Painful Progress
How much better it is to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen above silver. Proverbs 16:16 NASB
Wisdom – Proverbs commends obtaining wisdom. What it doesn’t tell you is that there is a price to pay. You have to learn the hard way. Others who have chosen this path offer reminders and condolences.
“Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away.”[1]
“Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, complacency, or smugness. Self-satisfaction breeds futility and despair. All that is creative in man stems from a seed of endless discontent.”[2]
“Man’s extraordinary success as a species springs from his discontent, which compels him to employ his imagination.”[3]
The Hebrew phrase qānâ-ḥokmâ is the combination of the infinitive verb plus the noun, positioned at the beginning of the sentence. It’s first because it is the most important idea in the sentence. First is getting; the reward comes later. First is the struggle with emptiness, the gnawing of discontent, skirting the edge of depression. Gold, if it comes at all, is far down the rainbow.
The Hebrew qānâ-ḥokmâ combination is important. This verb-noun “combination” is really a singular whole. In Hebrew, you can’t “get” without engaging “wisdom.” That’s not how the West thinks. We think we can acquire all sorts of things without involving wisdom. We think wisdom is a separate commodity, one of the things on the obtainable list, along with wealth and health. But Hebrew is different. Any acquiring effort results in ḥokmâ even if that wasn’t the goal. Why? Because wisdom is experiential. “The essential idea of ḥākam represents a manner of thinking and attitude concerning life’s experiences; including matters of general interest and basic morality. These concerns relate to prudence in secular affairs, skills in the arts, moral sensitivity, and experience in the ways of the Lord.”[4] In Hebrew, to live unto the Lord is to acquire the attitude and skills of wisdom. To live any other way is foolishness, a symptom of idolatry. Wisdom is like happiness. Both are byproducts of something else. Someone who thinks either one can be obtained directly just doesn’t understand. As Heschel notes: “ to be wise is to be eternally curious, . .”[5]
Topical Index: wisdom, qānâ-ḥokmâ, endless discontent, Proverbs 16:16
[1] Frederick Buechner Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (HarperOne, 2006), p. 19.
[2] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 31.
[3] Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self, p. 64.
[4] Goldberg, L. (1999). 647 חָכַם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 282). Chicago: Moody Press.
[5] Frederick Buechner Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (HarperOne, 2006), p. 12.
As I come dangerously close to the end of my promised 70 years of life, I have accumulated many possessions, but few friends. I have amassed my fair share of information, but sadly little wisdom. I have eagerly (and egoly) entered into many relationships, but l exited all of them with giving and receiving more pain and blame than when I, in hope, began. My children have forgotten my face, my grandchildren never knew my place as the honored head of the clan. Along with Jacob I can readily and honestly say that “my years have been few and difficult”. My life has been more woe and weal than joy and zeal and more misgiving then giving. Yet, like King Hezekiah, YHWH may graciously grant me an additional 15 years of life as I lay on my (spiritual, not physical) deathbed. Proverbs 9:10 promises that “the fear of YHWH is the beginning of wisdom” so let me learn to fear before I fail yet again.
As a side note it is easy to understand and easier to fall headlong into the Christian belief that it is in the “next life” that we gain everything, including, presumably, wisdom. I am currently disrobing myself of that idea, and tossing it aside with almost all my previous held beautiful royal Christian doctrinal attire. In that sense I am naked and unashamed…. hmmm, perhaps I have gleaned some wisdom in my 40 plus years in the wilderness after all.
The hope you speak about is our reality now, but it’s not so easy to continue to hope when God has been exiled from the world. All that you say may be true, but we don’t have the parting of the sea, the manna, the fire from heaven or even the witness of the resurrection to back us up. We have the reports of those who did see. Perhaps that’s enough most days–but there are days when it doesn’t seem quite enough, days when we’d like to have God ring the doorbell and visit for a while.