No Fear - the Biblical Books of Wisdom

I want to say that I don't know what ever possessed me to teach the books of Wisdom - Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job - but I'd be lying. I'm teaching them because they are unconventional, contrary, and packed with existential angst. Perfect.

We've gotten through the first two already, and are poised to begin Job tonight and only now do I begin to understand where this is all going. There's Proverbs with its neat, confident little phrases that don't always work out in real living. After all, the wise do not always have good fortune, do they? Nor do the diligent always enjoy wealth. Then there's Ecclesiastes, who, contrary to some translations, does not say that everything is meaningless, but that everything is the Hebrew hevel, meaning that they shift and fade like smoke. Gone the Proverbial confidence. Replace it with cynical reality, a world we know all too well in which we try to grab on to something only to see it fade away and disappear, leaving us feel a kind of betrayal. And of course, there's our friend Job, who suffers beyond imagination by God's specific proclamation just to see whether he will be able to remain loyal and faithful to God. He doesn't.

At the end of all this, all we really want is something that makes sense in the way we understand sense. We want God to be just. We want, actually, what Proverbs lays out. We want the world to give health and good fortune to the faithful and to punish everybody else. But it doesn't happen that way. We think that by the end of Job, God will explain how and why the world works as it does, but He explains nothing. God, when He finally gets involved openly in the whole Job affair, just sits back and dares anyone to be Him. Can you create a universe?, he asks. And, of course, we can't.

All we're left with is the idea that we need to live with the fear of the Lord. 

Really? Fear of the Lord, as I was taught, is a healthy respect for God - for who He is, for what He does, and what He gives. And that's all fine if there is some assurance that He will let me in on at least some of His reasoning. Come on, God. Give me a break. I keep asking Why and get no answer.

And God just smiles. 

And I've come to understand that this lack of explanation is where the fear part comes in. It's a kind of respect we're not used to. It's the kind that just asks us to remember who God is and who we are. He loves us but owes us nothing. We love Him and He tells us to trust and expect nothing but be grateful for everything. 

OK. Well, then, fear the Lord but fear nothing else. The road is wide open. It will need to be. I'm going to have to do more U-ey's than I thought.

Image: Reddit