APRIL 20 2019
WISDOM
If there ever were a need for wisdom, it is today, because the problems the world is facing are greater than at any point in history.
Paradoxically, if there ever was a lack of wisdom, it is today. The situation that confronts us stems from decisions made centuries ago, and to rectify these now deeply ingrained initiatives the world needs remedial measures that are nearly impossible to implement.
There is a consensus developing that the entire world is on the wrong track. People are perplexed, because the old is dying and the new has not yet been formed. People sense that the present situation cannot be maintained, even though it gave people jobs and great prosperity. That’s why many clamor for a return to the good old times, and fall for empty slogans such as Make America Great Again. They don’t want to admit that the past is the past.
Panta rhei, oude menei: everything flows, nothing remains the same: the ancient Greeks knew this already.
All living entities and all human enterprises are subject to birth, growth and decline.
Take mobility.
For many millennia the horse and buggy and sailing ships were the only mode of transport, then motorized transport came, then airplanes. Next? Space travel? A pipe dream.
Take cars.
Weird to the point of ridicule: the entire concept of “car” is bizarre: 1000 kilograms of steel, plastic and rubber to convey 80 kg of human flesh. Oil created the car, and oil created America, and oil made America great. And now the oil kills: now everything, including the USA, constructed on carbon content is lethal.
Me: I bike when I can.
I love my bike, my bicycle, my two-wheeler, my iron horse. I can lift it, I can service it. It always works: no key, no starter, no fuel, except my legs. A sustainable society can be built on a bike: not on a car: that’s why America will die, and never arise again.
Cars are crazy: they account for over ¼ of our greenhouse gas emissions. GHG does not stand for God’s Holy Grail. It stands for the complete opposite, Green House Gases. Today they fuel the world’s Gas Chambers made notorious by the HOLOCAUST that killed millions of Jews. Now we are our own executors. Weird, totally weird.
Or take communication: in Africa the tom-tom; flags were used on sailing ships, fire or smoke signals by the American indigenous population; then the telegraph and Morse-code, telephone, Internet, TV. Now the ‘smart phone’ is slated to kill the human brain.
Or take the workplace. When I arrived in St. Catharines, Ontario in 1955 (left in 1975), General Motors there employed at least 5000 men and a few women. That was the place to be: guaranteed wages, even when unemployed: pension, the works. Then General Motors had 50 percent of the automobile market in North America. Then there also were several other manufacturers: Studebaker, Hudson, Nash, Packard, now all gone, as well as the 5000 jobs. English Electric, Ferranti Packard, the paper mills: in the space of 50 years all these ‘man-sized’ jobs disappeared: gone. St. Catharines now exists on government-financed jobs; Brock University, Niagara College, the healthcare business, perhaps the wine industry, perhaps a bit of tourism.
Where have all the jobs gone? I read last week that 70,000 stores will close this year in North America. For the longest time women have had the edge there over men, even though the pay for these service jobs was less.
Today all governments work with deficits. How long will that last? How long can that last?
Automation. Robots. Artificial Intelligence. Predictions are that millions of jobs will disappear, taken over by machines, mechanical devices, computer-driven tools.
How about human bodies? Will they become superfluous? Idleness breeds evil; uselessness kills the mind; no gainful work causes illness, both physical and psychical. No work without leisure, no leisure without work. Unemployment requires government handouts. Unemployment causes violence. Unemployment kills. All require public help. All become a burden for the taxpayer, itself a disappearing phenomenon. All scream for money that isn’t there.
Enter Climate Change.
We now see it daily in the US Mid-West, America’s bread basket: rains, floods, tornados, all conspiring to make a harvest nearly impossible. The waters leaching all the agricultural poisons into the streams, further imperiling the already precarious state of health of the US population, while threatening food inflation imposed on an already financially stressed population, further causing hardship and mental turmoil.
So, after this brief summary of the state of our financial insecurity and the mental imbalance of a large segment of the working class in Canada and the USA, questions scream for solutions.
Are there still answers? Are there still solutions? Have we painted ourselves in such a tight corner, that there no longer is an escape?
Forget about Trump and his empty bombast, his childish boasting, his dangerous rhetoric. Forget about Doug Ford in Ontario, Canada, with his ‘buck-a-beer’, his anti-climate-change cheap shots.
YES, THERE IS A SOLUTION.
I always read something. Last week I reread a book, a special book, a book given to me by a friend to whom the book was dedicated: Mark Vander Vennen.
BEYOND THE MODERN AGE was written by Bob Goudzwaard and Craig G. Bartholomew. The title suggests that we have entered a new phase. The Modern Age is over. The problems have become too big to be solved. Going back to the time when America was truly great – witness the Marshall Plan – is now impossible, given America’s hundreds of trillions of debt and future obligations.
The days of ENLIGHTENMENT are over as well. That was the time, starting around 1650 – 1680, when “the more dramatic and decisive period of rethinking (came about) when the mental world of the West was revolutionized along rationalistic and secular lines…..Human logic, based on human wisdom freed itself from any attachment to God and the Holy, and pursued its own rationale.” This model has run stuck.
We now have entered the new Dark Ages, an era of desperation, false promises and lies.
It’s high time to reflect.
In God’s grace we are on a cross road. The current path has become a dead end, and there remains one small opening for those who seek. The opening consists of 5 words: THE FEAR OF THE LORD.
“The fear of the Lord” … is the opening line of many texts in the Bible. Psalm 19, one of my favorite bible passages, which, like no other passage of Scripture, extols the praise of creation, starts with the glorious line,
“The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they display knowledge…..Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world”.
And then, later in this poetic masterpiece the simple words,
”The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.”
Isn’t that mind-boggling? How can ‘fear’ be pure? We associate fear with negative aspects, with fright, with something to avoid.
Indeed, that text, and many others, begs the question, “what is meant by “THE FEAR OF THE LORD?”
That is just one instance where ‘fear’ enters in, a word that needs explanation. Psalm 111: 10 reiterates this theme,
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.”
Job, in the book by his name, when he questions the origin of his unfortunate circumstances, which his friends blame on his sinful past, Job says, “The fear of the Lord – that is wisdom”.
So, a preliminary conclusion could be that ‘fear of the Lord’ and ‘wisdom’ are intimately intertwined.
BEYOND THE MODERN AGE tells me that , “Wisdom in Scripture is rooted in the doctrine of creation and espouses a doctrine of creation order.”
I agree with this statement, but it is typical churchy parlor, and needs some clarification. A few lines later, it reverts to common day language and states, “Creation order alerts us to the fact that the world is shaped in particular ways, and it is only as we find those ways and walk in them that we truly flourish”.
I like the way J. H. Bavinck clarifies the creation order in a book I have translated, published by Eerdmans, “The Riddle of Life”. There Dr. Bavinck writes,
“When we look around us with open eyes and minds then there is one thing that time and again touches us to the core: it’s all about serving. The law of serving is at the heart of every creature: it is the overarching purpose for every being. That law makes it possible for the entire world to exist. Every creature thinks that it is there only for itself, but in final analysis it is nothing else but a servant for others. To be alive, to exist at all, finds it destination simply in serving others. Without that law nothing else can be.
Yet that law of serving is remarkable in more than one way. What is so truly amazing is that, as a rule, no creature is there for the sole reason of serving, as they all think that self-help is their sole goal, but all that serving goes automatically, and thus is simply an unconscious act. It is as if a mighty hand brings all this in motion and, in spite of itself, stimulates this self-less serving. This serving, therefore, is not a sacrifice, is not a duty, but an in-born act, without compulsion, without intent. Each single being is there according to its nature, but everything together is so oriented that the existence of the one supports the other and maintains it.”
That is the Creation Order. Bob Goudzwaard and Craig Bartholomew are correct when they write that the creation order makes us aware that the world is shaped in particular ways and that in finding them we discover wisdom.
On top of the SERVING pecking order, if I may use that term, are we, women and men, girls and boys. Our task is to serve consciously, just as Christ did, as stated in Mark 10: 45, “he came to serve and not to be served”.
We have reversed that order. We have made creation our slave. We, in our pride and arrogance, have subjected all of creation to our wily whims and capricious cruelty. We, in our idolatrous inclination, have rejected the notion that Creation represents God, which have made our greedy acts nothing less than rebellion and insurrection, and indeed blasphemy.
Wisdom’s Way.
Wisdom’s way is through humility; wisdom’s way is through service to the earth and all it contains, including our fellow humans globally; wisdom’s way is ‘seeking the kingdom”, the central theme of Jesus ministry; wisdom’s way is seeking the welfare of creation; wisdom’s way is “The Way, the Truth and the Life”, by following Jesus who taught us how to live.
If we want to find ‘wisdom’ then we have to look to creation, because “In Wisdom He made it all,” as Psalm 104: 24 informs us.
That’s why ‘the fear of the Lord’ is the first step in becoming wise. That fear really means: looking in AWE at creation, seeing it with the eyes of the author of Psalm 8, “O Lord, our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” That fear is nothing else but bowing humbly for God’s majesty.
That fear is all about honoring God’s name, his signature on creation, just as the name of “Rembrandt” on his paintings validates his masterpieces.
In the TEN COMMANDMENTS, God orders us “not to misuse his name”. That has nothing to do with swearing, and everything to do with treating Creation as holy, because in it God’s wisdom is revealed. In the LORD’S PRAYER the same emphasis is given: “Holy be thy name.”
Romans 1: 20 sums it all up,
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Saying sorry is not enough. Faith without deeds is dead.
Want WISDOM?
Love Creation, Love God, the Creator, Love LIFE.