we run from self-knowledge? It is just overwhelmingly painful. In “A Study of History,” Arnold Toynbee expressed his reservation about self-knowledge:

·       Unless we can bear self-mortification, we shall not be able to carry self-examination to the necessary painful lengths. Without humility there can be no illuminating self-knowledge.

As many point out, true self-knowledge is humbling. It shows us who we truly are. As a result, many psychologists have observed that normalcy is self-delusion. One representative study reported:

·       “In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, ‘when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.’” (Abcnews.go.com; “Self-images Often Erroneously Inflated,” 11/9/05)

Many such studies demonstrate that self-delusion is pervasive. Although we have the inner resources for self-knowledge, we seem to lack the willingness to make use of them. In “Positive Illusions,” psychologist Shelley Taylor sums up the evidence:

·       “Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (214)

Perhaps pain isn’t so bad? Perhaps it’s even necessary! Sadly, once the psychological torment passes, these aggressive tumors return.  Taylor confesses:

·       “When depressed people are no longer depressed, they show the same self-enhancing biases and illusions as non-depressed people.” (p.223)

This demonstrates that these “self-enhancing biases and illusions” are entirely human and serve to explain why we flee from self-knowledge. We are simply addicted to the pleasure of having an inflated self-esteem, and we will reject anything that might threaten our comfortable addiction.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

·       For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it. (http://imaginefirestone.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RethinkingSelf-Esteem.pdf)

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

Baumeister, Wilber, and Tolle each share the same goal – having accurate self-knowledge. However, it seems that this goal is obstructed to such a degree that the disciplines of remembering, self-reflection, and stillness are incapable of breaking through, and perhaps we don’t even want these disciplines to break through.

This is where Jesus’ words can offer us a renewed hope. One night, a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, came secretly to question Jesus and was told that he wasn’t even ready to hear the answers:

·       Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

According to Jesus, real truth, although available, is not attainable unless we are reborn of God. Elsewhere, in His final moments, Jesus startled His disciples with a teaching that must have seemed over-the-top to them:

·       Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5)

It is terribly humbling to learn that we “can do nothing” apart from Him. It is something that we will not allow ourselves to see, without entirely destabilizing our lives. At all costs, we will resist it.

However, this truth, embraced by AA, has made the difference in many lives so broken that they were ready to receive it. Let us all be so broken!

MORALITY, JUSTICE, MODERN SECULARISM, AND COMPASSION: MY RESPONSE TO AN ATHEIST

It is understandable that you feel uncomfortable with dogmatic and objective forms of morality. These can become imperialistic and pose a threat to the innocent. However, correct objective forms can also promote society as these ideas have promoted the West.

Where would we be without the traditional Western understanding of objective justice! This, however, is now crumbling before a subjective and secular understanding of compassion.

In one such case, a woman was raped by a migrant. However, since she felt sorry for him and had compassion, she refused to bring charges. Consequently, this man is now free to rape others. Compassion? Not really.

Compassion must be guided by wisdom. However, wisdom is now almost dismissed. Why? Because, wisdom recognizes that there are objective principles of morality and justice, and that morality is not just a choice we make but a law to which we must conform.

HOW ARE WE TO DO THEOLOGY?

This question is really very elementary. Theology is our attempt to understand God’s Word. We do it be meditating on the Word day and night (Psalm 1). Theology also requires that we properly interpret Scripture, which is pleasing to our Lord:

·       Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15; ESV)

Although this answer is simple, we tend to slip into other ways of doing theology. For the first several years of my Christian walk, I had interpreted Scripture through my distorted lens. I tried to understand Scripture in a way that would enable me to feel good about myself, not thinking for a moment that there was anything wrong with doing theology in this manner.

If my interpretation felt right to me, I’d embrace it. If it didn’t, I would either try to interpret the verse in question in a more comfortable way, or I would just ignore it.

I wasn’t reading Scripture any differently than before I was saved. Ethnically a Jew and also a Zionist living in Israel, my favorite book quickly became the Book of Joshua. Why? Because my people were victorious over the others, and that made me feel good!

However, the next book was Judges. Expecting more of the same ego-enhancement, I became very disappointed with this book and put the Hebrew Scriptures down.

Many others are doing the same thing. We comb the Scriptures for support for our own conclusions. One theologian taught that Jesus had admitted that He was wrong about the Syro-Phoenician woman (Matthew 15). At first, He thought her unworthy to receive anything from Him. However, after seeing her faith, He decided elsewise.

From this, the misguided theologian concluded that Scripture is often wrong or that the truth has evolved as Jesus’ understanding had evolved. Ultimately, we have to decide. Consequently, we have been made the judges of Scripture, instead of Scripture judging us. Our judgment reigns supreme.

Scripture is also made into the servant of our lifestyles. We coerce it to say the very things that will justify our lifestyles. Christians who believe in socialism or communism exalt the few verses that show that the disciples had everything in common and ignore the many other verses that make appeals to individuals who have their own resources.

Those who are living alternative sexual lifestyles present Jesus as the ultimate radical who challenged the status quo. His foes was the judgmental religious leaderful. They excluded, while Jesus received all into community. Meanwhile, they neglect the fact that Jesus often called the sinner to repent. They also ignore the fact that Jesus’ critique of the Pharisees wasn’t that they were judgmental, but that they refused to even believe Moses:

·       Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:45-47)

A theology which is faithful to the Word of God seeks to reconcile verse with verse in order to understand Scripture in a coherent and unified way. However, too much theology is performed to reconcile Scripture with the prevailing culture.

Theistic evolutionists (TE) claim that there is no possible conflict between Scripture and evolution. They argue that these two sources of knowledge cannot conflict because they are focused on different things. Evolution’s concern is the physical world, while the Bible’s focus is on the spiritual world. Conflict resolved!

However, the Bible teaches a lot about the physical world – teachings that go against evolution, like God speaking the world into existence or the introduction of sin and death through Adam and Eve. Doesn’t this violate the TE’s claim?

According to the TE, even though the Bible talks about the physical world, its main concern is spiritual, as if it is possible to separate the two. The TE goes further by claiming that the Bible speaks wrongly about the physical world because it has imbibed deeply from the errant cosmology of the Ancient Near East. Here is an example the TE uses to denigrate what the Bible teaches about the physical world:

·       Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. (Psalm 93:1)

How will it never be moved? Here, the TE imposes his Scripturally depreciating interpretation to support his claim that the Bible isn’t interested in the physical world. He claims that the Psalmist wrote under the misunderstanding that our earth will not be moved because it sits on a pedestal, as the ancients had erroneously believed.

However, the TE ignores the fact that Scripture also says that the righteous shall not be moved. Why not? Because he is stuck on a pedestal? Of course, not! Rather, he will not be “moved” in the sense that he will not be destroyed . Likewise, the earth will not be destroyed.

The TE and many others coerce Scripture into agreeing with them, just as I had done. I do not do this anymore. It is not because I am more spiritual or faithful than others. I am not. Instead, it is because I have been so chastened that I only want God’s unadulterated truth. I need to know that I am walking in His light.

Theology, therefore, is not simply a mental exercise. If it was, we could learn wisdom from a book. However, wisdom is a gift from God. It comes through humbling and painful circumstance:

·       The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise. Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence. The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor. (Proverbs 15:31-33)

Who will listen to reproof; who solicits criticism? Only the one who has been humbled and comes to despair in his own judgment. Only such a person is ready for the “fear of the Lord” – an openness to His wisdom and correction.

I had “ignored instruction,” thinking that I had the answers. He chastened me with myself and my own foolishness, allowing me to reap the consequences of my arrogance. He humbled me in order to lift me up. The Psalmist David had confessed:

·       It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalm 119:71-72)

When we are afflicted, we grab any life-preserver thrown our way. The Word was given to me, and it now has more value than anything else. Therefore, I meditate on it continually, as the Lord instructed Joshua:

·       This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1:8)

How do we understand this Book? Once again, it is not just a mental activity. Theology must be done on “our knees,” meaning that we have to cry out to our Lord for His wisdom to properly understand. And He is able to provide it:

·       Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” (Luke 24:44-46)

Since He can open our minds to understand His truths, we must be in prayer, lest our own interests and agendas overtake us.