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Coming up in this episode on followHIM.
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What's maybe most surprising about Ecclesiastes at the end of the day is how skeptical and irreverent and oldly pessimistic it is as a book to the point that many people have not only wondered why it's in the Bible, how did it even get there, to the point that, well, no one's ever had the courage to cut it from the Bible.
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Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM.
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My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host.
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I'm here with my co-host, John Bytheway, who does not have dry bones.
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John, you've probably never seen that compliment before,
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22,"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.".
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Yeah, I don't want that kind of, would that be spiritual osteoporosis or something?
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John, you have a merry heart.
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Oh, so do you, Hank. Thank you.
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That's what makes you an excellent cohost. John, we are privileged to have returning to the show Dr. Adam Miller. Adam, welcome back. We've missed you.
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I am happy to be with you again as your resident Latter-day Saint philosopher.
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Am I the only philosopher that you guys have on the show?
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We do have Joe Spencer join us every once in a while, and I know he's a close friend of yours.
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Indeed he is.
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Both compliment each other and complement each other really well.
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John, when you think of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, does anything come to mind?
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Yeah, the Proverbs are little sound bites, little refrigerator magnets type of things.
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I was watching the Bible Project on YouTube. I liked something they said.
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The Proverbs are not promises.
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They're kind of like good ideas and great guidelines.
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They work a lot of the time.
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And then I loved how it said,"So we balance those with Ecclesiastes and Job." And I went, oh, that's perfect. Proverbs will give you some great ideas.
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Train up a child in the way he should go. He will never depart from it. Well, that's a good idea. Then we'll read Job and Ecclesiastes.
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There's some exceptions. So I appreciate that big picture.
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That's fantastic. I was telling you both before we hit record, my first introduction to scripture really was the book of Proverbs has a special place in my heart. Adam, Dr.
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Miller, what are we going to do today?
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We've been talking about this for a few months.
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You were excited to take these on.
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John Bytheway doesn't look like he's aged a day in decades.
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But you and I, Hank, I think we're looking a little rough -.
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Yeah.
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Around the edges. Time is taking its toll.
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It is.
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Our lives are slipping away here. How long do we have left?
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Maybe days, maybe decades.
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Right. Just this morning, I was looking at my phone going, "Man, I got to move this further away from me.
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I can't see it." Right. I was talking to a friend once, Natalie Norton.
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You have these moments in conversation where people say something and you never forget it. She said she had learned that happiness in life is how you manage loss, how you deal with loss. And that's something I hadn't heard, but rang true.
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As Elizabeth Bishop puts it,"Life is in some respects the art of losing." It's the art of losing.
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Are your children grown?
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Have your parents passed?
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Have your dreams and ambitions been realized? The world's a moving target.
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The one thing that's guaranteed is that everything that arises passes away.
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That's one part of the picture.
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Imagine that world and then couple that world in your imagination with a certain kind of religion. Imagine, for instance, a religion that required you to lose your life in order to save it.
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Imagine a religion that could at any time ask you, like Jesus did, to leave your family or to willingly suffer persecution or to plain go sell all that you have right now and give it to the poor.
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Imagine a religion that is explicitly premised on the necessity of sacrificing all things, because as the Lectures On Faith put it, any religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.
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Imagine a religion here that required you to willingly return to God everything you'd ever been given to consecrate all of your time, all of your talents, all of your possessions, turning over the whole of your life to God's care and attention.
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Can you imagine that kind of religion coupled with this kind of world?
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Can you imagine joining this kind of religion on purpose and then showing up every Sunday for decades then perhaps even attempting in all earnestness to actually and honestly sacrifice all things, consecrating them all back to God?
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So imagine on the one hand then that we have a world where disappointment and loss and death are guaranteed.
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And on the other hand, a religion where sacrifice and consecration, not just of some things, but of all things, is quite intentionally the explicit order of the day.
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The place where these two lines meet, the place where inevitable loss crosses with willing sacrifice, that's the place where wisdom arises.
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This is what the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes are about, wisdom. Both are wisdom books.
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Both books are integral to an ongoing and open-ended biblical conversation, a conversation that is unfinished, that you and I are invited to participate in about the nature of this divine wisdom. Both books then I think press the same set of questions.
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What kind of world is this?
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What kind of life is vain and foolish given that world?
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And then what kind of life would be redemptive and wise given that world? With the time we have today, I want to try to accomplish three things. First, I want to look at how the book of Proverbs describes wisdom in terms of a willingness to fear God, welcome correction, and break free from the kind of self-deception that truth about ourselves and the world. Second, I want to look at how the book of Ecclesiastes can function as a harsh, perhaps very harsh, but necessary medicine that forces us to see with clear eyes the nature of the problem we keep avoiding, a problem that perhaps the whole of our contemporary world is built to distract us from seeing. Third, I want to then look at how this kind of wisdom can, by way of faith, open onto the kind of surprising, redemptive, and unconventional wisdom that Jesus describes as loving your enemy or what the apostle Paul calls the foolishness of God. And as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.
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God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, such that at the end of the day, as conventional as the kind of wisdom we find in Proverbs seems to be, the kind of wisdom at stake in the gospel of Jesus Christ is pretty unconventional.
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If Proverbs depends on the expectation of a sort of symmetry between action and consequence, the gospel hinges instead on an asymmetrical and unconditional expression of perfect love. So that true wisdom, divine wisdom looks for all the world to the world like foolishness. So the question is why?
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Why would real wisdom look foolish and why would that foolishness be redemptive?
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Fantastic. Before we go any further, John, for those who haven't been here before, or maybe this is their first introduction to Adam, what do we know about him?
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Adam is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas.
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He has a bachelor's in comparative literature from Brigham Young University and a master's and a PhD in philosophy from Villanova University.
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He's the author of probably more than a dozen books.
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I'm looking at Original Grace right here.
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And I know that one that's currently in production that he wrote with Rosalynde Welch, whom we've had on the podcast, called Seven Songs: Signs of Christ in the Old Testament.
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Everybody that loves the Old Testament should be interested in that, especially as we've talked about songs in the Old Testament, which we have this year. That's going to be a great contribution.
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Thank you for joining us again.
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My pleasure.
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Let's read from the Come, Follow Me manual. And then Adam, we're excited, John and I both, to listen and learn. It starts this way.
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"You might think of the book of Proverbs as a collection of wise counsel from loving parents. Its main message is that if you seek wisdom, especially God's wisdom, life will go well.
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But Proverbs is followed by the book of Ecclesiastes, which seems to say it's not that simple.
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The preacher quoted in Ecclesiastes observed that he gave his heart to no wisdom, but still found vexation of spirit and much grief. In various ways, the book asks, can there be real meaning in a world where everything seems vain, temporary and uncertain?
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Yet while the two books look at life from different perspectives, they teach similar truths.
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Ecclesiastes declares,"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.
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Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man." This is the same principle found throughout Proverbs,"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart." Life is always better, if not always perfect, when we trust and follow the Lord Jesus Christ." Beautiful.
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So well written. Adam, with that, where do you want to start?
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How do you want to go about this?
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Yeah, that is well said.
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Let's start with your standard issue disclaimer here for listeners.
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I'm not a historian, let alone of the Hebrew Bible or a scholar of ancient Semitic languages. I'm a philosopher sometimes, wear also the hat of a theologian.
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That's a different kind of job and it brings a different perspective to these passages. The historian might ask a question like,"Did this event really happen or why did this event really happen?" Where a philosopher would instead ask a question like,"What does it even mean for a thing to be real anyway?" Which is a very weird, very hard sort of question.
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Weird, hard questions about obvious things that we normally take for granted.
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That's the philosopher's job.
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We'll try to do some of that today.
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Let's just start with a little bit of really big picture biblical context, as has probably been emphasized by many of your guests here this year, the Bible and the Old Testament in particular is not a single book.
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The Bible is a collection of books.
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The word Bible literally means books, plural, not book singular. That's good, I think. These books, they need each other.
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They are in open conversation with each other.
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To understand these books is not just to understand what's being said on any given page, but to see how that page is in active conversation with a number of other very different pages that may address the same topic from very different perspectives.
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Though they share the same God and are inspired by the same spirit, these books come from many different times and places and perspectives, and most of those are very different from ours, very different from the world in which you and I live, very different from the sort of assumptions that you about the world or about religion.
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I think a good general interpretive rule for the Bible in general and the Old Testament in particular, and for scripture even more broadly, is to keep the parts in circulation with each other, to keep them all in conversation with each other, and especially to keep all of the parts of the Bible and all of the parts of our scriptures in conversation with Jesus Christ. If we fall into the trap of expecting any one verse or any one chapter or any one book to be telling us exactly what we need to know and that's it and that's all there is, then I think we'll miss the point.
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The point is the way that God has initiated a conversation with us as human beings, that this conversation has been recorded in part for us in our scriptures, that the conversation is open, ongoing, and invites us to participate in an active way in that conversation with all of it always circling back to Jesus Christ.
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If we follow that as a kind of general rule, then most of the concerns that we tend to have about any given passage of scripture can find their proper place and we can find a way to see what is being offered in that scripture even if it's not what we expected or even needed at that moment.
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It's not univocal. It's almost like a choir.
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All these different authors offer something different each.
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Sometimes they come in direct conflict with each other and that's okay.
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I like an open and ongoing conversation.
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I love that we're going through a book of scripture every year. Hank, haven't you been pleasantly delighted with how a different guest will see the same segment we did four years ago differently, give us new thoughts and insights.
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I used to think I knew stuff, but I know nothing. And as we start doing this, it's been really fun to see how much there is to learn every time.
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Talking about dealing with loss, the loss of confidence in your own knowledge over the years.
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Exactly.
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When you're young, you think you know everything and by the end you think, I know nothing.
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As the book of Proverbs emphasizes, that's a big part of what divine wisdom looks like, knowing how little you know, not trusting what you thought you knew, and it's then putting all of your trust in God.
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What's the Book of Mormon verse that says we have to consider ourselves fools before God? Yeah, we are.
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A little bit about the foolishness of God.
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Yeah, the foolishness of God to become fools with Christ and for Christ.
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Do you ever wonder when the Lord sees us all in these conversations if he's up there going like this, how far we're missing the point or whatever?
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We think we're really getting into it and the Lord's going, oh, boy.
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It seems to me when I am sitting with someone like Adam and entering scripture, I'm less sure of everything I know.
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There's a healthy feeling to it.
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I know it doesn't sound like it's a good thing to be less sure of everything you know.
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I think it means you're more open to learning, which Yeah, I think it's crucial to the learning experience.
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It's crucial to finding yourself at that moment where at the limit of what you know, you put your trust in something that's not you.
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You put your trust in God and let him carry the weight.
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I love it.
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Two other general points I think about reading scripture, interpretive points.
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I think it's also very helpful to keep in mind that genre, understanding genre can be especially important to knowing and following what's going on in any of these particular books in the Old Testament.
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And genre can be especially important for understanding books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which are doing a different kind of thing than most of what the rest of the Bible is doing, right?
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Different genres have different kinds of rules and different kinds of goals and use different sorts of rhetoric, than other genres do.
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And this respect, as we already mentioned, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are examples of wisdom books rather than being narrative or history or law or prophecy, like most of the rest of what we have gotten or will get here in our course of Old Testament study this year.
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There's something more like an inspired set of parallel reflections on the meaning of life and law and prophecy.
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It's as if in the middle of the Old Testament, someone called timeout from the steady stream of story and prophecy to say,"Let's sit for a moment with this." Depending on how we count, there are four wisdom books in the Bible.
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Sometimes the Psalms are included in that list, but I think really the Psalms are a whole separate thing to themselves.
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The four wisdom books, as I would count them, include Proverbs here, Ecclesiastes, Job, and the Song of Solomon, sometimes called The Song of Songs. Proverbs, as John has already noted, is not a surprising inclusion in the Bible.
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Primarily consists of pretty conventional wisdom about what you would need to do in order to negotiate your way through the world in a more or less successful way.
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Fingers crossed.
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It's a pretty straightforwardly pious and optimistic book, so I don't think it's any surprise that we have Proverbs in there.
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And as you noted, Hank, it's a powerful book and can be a great entry point to our experience of a Hebrew way of thinking about the world.
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But the other three here in our list, Ecclesiastes, Job, and the Song of Songs, are all quite surprising, all very surprising in terms of the kinds of things that they have to say, and maybe even just in terms of the fact that they're in the Bible at all.
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As we take a close look at the details of Ecclesiastes today, one of the first questions we might end up asking ourselves is how and why is this in the Bible? Ecclesiastes.
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One of these things is not like the others.
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Yes, exactly.
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Where did this come from?
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Exactly. As long as we keep them in conversation with the rest of the Bible, and especially keep them in conversation with Jesus Christ, these are also some of the most rewarding and valuable books in the Bible precisely because of how surprising and unusual they are, and because of the ways that they, as a result, can challenge us to think harder, to think more deeply, to connect more truly with the gospel message itself. And Job, as you recall, you get kind of an extended argument about the nature of divine justice and the relationship between justice and human suffering.
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And spoiler alert, it turns out that the relationship between justice and suffering is not at all what we thought, and that recognizing this can open onto a direct experience of God, which in some ways is pretty surprising conclusion to reach, though perhaps not in relationship to the teachings of Jesus Christ. It's a surprising inclusion though in the canon of the Old Testament.
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The Song of Solomon is a surprising inclusion because as short as it is, it's a powerful 2,000 year old love poem that not only treats human intimacy as a divine gift, but that has long been understood as an allegory for developing a deep and intimate connection with God. The third of those is Ecclesiastes, the third of the surprising inclusions here in the wisdom books.
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Ecclesiastes may be the most surprising of all of these three wisdom books and may be the most challenging of all three of those surprising wisdom books, and may be one of my favorite books of scripture, period.
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I even, at one point, once published a small little bespoke paraphrase of the whole book in contemporary English to try to capture for people what's so valuable about it and why they might care about the experience of reading Ecclesiastes.
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It's a weird, hard book that refuses to take for granted many of the conventional ideas that we typically assume are obvious, that the book of Proverbs itself may take for granted as obvious.
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You can see then why, as a result, it might appeal, especially to a philosopher.
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If our business as philosophers is to not take for granted as obvious the things that seem obvious to everybody else, well, Ecclesiastes does a great job of doing just that.
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The Lord wanted to put in something for philosophers, right? Like, we can't have them missing out here.
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He throws us the occasional bone, yeah, that's nice.
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I will say this before we go any further, to everyone listening, you're already loving what Adam has to say. Go back four years ago, walk through the book of Job with us. Go find that episode.
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I remember being so unsatisfied with the ending because Adam showed us Job never gets his questions answered.
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Right.
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The Lord comes with something but not answers to questions, and then the book ends and you feel like, no, where's the wrap up?
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Where's the part where all of the questions get answered?
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And it didn't happen. And that left me kind of uncomfortable, but also, again, I think it's a healthy uncomfortable.
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Yeah, Job spends 40 chapters, he and his friends, asking these questions about suffering and justice, and Job just begging God to show up and answer his questions.
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And to everyone's surprise, at the end of the book of Job, God does show up, but instead of answering any of Job's questions, he spends four chapters of his own asking Job question after question.
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And then he wraps the whole thing up, God does by saying, And Job was right to ask his questions.
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You friends who told him to sit down and be quiet, you were wrong.
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Job was right to ask them, even though God only responds with questions of his own and never answers.
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It's a truly remarkable thing, the book of Job.
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You can easily find that on our YouTube channel, go back and find Adam. John, you know how I feel about Adam. You feel the same way.
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It's always a profound experience.
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Yeah. If it's mind expanding, it's soul expanding, and I just think it puts us in a position, hopefully for some inspiration, to be hungry and to be wondering. You'll love it.
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Be open to analyzing why you are certain, or maybe should you be so certain about things. I appreciate that.
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Adam and his friend, Joe Spencer, who we've had on the show, have helped me appreciate philosophy in ways I never thought possible or even had the, opened me up to a world of thinking that I didn't even know existed.
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As John noted, to be hungry and to be wondering is a good place to be spiritually.
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Let me note one last thing here in terms of setting up our reading of the pair of them.
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What's maybe most surprising about Ecclesiastes at the end of the day is how skeptical and irreverent and oldly pessimistic it is as a book to the point that many people have not only wondered why it's in the Bible, how did it even get there, to the point that, well, no one's ever had the courage to cut it from the Bible.
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A later ending to the book was added to help soften the blow of its claims by editors who were concerned for unsuspecting readers simply stumbling upon it.
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Here's the kind of unsurprising and relatively conventional find in the book of Proverbs. This is, for example, Proverbs chapter three, verse 33, "The Lord's curse is on the household of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the righteous." No surprises here. Exactly what you might expect to have been said.
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The wicked will be cursed and the righteous will be this.
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In Proverbs 15:17.
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This is a great one.
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"Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened ox where there is hatred." That's also just good sound I think conventional wisdom.
00:27:08.500 --> 00:27:17.240
You're better off just with a salad where everyone's happy than a meal, a rich feast where everybody's angry and upset.
00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:22.880
Good plain, unsurprising, proverbial advice.
00:27:23.880 --> 00:27:33.319
Here on the other hand are the alarming lines that you find in Ecclesiastes. Here, for example, is the opening line of Ecclesiastes.
00:27:34.359 --> 00:27:35.849
Verse two.
00:27:35.940 --> 00:27:44.420
I'll use a variety of translations here as we skip around back and forth, depending on what's most useful. This is from the New English translation.
00:27:45.160 --> 00:27:49.920
Futile, futile, laments the teacher. Absolutely futile.
00:27:50.140 --> 00:27:51.720
Everything is futile.
00:27:54.339 --> 00:27:58.259
That's the opening line. The opening line of Ecclesiastes.
00:27:59.859 --> 00:28:02.980
Use that in a talk. Put that on your missionary plaque.
00:28:05.099 --> 00:28:10.220
Yes. This is getting used all the time, I'm sure, by missionaries and different sorts of Facebook memes etc.
00:28:12.940 --> 00:28:14.559
to promote interest.
00:28:14.619 --> 00:28:23.920
Or here is the original closing verse of Ecclesiastes, 12 chapters later. This is verse eight of chapter 12.
00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:28.700
This is the NIV version. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher.
00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:33.200
Everything is meaningless. That's the closing line of the book.
00:28:33.819 --> 00:28:37.299
The opening line of the book, futile, futile, everything is futile.
00:28:37.940 --> 00:28:42.920
The closing line of the book, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.
00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:48.500
An unusual position for a biblical book to take.
00:28:49.220 --> 00:28:51.819
The million dollar question then again though is why?
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:54.480
Why does Ecclesiastes say this?
00:28:55.259 --> 00:29:07.099
What does it have to do with Proverbs and what happens when we put this cry of despair from Ecclesiastes in conversation with the teachings of Jesus Christ?
00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:47.799
The original ending of Ecclesiastes is pretty clearly chapter 12, verse eight. Even in contemporary translations, the scene is obvious because the discourse switches from first person to third person, all the way through the book, the preacher, quote unquote, the speaker has been speaking in the first person directly to us. Then it switches to the third person here in verses nine through 12, and you get a little commentary on what people have just read that also gives it a kind of a slight more pious, less skeptical and irreverent spin.
00:29:48.819 --> 00:30:00.259
And it wraps up by saying,"Since every deed will God bring to judgment for every hidden act, be it good or evil, at the end of the day, fear God and do good.
00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:08.940
Which is a pretty pious ending to a resolutely impious at least from a conventional perspective and skeptical book.
00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:15.779
It reminds me of the book of Mark, which ends with you never see the resurrected Lord.
00:30:16.859 --> 00:30:26.259
It's the women saw the angels and ran away and someone did not like that ending. They added quite a bit. And it's after verse eight,
00:30:26.380 --> 00:30:31.140
8. It says they went out from the sepulchre.
00:30:31.839 --> 00:30:34.240
They were afraid. They didn't say anything to anyone.
00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:37.039
And that's the original ending. That's the ending.
00:30:37.519 --> 00:30:38.839
Someone was uncomfortable with that.
00:30:39.460 --> 00:30:46.660
The tomb is empty, yeah. We can be sympathetic, I think, with people being uncomfortable ending just with an empty tomb.
00:30:47.440 --> 00:31:09.180
But it's also a kind of extraordinary move on the part of the earliest manuscripts that we have, at least for the Gospel of Mark, that it has the courage and audacity to leave their gospel ending with a kind of question for us to answer then as believers or not in response to the fact that the tomb was empty.
00:31:09.980 --> 00:31:25.779
The basic problem has to do here with the way that there's something really obvious about the world that in general you and I can't see or don't see or don't want to see or even refuse to see.
00:31:26.519 --> 00:31:43.920
And that this is what prevents us from being wise, such that the first step toward redemption is to open our eyes and willingly see what it is that we have not wanted to see.
00:31:40.619 --> 00:31:51.980
As the book of Proverbs says, we end up living as fools or dupes, or as Robert Alter puts it, dolts is his translation.
00:31:53.940 --> 00:31:58.799
Because of this ignorance, then we do end up doing foolish and destructive things.
00:31:59.099 --> 00:32:08.900
We end up pursuing happiness in impossible ways that fail to match up with how the world really is and with what God really wants for us.
00:32:09.640 --> 00:32:13.400
We have to see with clear eyes the world as it actually is.
00:32:14.079 --> 00:32:19.980
That sort of sober wisdom I think is what Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are both meant to help equip us.
00:32:20.700 --> 00:32:41.059
I have to be disabused of the idea that my happiness depends on getting something and response to my own desires so that I can discover instead that my happiness depends really on knowing something, or even better, someone, that someone is God.
00:32:42.200 --> 00:32:54.339
What I have to know is what Jesus sees and knows, that the world is full of loss and suffering as everyone dies and all things pass away. This is what Jesus sees more clearly than anyone else.
00:32:54.799 --> 00:32:55.799
Jesus never hides.
00:32:55.940 --> 00:33:00.539
He never turns his face from fear or loss or pain or suffering.
00:33:01.180 --> 00:33:02.839
He always looks it square in the eye.
00:33:03.180 --> 00:33:06.480
He sees it as clearly as it can possibly be seen.
00:33:07.640 --> 00:33:10.380
But then I also have to do what then Jesus does.
00:33:11.240 --> 00:33:18.980
I have to greet all this inevitable loss of all things with my own willing sacrifice and consecration of all things.
00:33:20.180 --> 00:33:28.779
And this as Jesus shows is ironically the only way to save and redeem all things is by greeting their loss with willing sacrifice.
00:33:29.339 --> 00:33:40.339
And that sacrifice is a kind of transformative alchemy that gives us back everything that we would lose as we love and care for it, even as it passes away.
00:33:41.299 --> 00:33:49.500
Jesus is the model there at the end of the day, though I think Mormon gives us a look at it in miniature.
00:33:50.339 --> 00:33:53.619
But that's what's at stake, I think, in both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
00:33:54.400 --> 00:33:58.480
I'm still thinking about that I myself am a dolt and uh.
00:34:00.660 --> 00:34:01.492
We all are.
00:34:02.299 --> 00:34:04.819
There's a really hopeful phrase for me in,
00:34:06.099 --> 00:34:22.500
11, that his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them or who have ignorantly sinned.
00:34:23.019 --> 00:34:29.599
I just think there's hope for dolts because a lot of us have ignorantly sinned.
00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:37.519
That gives me some hope that yeah, we're a lot of dolts and I've had my moments of great doltage myself.
00:34:37.880 --> 00:34:52.840
Adam, I have two items I would love for you to comment on. One, you brought up Mormon in the Book of Mormon. To me, one facet of many of my testimony of the Book of Mormon is it's wisdom.
00:34:53.039 --> 00:34:57.639
And it seems that you have to live a while to get that kind of wisdom.
00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:02.400
You just have to be on the earth observing for quite a while.
00:35:02.440 --> 00:35:06.039
And here you have this young 20s farmer.
00:35:07.679 --> 00:35:10.820
Lehi has wisdom of an older person.
00:35:11.420 --> 00:35:16.460
Mormon has the wisdom of, you even watch Mormon change throughout the book.
00:35:17.340 --> 00:35:19.460
You can watch him soften.
00:35:19.480 --> 00:35:20.659
From 10 years old to...
00:35:21.320 --> 00:35:22.780
Yeah, as he writes.
00:35:23.760 --> 00:35:27.519
I would love to ask you about the wisdom you've seen in the Book of Mormon.
00:35:29.400 --> 00:35:48.920
Yeah, I think the Book of Mormon is full of wisdom and the Book of Mormon, like the Bible, is a good example of what it looks like to see an unfolding, ongoing, growing conversation about what it looks like to experience the kind of wisdom that allows for redemption.
00:35:49.440 --> 00:35:52.980
You can see the way that that conversation unfolds in individual people's lives.
00:35:53.579 --> 00:36:05.572
As you noted in the Book of Mormon, you can see the way that Nephi undergoes a whole series of transformations that deepen and expand what he understands about God and about God's work.
00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:26.500
You can see the way that it unfolds over the span of the whole Book of Mormon, the way that the Book of Mormon embodies a whole series of perspectives on wisdom that are irreducible to one point of view, but that in conversation with one another all help point toward and deepen our understanding of Jesus Christ.
00:36:27.199 --> 00:36:30.340
Adam, I'm going to save my second question for a little bit later.
00:36:30.739 --> 00:36:32.659
It's a little bit of a teaser. It'll keep you here.
00:36:33.139 --> 00:36:36.179
Because what we've been talking about is kind of spelled out in the book of
00:36:36.239 --> 00:36:47.579
11,"For wisdom is better than rubies." There's a bit of an Adam Miller feel to that, to that verse.
00:36:48.400 --> 00:36:50.059
Yeah, wisdom is better than rubies.
00:36:50.639 --> 00:37:01.119
That I think is a version of something that I floated a few minutes ago that at the end of the day, happiness does not depend on getting something, but it depends instead on knowing something.
00:37:01.699 --> 00:37:11.139
It depends on acquiring a certain sort of wisdom that understands the nature of the world, your place in it, and what all that has to do then with your relationship to God.
00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:13.719
The comparison to rubies is helpful here.
00:37:13.900 --> 00:37:29.500
It's the kind of comparison that the book of Proverbs frequently makes because it wants to emphasize how then valuable wisdom is and how much more valuable wisdom is than the kinds of things that we normally spend our time trying to acquire.
00:37:30.119 --> 00:37:49.940
Let's take a closer look now at the book of Proverbs and then at some of the details of the book of Ecclesiastes, both of which I think are well worth our time. The book of Proverbs is itself a collection of sayings compiled over several centuries from a variety of different sources.
00:37:50.860 --> 00:37:52.760
The book of Proverbs doesn't hide this.
00:37:53.800 --> 00:38:02.760
The seams are visible and it indicates to you when it's transitioning from one set of sayings to another set of sayings.
00:38:03.679 --> 00:38:13.280
Some of the sayings compiled in Proverbs are attributed directly to King Solomon himself and may go back even that far to the 10th century.
00:38:14.159 --> 00:38:28.920
Some of them we are told were compiled in the time of King Hezekiah in the 8th century, but other sections are also clearly borrowed from even non-Hebrew sources and repurposed.
00:38:29.599 --> 00:38:33.820
Some are explicitly ascribed to sources other than Solomon.
00:38:34.579 --> 00:38:41.199
Eight basic sections to the book, you get a little introduction in the first couple verses of chapter one.
00:38:42.159 --> 00:39:00.360
Then from the remainder of chapter one through chapter nine, you get an extended discourse on wisdom, on the nature of wisdom that's primarily framed as the conversation between a father and a son.
00:38:55.500 --> 00:39:02.079
Like most conversations between fathers and sons is a monologue.
00:39:05.679 --> 00:39:07.000
By the father to the son.
00:39:09.260 --> 00:39:19.840
It's very different than the rest of the book of Proverbs because it's one long, sustained, more or less continuous conversation.
00:39:20.639 --> 00:39:37.059
Most of the rest of the book of Proverbs consists of little teeny, tiny, two-line couplets, very pithy sayings that you could essentially read in any order and are more or less self-contained in their own right.
00:39:37.480 --> 00:39:47.360
Most of the rest of the book of Proverbs, you could cut up with a pair of scissors verse by verse, put them into a lottery ball hopper, spin them around and pull them out in any order and you'd be just fine.
00:39:47.860 --> 00:39:49.940
Nothing would be lost in the process.
00:39:50.460 --> 00:39:52.980
But those first nine chapters are not like that.
00:39:53.420 --> 00:40:01.400
It's that opening section on the nature of divine wisdom you will be surprised to learn is what interests me most.
00:40:02.579 --> 00:40:03.413
We are shocked.
00:40:04.139 --> 00:40:04.972
Shocked.
00:40:05.460 --> 00:40:10.460
The practical advice that you get in the middle, people are welcome to spend time with that, but that's not what I'm going to focus on.
00:40:12.079 --> 00:40:22.460
One of the most striking features of those opening nine chapters especially is the way that at various points, wisdom is personified as a woman.
00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:34.420
Wisdom as a woman speaks directly to the son, to the father's son, petitioning herself for the son to care about the nature of wisdom.
00:40:35.539 --> 00:40:44.159
That's a pretty unusual thing in the context of Hebrew literature for an abstraction like wisdom to be personified in this way.
00:40:44.860 --> 00:41:13.199
Not unusual maybe for wisdom to be associated with the feminine qualities, but unusual for abstractions in general to be personified in Hebrew thinking. But this carries through in general across the biblical canon, the idea that divine wisdom is almost a kind of quasi personage who has been involved with God's work from the very beginning and has expressed God's will throughout the course of time.
00:41:13.820 --> 00:41:36.360
It's passages like this that also supply a template for what John does at the beginning of his gospel. When John says,"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." That kind of personification of the Word, of logos, of reason, of wisdom, they're associated with Jesus Christ.
00:41:36.760 --> 00:41:40.719
We find a early template for that way of talking here in the book of Proverbs.
00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:46.539
In the Book of Mormon, this is Mosiah 8:20,"O how marvelous are the works of the Lord.
00:41:46.599 --> 00:41:48.260
How long doth he suffer with his people?
00:41:48.980 --> 00:41:54.260
Yea and how blind and impenetrable are the understandings of the children of men for they will not seek wisdom.
00:41:54.820 --> 00:42:03.900
Neither do they desire that she should rule over them." Book of Mormon too has wisdom as a she. You can see my wife nodding at this part.
00:42:04.800 --> 00:42:08.480
Adam, you're right. She speaks first person.
00:42:09.159 --> 00:42:20.260
Right in chapter one,"She crieth in the chief place of concourse in the city. She uttereth her words saying, How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity?
00:42:21.239 --> 00:42:22.300
Ye simple ones?
00:42:22.900 --> 00:42:23.760
Ye simple ones.
00:42:24.099 --> 00:42:27.679
How long will you dolts hang on to your ignorance?
00:42:29.940 --> 00:42:38.639
Our appetite for wisdom will depend on our appetite for correction. Are we willing to be corrected?
00:42:38.820 --> 00:42:39.619
Corrected.
00:42:39.619 --> 00:42:43.159
We will only be as wise as we are willing to be corrected.
00:42:43.739 --> 00:42:54.552
We will only acquire as much wisdom as we are willing to bear what seems to outsiders to be what is fearful, the fear of the Lord.
00:42:55.139 --> 00:43:07.039
I'm especially going to use for this section some of Robert Alter's translations, which I think are some of the cleanest, clearest, most contemporary translations.
00:43:03.659 --> 00:43:12.619
Here's Proverbs chapter one, verses one through seven.
00:43:07.840 --> 00:43:33.860
"The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel, to know wisdom and reproof, to understand discerning maxims, to accept the reproof of insight, righteousness, justice, and uprightness. To give shrewdness to the simple, to allow knowledge and cunning.
00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:39.340
Let the wise man hear and gain learning and the discerning acquire designs.
00:43:40.199 --> 00:43:44.360
To understand proverbs and adages, the words of the wise and their riddles.
00:43:45.280 --> 00:43:47.659
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
00:43:48.599 --> 00:43:53.480
Wisdom and reproof dolts despise.
00:43:48.599 --> 00:43:59.432
That's the official prologue here essentially to the rest of the book of Proverbs.
00:44:00.119 --> 00:44:34.760
And what's less clear in the King James version that is really emphasized here in Alter's version is the role of reproof and correction. For instance, in King James, verse two gets translated as,"To know wisdom and instruction to perceive the words of understanding." Instruction is fine as a translation, but it's a pretty weak translation of instruction in the sense of you're going to now be instructed about what you need to change, about how you need to be corrected.
00:44:35.300 --> 00:44:38.980
Reproof is straightforwardly how Alter translates that.
00:44:39.340 --> 00:44:42.920
To know wisdom and reproof.
00:44:39.340 --> 00:44:42.920
Those two things go together.
00:44:43.920 --> 00:44:49.000
To accept the reproof of insight, that's what's at stake here in knowledge.
00:44:49.079 --> 00:44:52.500
Will I accept the reproof or will I reject it?
00:44:53.179 --> 00:45:01.840
To borrow another famous line from the Book of Mormon, with respect to the nature of wisdom, the wicked take the truth to be hard.
00:44:58.019 --> 00:45:11.099
This is a good sign of the fact that something might be true, that I take it to be hard, that I don't want to hear it, but I would prefer it not to be the case, that I reject it and refuse it.
00:45:12.179 --> 00:45:15.280
That's a good sign that I might pause and reconsider.
00:45:15.860 --> 00:45:19.320
And something quite important, in fact, might be at stake here instead.
00:45:20.079 --> 00:45:24.880
Wisdom and reproof dolts despise. Alter has it.
00:45:26.260 --> 00:45:36.539
Part of what's always going to be at stake here in what wisdom is trying to show us is that wisdom is trying to show us that our desires are not a good measure for truth.
00:45:37.880 --> 00:45:44.559
It's going to hurt to discover that I'm probably not going to get what I thought I wanted. I'm not going to want to hear it.
00:45:45.119 --> 00:45:58.420
Seeing the truth is always going to involve my willingness to lay down my will and accept reality and endorse the Lord's will instead. And that always pinches. It always hurts that sort of correction.
00:45:59.019 --> 00:46:04.952
The fear of the Lord then is the beginning of wisdom as Proverbs puts it here.
00:46:05.619 --> 00:46:18.559
These verses later in chapter one that you already pointed us toward, Hank, verses 20 through 25, and then 29, read like this.
00:46:19.679 --> 00:46:23.880
This is wisdom personified. Wisdom cries out in the streets in the squares.
00:46:23.980 --> 00:46:30.820
She lifts her voice at the bustling crossroads, she calls at the entrance to the gate, says her sayings.
00:46:31.880 --> 00:46:36.719
How long dupes will you love being duped? That's great.
00:46:37.739 --> 00:46:39.900
I really like Alter's translation here.
00:46:40.099 --> 00:46:48.980
How long dupes will you love being duped? In scoffers, lust, scoffing, in fools, hate knowledge.
00:46:50.119 --> 00:46:54.940
Turn back to my rebuke. Look, I would pour out my spirit to you.
00:46:55.219 --> 00:47:00.099
I would make my words known with you.
00:46:55.219 --> 00:47:13.539
Because I called and you resisted, I reached out my hand and none paid heed and you flung aside on my counsel and you did not want my rebuke because they hated knowledge and the Lord's fear they did not choose.
00:47:15.139 --> 00:47:17.760
How long dupes will you love being duped?
00:47:18.599 --> 00:47:36.159
There's a certain sort of innocence to our ignorance given the way that as a human being, you're born as a baby, you don't know things, everybody needs time and space to learn and grow. When you arrive, you're a blank slate.
00:47:32.340 --> 00:47:36.159
There's no shame in that.
00:47:36.980 --> 00:48:17.900
But over time here, especially as we grow attached to trying to understand reality in terms of our own desires, an element of self-deception becomes involved here where we become culpable in a way for our attachment to this distorted way of seeing reality that refuses to recognize the really obvious truth about how the world is passing away, about how it won't line up with our desires, and about how we're called as a result to sacrifice instead of cling to all the things that we've been given, such that as dupes, we end up loving being duped.
00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:35.239
The more successful we can be in our self-deception that no, we really are great and we really do deserve it and we really are going to get what we want. The better we can preserve that fantasy, the more we like it and the more resistant we become to the truth that wisdom is in fact offering instead the hard truth that we need to hear.
00:48:35.800 --> 00:48:38.219
That's why Ecclesiastes is going to hit me so hard.
00:48:39.019 --> 00:48:39.739
Indeed.
00:48:39.739 --> 00:48:43.079
Everything you're chasing is meaningless and futile.
00:48:44.059 --> 00:48:44.900
I don't want to hear that.
00:48:45.719 --> 00:48:49.539
Yeah, zero punches pulled once we get to Ecclesiastes.
00:48:49.559 --> 00:48:52.880
Proverbs does a nice job of setting up the pins for us here in many respects.
00:48:53.679 --> 00:49:10.380
A lot of the contemporary world is quite intentionally built to reinforce and coddle our tendency toward distraction and self-deception and avoidance to not see the real problems, to actually respond to them with care and love that they require.
00:49:11.019 --> 00:49:20.199
I noticed that wisdom said, she asks,"How long ye dupes will you love being duped?" Not how long dupes will you be duped, but you actually -.
00:49:20.440 --> 00:49:21.320
You will enjoy it.
00:49:21.420 --> 00:49:22.739
You love this part.
00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:25.119
Yeah, we love it.
00:49:25.119 --> 00:49:42.880
I often joke with my students that it used to be the case that when I was in school and I found myself in a classroom where I didn't want to be, that I would have to myself do all the hard work of fantasizing that I was someplace else doing something else with someone else.
00:49:43.699 --> 00:50:02.260
I would pony up and do the hard work of being duped in a way that I loved to be duped by my own fantasies and daydreams. For them, that's a pretty rare experience actually for my students today that if they're in a classroom wishing that they were somewhere else doing something else, that they don't have to do that work themselves.
00:50:02.920 --> 00:50:21.773
They can offload all that work of fantasizing and being distracted and running away from how things actually are and where they're actually at by flicking open their phones and letting the world bear the burden of helping them to love being dupes who love being duped.
00:50:22.360 --> 00:50:26.360
It's so easy. It's not even. I don't have to daydream anymore.
00:50:26.739 --> 00:50:31.300
My daydreams are right on my screen.
00:50:26.739 --> 00:50:31.300
It'll take me somewhere else mentally.
00:50:32.119 --> 00:50:39.119
Yeah, we'll pay good money to have someone else dupe us more effectively than we could dupe ourselves because we love being duped so much.
00:50:40.380 --> 00:50:45.360
I think it's been referred to as the dupification of the new generation, right?
00:50:45.400 --> 00:50:46.760
I've heard that before, yes.
00:50:48.820 --> 00:50:53.579
Yeah, not how long will you be duped?
00:50:48.820 --> 00:50:53.579
How long will you love being duped?
00:50:53.599 --> 00:50:57.500
Scoffers lust scoffing, he says. Fools hate knowledge.
00:50:57.980 --> 00:50:59.159
I called and you resisted.
00:50:59.800 --> 00:51:07.619
Maybe that's why it's difficult to compete with media and phones as a teacher, as a parent sometimes, even as myself.
00:51:08.619 --> 00:51:16.539
I'd rather be doing something else somewhere else with someone else. I'm going to rescue that king who's in a tunnel full of boulders.
00:51:18.820 --> 00:51:22.500
Better go jump these trains.
00:51:22.579 --> 00:51:29.440
How interesting. I like that. I didn't ever thought of it that way, but yeah, I want to be somewhere else doing something else.
00:51:30.360 --> 00:51:37.519
We see this again and again with, in the social media, the truth loses to desire every time.
00:51:38.280 --> 00:51:50.800
What we wish for the case, what we wanted to be true, what rings our bells and colludes with our fantasies, that will win out every time over what we don't want to hear and don't want to see and what is actually the case.
00:51:51.639 --> 00:51:56.440
The algorithm wants it to be that way, because you'll come back.
00:51:57.440 --> 00:52:00.139
Well, this is the price then of real wisdom.
00:52:00.599 --> 00:52:18.519
You have to hear and see and feel what you didn't want to hear and see and feel. You have to be like Mormon of sober mind and quick to observe the way things actually are and how it departs from what you thought you wanted things to be.
00:52:19.679 --> 00:52:20.960
John, where is it in the Book of Mormon?
00:52:21.039 --> 00:52:24.340
The spirit will showeth you things as they really are.
00:52:25.380 --> 00:52:29.320
There might be an addition there and it will be really uncomfortable.
00:52:30.599 --> 00:52:31.432
Right?
00:52:31.920 --> 00:52:35.579
13, I think.
00:52:31.920 --> 00:52:35.579
And you won't like it.
00:52:36.360 --> 00:52:37.940
Yeah, and you probably won't love it.
00:52:38.800 --> 00:52:41.039
I love what you've taught me here.
00:52:41.679 --> 00:52:49.980
When I see the word instruction in King James, I've always thought I'm just learning something, but this kind of instruction is this is what you're doing wrong.
00:52:50.079 --> 00:52:54.840
This is reproof. This is what you thought you knew but isn't right.
00:52:54.940 --> 00:52:56.599
That's humbling and helpful though.
00:52:57.559 --> 00:53:02.773
Am I willing to receive instruction or reproof from my dupification?
00:53:04.239 --> 00:53:05.420
Yep, that's the price of wisdom.
00:53:05.659 --> 00:53:08.099
That's the door through which we must be willing to enter.
00:53:09.320 --> 00:53:30.539
Once you pass through that door and see the truth that the world is passing away and you will lose everything, then you will be called to actually sacrifice willingly everything in order to save it and care for it and redeem it, which is also a hard thing that we are keen to avoid.
00:53:32.079 --> 00:53:33.119
Keen to avoid.
00:53:34.079 --> 00:53:55.400
Here in chapter three, we get very famous and rightly so, set of verses and five through 12,"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your discernment. Through all your ways, know him and he will make your path straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes.
00:53:56.179 --> 00:53:58.780
Fear the Lord and swerve from evil.
00:53:59.900 --> 00:54:07.539
Let it be healing for your flesh and a balm to your bones." Or as we get it in the King James, even better here.
00:54:08.300 --> 00:54:12.019
"It shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones.
00:54:12.400 --> 00:54:19.659
Honor the Lord more than your wealth than the first fruits of your crop and your barns will be filled with abundance.
00:54:16.219 --> 00:54:19.659
Your vats will burst with new wine.
00:54:20.460 --> 00:54:25.239
The Lord's reproof my son do not spurn and do not despise his rebuke.".
00:54:26.639 --> 00:54:35.500
Adam, in chapter three verse eight,"It shall be health to thy navel." Is, that's a pronoun there, it. Is it wisdom?
00:54:36.199 --> 00:54:37.260
The trust of...
00:54:37.780 --> 00:54:40.519
Be not wise in thine own eyes.
00:54:37.780 --> 00:54:40.519
Fear the Lord. Depart from evil.
00:54:40.960 --> 00:54:43.260
It shall be health to thy navel. That.
00:54:43.679 --> 00:54:46.679
This behavior will be?
00:54:43.679 --> 00:54:46.679
That's a good question.
00:54:47.059 --> 00:54:47.893
Yeah, it's a good question.
00:54:48.800 --> 00:55:02.940
My inclination is to see the whole of verses five through seven as the it, this whole complex of trusting in the Lord, not leaning to your own understanding, being not wise in your own eyes and fearing the Lord.
00:55:03.719 --> 00:55:06.179
Those things collectively are what constitute wisdom.
00:55:07.460 --> 00:55:15.940
That wisdom then will be health to your navel and marrow to your bones. Yeah, it's a powerful phrase, health to your navel. Your navel is your belly button.
00:55:16.920 --> 00:55:35.179
It's the place where in the womb, strength and nourishment, it's the place where it comes from, where it flows into you, health here to the navel, strength and power and growth coming to you from God and marrow to your bones, a powerful image.
00:55:36.619 --> 00:55:41.000
Let it be healing for your flesh and a balm to your bones is how Alter has it.
00:55:42.519 --> 00:55:49.052
One of my favorite verses here in all of Proverbs in chapter four, verse seven.
00:55:49.780 --> 00:55:50.612
Oh, I love it.
00:55:52.380 --> 00:56:00.480
Here I really prefer the King James translation, but I'll give you Alter's first.
00:55:55.980 --> 00:56:01.579
Alter's translation of chapter four, verse seven goes like this.
00:56:02.400 --> 00:56:05.719
The beginning of wisdom is get wisdom.
00:56:09.980 --> 00:56:15.713
That's great. The beginning of wisdom is get wisdom and in all that you get, get discernment.
00:56:16.380 --> 00:56:25.400
I suspect the Hebrew here might even be pithier and more entertaining than the English rendition.
00:56:21.340 --> 00:56:25.400
The King James goes like this.
00:56:26.179 --> 00:56:34.820
Wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom. And then this, my favorite bit. And with all thy getting, get understanding.
00:56:36.860 --> 00:56:38.840
With all thy getting, get understanding.
00:56:39.519 --> 00:56:40.900
So there are two ways to understand this.
00:56:40.980 --> 00:56:50.780
I think you might see it as urging us to always and only get wisdom. With all of your getting, the thing that you should be getting is wisdom.
00:56:52.079 --> 00:57:12.760
But also I think you could read it in the sense that, as Alter seems to suggest, that in all that you get, also get discernment such that whatever you're doing, whatever you're trying to get, whatever work is at hand, you should also simultaneously be acquiring wisdom. You should be getting discernment.
00:57:13.500 --> 00:57:21.679
Your understanding should be increasing regardless of whatever the particular task is that you are engaged in at the moment.
00:57:21.800 --> 00:57:29.699
Wisdom should simultaneously be accruing. With all of your getting, get understanding. Keep your eyes wide open the whole time.
00:57:29.960 --> 00:57:32.559
Always be quick to observe. Always be sober.
00:57:33.019 --> 00:57:37.940
Never be duped by your love for being duped. It's nice.
00:57:39.000 --> 00:57:41.500
The beginning of wisdom, get wisdom.
00:57:44.639 --> 00:57:46.760
That seems so simple when you put it like that.
00:57:47.159 --> 00:57:47.992
Right.
00:57:50.840 --> 00:57:53.519
Just a handful more here in this same spirit.
00:57:54.059 --> 00:58:01.480
Verses 18 and 19 in chapter four, "But the path of the righteous is like lights, radiance, ever brighter till day has come.
00:58:01.860 --> 00:58:03.500
The way of the wicked is like darkness.
00:58:04.360 --> 00:58:18.179
They know not on what they stumble." Whereas the King James has it,"The path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness.
00:58:18.679 --> 00:58:29.679
They know not at what they stumble." That's a good example too of like the real value of also always simultaneously keeping an eye on the King James translation.
00:58:30.820 --> 00:59:07.519
The way that it might have been cleaner and clearer what the Hebrew was saying in the contemporary translation, but if you skip the King James altogether, then you miss the way that we're getting biblical language that is picked up and repurposed elsewhere all the time in other passages of scripture, in songs, et cetera. This notion of the path of the just being a shine our light that shines more and more brightly unto the perfect day, that's language that has resonance across the whole of scripture and into our contemporary way of speaking as Latter-day Saints.
00:59:07.960 --> 00:59:15.000
You'll miss that if you skip out on the King James altogether, even if it's also really valuable to read contemporary translations.
00:59:16.139 --> 00:59:23.679
The path of the just, is that the commandments? Is The path of the just is maybe the beginning of wisdom.
00:59:23.739 --> 00:59:31.460
That's why maybe the Lord has given us commandments is to get you started down that road and give you a gleam of light.
00:59:33.619 --> 00:59:38.739
Yeah, and I think it has to do here with the way that this sort of wisdom is not a theoretical endeavor.
00:59:39.659 --> 00:59:47.320
It's something that accrues as you engage practically in obedience, in service, in sacrifice.
00:59:48.380 --> 00:59:55.500
And as you serve and obey and sacrifice more, the wisdom will increase in parallel, right?
00:59:55.539 --> 01:00:03.639
It's the kind of wisdom that you can only have at the end of the day by having done what you were asked to do.
00:59:59.039 --> 01:00:03.639
You can't have it in the abstract.
01:00:04.739 --> 01:00:07.980
You can only get it from the inside out by experiencing it for yourself.
01:00:08.380 --> 01:00:12.380
That unfolds in this very gradual, very careful way over time.
01:00:13.260 --> 01:00:15.260
A cruise with engagement.
01:00:13.260 --> 01:00:15.260
I really like that.
01:00:16.480 --> 01:00:18.880
But the way of the wicked is darkness instead.
01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:38.099
One characteristic feature of wickedness is the way that you will constantly stumble because the world will not be what you want it to be, but also you won't understand why you're stumbling because you don't actually grasp the true nature of reality.
01:00:34.039 --> 01:00:46.739
You've refused to see it, so you keep stubbing your toes and you keep getting frustrated and disappointed by how things turn out when you try to force them to be what you want.
01:00:47.360 --> 01:01:05.579
You're not willing to accept the sort of correction that would allow wisdom to actually arise so that you could see the sacrifices that need to be made in order for love and justice and mercy to prevail. It would seem, and this is of course how you would think about it automatically as a kid.
01:01:06.500 --> 01:01:16.739
It would seem like the way to care for your own soul would be to privilege your own desires, to try to get those desires satisfied.
01:01:17.679 --> 01:01:21.659
But that's not actually the case.
01:01:17.679 --> 01:01:39.760
What you have to do instead, it turns out as Jesus puts it right, if you want to save your soul, you can't save your soul. You can't save your soul by saving your soul, you have to lose it to save it and you have to be willing to accept here the sort of instruction that brings your heart and mind back around to reality in order to avoid despising your own soul here.
01:01:40.820 --> 01:01:47.340
I love the idea of, in a human way, to have mentors who are willing to give you correction.
01:01:48.139 --> 01:01:57.659
Some of my last advice I got from my mission president was to go home and find mentors and to be willing to say, "Do I have any blind spots?
01:01:57.699 --> 01:02:06.780
Am I doing anything wrong that you see that's hurting me?" To be willing to invite reprove that way, which was terrific advice.
01:02:08.219 --> 01:02:10.719
Yeah, mentors are really important in that respect.
01:02:11.400 --> 01:02:43.820
This is not the kind of thing you can outsource to an app or a chatbot whose entire orientation is to flatter you and agree with you and aid and abet all of your fantasies and your desire to be duped because that's good business. It drives engagement, as they say, captures our attention. When what you really need are people who, because they love you, will tell you what you need to hear, even, or especially if you don't want to hear it.
01:02:44.360 --> 01:03:02.489
The gospel is a kind of apprenticeship model where we have to sign up to work with people who are far enough along that they know what they're doing so that they can show us how to do what they've been doing so that we then can discover it for ourselves and show it to others in turn.
01:03:03.789 --> 01:03:04.623
But you have to do it.
01:03:05.510 --> 01:03:08.670
I've heard Hank quote verse 13 dozens of times.
01:03:09.090 --> 01:03:12.329
"A merry heart, maketh a cheerful countenance." It's very similar to what I quoted.
01:03:14.030 --> 01:03:21.849
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Maybe I thing that comes natural to me. Is a merry heart.
01:03:22.550 --> 01:03:27.090
Well, who else did it come natural to?
01:03:22.550 --> 01:03:27.090
We all need some, what do we call it?
01:03:28.329 --> 01:03:33.329
Vitamin NCT. Joseph Smith said he had a native cheery temperament.
01:03:35.849 --> 01:03:45.329
That's a super valuable thing and it points out the way that our happiness here does not depend on getting something.
01:03:40.469 --> 01:03:45.329
It depends on a certain state of mind.
01:03:45.610 --> 01:03:47.969
It depends on understanding something, seeing something.
01:03:48.030 --> 01:04:11.429
It depends on the native cheery temperament, the That's where the truth of our happiness lies. And that's a very powerful, liberating thing to discover that I don't have to depend on the world to give me what I want in order to find joy, but that I can bring to the world by sacrificing for it, caring for it, appreciating it, being grateful for it.
01:04:12.309 --> 01:04:16.710
That's the source of joy is what I bring to it rather than what I had hoped to get from it.
01:04:16.710 --> 01:04:19.909
I'm trying to put this in a way I might understand it better.
01:04:20.449 --> 01:04:27.809
Almost like he that refuses to eat healthy and exercise doesn't really like his own body.
01:04:28.989 --> 01:04:31.590
Even though that's not what the body wants, seemingly.
01:04:32.489 --> 01:04:41.510
When I get up early to exercise, my body doesn't seem to want it, yet I'm doing it because I want to care for my body.
01:04:41.849 --> 01:04:43.949
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
01:04:44.650 --> 01:04:50.489
So it does seem like the opposite. If I love my own body, just give it what it wants, not something it doesn't want.
01:04:50.650 --> 01:04:52.280
Twinkies, Ding Dongs. Yeah.
01:04:53.329 --> 01:04:57.530
Yeah, but there's a place for Ding Dongs especially, I think, but -.
01:05:01.010 --> 01:05:05.949
It almost seems like the last thing my body wants, but it's supposedly the one thing it needs.
01:05:07.570 --> 01:05:33.389
Yeah, exercise is a good example of how the body acquires wisdom where you haul it out of bed and you force your body to engage with reality in an intensive way that doesn't match up neatly or obviously with your own desires, but that in the process you then discover things about the nature of reality and about your own nature, about who and what you are that you couldn't have discovered otherwise.
01:05:33.929 --> 01:05:35.650
You start to understand what your body is.
01:05:35.710 --> 01:05:38.190
You start to discover what your body can or cannot do.
01:05:38.909 --> 01:06:12.969
You start to discover what strengths you do or don't have. But if you don't leave desire to the side to engage with reality in this intensive way that exercise requires, then you don't get to see the sunrise, you don't get to feel the blood pumping in your own veins, and you don't discover who and what you are either. The thing about reality, as I think Proverbs emphasizes, is that if you get a taste for it, you will love it and sacrifice everything caring to take care of it, to redeem it, to save it. That's Jesus.
01:06:13.670 --> 01:06:18.382
Jesus sees the whole of it and it just makes him love it and care for it all the more.
01:06:18.889 --> 01:06:20.389
Feels like a paradox at first.
01:06:20.909 --> 01:06:22.530
Yeah, it certainly does.
01:06:23.050 --> 01:06:24.150
There's a Disney film.
01:06:24.909 --> 01:06:33.710
Do you guys remember when the Disney film Cars came out and the older car is trying to teach the younger car, you got to turn left to go right.
01:06:35.269 --> 01:06:36.190
Are you crazy?
01:06:36.809 --> 01:06:42.409
That makes no sense. Well, and you might look at like Alma's advice to Shiblon.
01:06:42.889 --> 01:06:47.882
You have to bridle your passions and then you'll be filled with love. It's like, wait, what?
01:06:49.010 --> 01:06:52.150
Shouldn't I let it go?
01:06:52.210 --> 01:07:02.882
Let's give you one more passage here just for fun from Proverbs and then we'll turn left to go right by looking at Ecclesiastes.
01:07:06.250 --> 01:07:08.050
That's a good way to describe Ecclesiastes.
01:07:08.710 --> 01:07:13.489
It feels like you're taking a hard left when you hope to go right, but then you end up in the right place at the end of the day.
01:07:16.210 --> 01:07:17.519
Chapter 16 verse 31.
01:07:18.250 --> 01:07:22.070
Gray hair is a crown of splendor through righteousness obtained.
01:07:23.449 --> 01:07:25.650
Or, as the new English translation has it.
01:07:26.670 --> 01:07:31.650
Gray hair is like a crown of glory and is attained in the path of righteousness.
01:07:33.610 --> 01:07:38.869
When you started this, Adam, you said, "If we're lucky, we can grow old and gray.".
01:07:38.889 --> 01:07:41.230
If we're lucky, we'll have gray hair.
01:07:41.869 --> 01:07:42.389
Exactly.
01:07:42.389 --> 01:07:47.710
You have to cross your fingers and hope that you will stick around long enough to get that crown of glory.
01:07:49.170 --> 01:07:52.650
We complain about getting old, not realizing what a blessing it is.
01:07:53.789 --> 01:08:05.670
This is what desire does when we try to read the world in light of our own desires and the world refuses to be what we wanted, then complaining is the order of the day.
01:08:06.489 --> 01:08:11.690
It's the telltale sign of the fact that we are dupes, loving being duped.
01:08:12.869 --> 01:08:14.170
Coming up in part two.
01:08:15.230 --> 01:08:33.000
As useful as the book of Proverbs can be, it also can be a trap because it can build into your way of thinking about the world the expectation that if I do X, Y will for sure happen.
01:08:33.539 --> 01:08:43.229
The point of the book of Ecclesiastes is to disabuse you. Profoundly, deeply, repeatedly without mercy.
01:08:43.479 --> 01:08:46.729
To disabuse you of the idea that any such symmetry exists.
00:00:00.380 --> 00:00:03.180
Coming up in this episode on followHIM.
00:00:03.979 --> 00:00:27.480
What's maybe most surprising about Ecclesiastes at the end of the day is how skeptical and irreverent and oldly pessimistic it is as a book to the point that many people have not only wondered why it's in the Bible, how did it even get there, to the point that, well, no one's ever had the courage to cut it from the Bible.
00:00:33.479 --> 00:00:36.020
Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM.
00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:40.280
My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host.
00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:43.920
I'm here with my co-host, John Bytheway, who does not have dry bones.
00:00:45.579 --> 00:00:48.320
John, you've probably never seen that compliment before,
00:00:48.380 --> 00:00:57.979
22,"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.".
00:00:59.240 --> 00:01:04.340
Yeah, I don't want that kind of, would that be spiritual osteoporosis or something?
00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:08.000
John, you have a merry heart.
00:01:08.579 --> 00:01:10.000
Oh, so do you, Hank. Thank you.
00:01:10.060 --> 00:01:18.640
That's what makes you an excellent cohost. John, we are privileged to have returning to the show Dr. Adam Miller. Adam, welcome back. We've missed you.
00:01:19.500 --> 00:01:25.072
I am happy to be with you again as your resident Latter-day Saint philosopher.
00:01:26.680 --> 00:01:30.519
Am I the only philosopher that you guys have on the show?
00:01:31.219 --> 00:01:36.480
We do have Joe Spencer join us every once in a while, and I know he's a close friend of yours.
00:01:37.079 --> 00:01:37.912
Indeed he is.
00:01:38.200 --> 00:01:42.299
Both compliment each other and complement each other really well.
00:01:43.219 --> 00:01:47.060
John, when you think of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, does anything come to mind?
00:01:48.099 --> 00:01:53.620
Yeah, the Proverbs are little sound bites, little refrigerator magnets type of things.
00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:58.000
I was watching the Bible Project on YouTube. I liked something they said.
00:01:58.019 --> 00:01:59.680
The Proverbs are not promises.
00:02:00.200 --> 00:02:03.019
They're kind of like good ideas and great guidelines.
00:02:03.599 --> 00:02:06.700
They work a lot of the time.
00:02:03.599 --> 00:02:15.139
And then I loved how it said,"So we balance those with Ecclesiastes and Job." And I went, oh, that's perfect. Proverbs will give you some great ideas.
00:02:15.680 --> 00:02:23.240
Train up a child in the way he should go. He will never depart from it. Well, that's a good idea. Then we'll read Job and Ecclesiastes.
00:02:23.560 --> 00:02:26.479
There's some exceptions. So I appreciate that big picture.
00:02:27.199 --> 00:02:39.599
That's fantastic. I was telling you both before we hit record, my first introduction to scripture really was the book of Proverbs has a special place in my heart. Adam, Dr.
00:02:35.639 --> 00:02:39.599
Miller, what are we going to do today?
00:02:39.879 --> 00:02:41.280
We've been talking about this for a few months.
00:02:41.719 --> 00:02:43.060
You were excited to take these on.
00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:47.659
John Bytheway doesn't look like he's aged a day in decades.
00:02:49.280 --> 00:02:51.300
But you and I, Hank, I think we're looking a little rough -.
00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:52.259
Yeah.
00:02:52.259 --> 00:02:54.800
Around the edges. Time is taking its toll.
00:02:55.319 --> 00:02:56.152
It is.
00:02:56.360 --> 00:02:59.199
Our lives are slipping away here. How long do we have left?
00:03:00.939 --> 00:03:02.819
Maybe days, maybe decades.
00:03:03.800 --> 00:03:09.919
Right. Just this morning, I was looking at my phone going, "Man, I got to move this further away from me.
00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:16.139
I can't see it." Right. I was talking to a friend once, Natalie Norton.
00:03:16.639 --> 00:03:33.919
You have these moments in conversation where people say something and you never forget it. She said she had learned that happiness in life is how you manage loss, how you deal with loss. And that's something I hadn't heard, but rang true.
00:03:35.060 --> 00:03:42.699
As Elizabeth Bishop puts it,"Life is in some respects the art of losing." It's the art of losing.
00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:46.120
Are your children grown?
00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:46.120
Have your parents passed?
00:03:46.180 --> 00:03:50.240
Have your dreams and ambitions been realized? The world's a moving target.
00:03:50.919 --> 00:03:55.819
The one thing that's guaranteed is that everything that arises passes away.
00:03:55.879 --> 00:03:57.259
That's one part of the picture.
00:03:57.759 --> 00:04:12.199
Imagine that world and then couple that world in your imagination with a certain kind of religion. Imagine, for instance, a religion that required you to lose your life in order to save it.
00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:28.779
Imagine a religion that could at any time ask you, like Jesus did, to leave your family or to willingly suffer persecution or to plain go sell all that you have right now and give it to the poor.
00:04:30.100 --> 00:04:49.860
Imagine a religion that is explicitly premised on the necessity of sacrificing all things, because as the Lectures On Faith put it, any religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.
00:04:50.639 --> 00:05:07.319
Imagine a religion here that required you to willingly return to God everything you'd ever been given to consecrate all of your time, all of your talents, all of your possessions, turning over the whole of your life to God's care and attention.
00:05:08.740 --> 00:05:12.800
Can you imagine that kind of religion coupled with this kind of world?
00:05:13.660 --> 00:05:33.019
Can you imagine joining this kind of religion on purpose and then showing up every Sunday for decades then perhaps even attempting in all earnestness to actually and honestly sacrifice all things, consecrating them all back to God?
00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:44.819
So imagine on the one hand then that we have a world where disappointment and loss and death are guaranteed.
00:05:40.879 --> 00:05:56.839
And on the other hand, a religion where sacrifice and consecration, not just of some things, but of all things, is quite intentionally the explicit order of the day.
00:05:57.740 --> 00:06:08.920
The place where these two lines meet, the place where inevitable loss crosses with willing sacrifice, that's the place where wisdom arises.
00:06:09.740 --> 00:06:17.680
This is what the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes are about, wisdom. Both are wisdom books.
00:06:18.699 --> 00:06:36.759
Both books are integral to an ongoing and open-ended biblical conversation, a conversation that is unfinished, that you and I are invited to participate in about the nature of this divine wisdom. Both books then I think press the same set of questions.
00:06:37.660 --> 00:06:39.040
What kind of world is this?
00:06:40.139 --> 00:06:44.439
What kind of life is vain and foolish given that world?
00:06:45.660 --> 00:08:04.279
And then what kind of life would be redemptive and wise given that world? With the time we have today, I want to try to accomplish three things. First, I want to look at how the book of Proverbs describes wisdom in terms of a willingness to fear God, welcome correction, and break free from the kind of self-deception that truth about ourselves and the world. Second, I want to look at how the book of Ecclesiastes can function as a harsh, perhaps very harsh, but necessary medicine that forces us to see with clear eyes the nature of the problem we keep avoiding, a problem that perhaps the whole of our contemporary world is built to distract us from seeing. Third, I want to then look at how this kind of wisdom can, by way of faith, open onto the kind of surprising, redemptive, and unconventional wisdom that Jesus describes as loving your enemy or what the apostle Paul calls the foolishness of God. And as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.
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God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, such that at the end of the day, as conventional as the kind of wisdom we find in Proverbs seems to be, the kind of wisdom at stake in the gospel of Jesus Christ is pretty unconventional.
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If Proverbs depends on the expectation of a sort of symmetry between action and consequence, the gospel hinges instead on an asymmetrical and unconditional expression of perfect love. So that true wisdom, divine wisdom looks for all the world to the world like foolishness. So the question is why?
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Why would real wisdom look foolish and why would that foolishness be redemptive?
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Fantastic. Before we go any further, John, for those who haven't been here before, or maybe this is their first introduction to Adam, what do we know about him?
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Adam is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas.
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He has a bachelor's in comparative literature from Brigham Young University and a master's and a PhD in philosophy from Villanova University.
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He's the author of probably more than a dozen books.
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I'm looking at Original Grace right here.
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And I know that one that's currently in production that he wrote with Rosalynde Welch, whom we've had on the podcast, called Seven Songs: Signs of Christ in the Old Testament.
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Everybody that loves the Old Testament should be interested in that, especially as we've talked about songs in the Old Testament, which we have this year. That's going to be a great contribution.
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Thank you for joining us again.
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My pleasure.
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Let's read from the Come, Follow Me manual. And then Adam, we're excited, John and I both, to listen and learn. It starts this way.
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"You might think of the book of Proverbs as a collection of wise counsel from loving parents. Its main message is that if you seek wisdom, especially God's wisdom, life will go well.
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But Proverbs is followed by the book of Ecclesiastes, which seems to say it's not that simple.
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The preacher quoted in Ecclesiastes observed that he gave his heart to no wisdom, but still found vexation of spirit and much grief. In various ways, the book asks, can there be real meaning in a world where everything seems vain, temporary and uncertain?
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Yet while the two books look at life from different perspectives, they teach similar truths.
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Ecclesiastes declares,"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.
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Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man." This is the same principle found throughout Proverbs,"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart." Life is always better, if not always perfect, when we trust and follow the Lord Jesus Christ." Beautiful.
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So well written. Adam, with that, where do you want to start?
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How do you want to go about this?
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Yeah, that is well said.
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Let's start with your standard issue disclaimer here for listeners.
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I'm not a historian, let alone of the Hebrew Bible or a scholar of ancient Semitic languages. I'm a philosopher sometimes, wear also the hat of a theologian.
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That's a different kind of job and it brings a different perspective to these passages. The historian might ask a question like,"Did this event really happen or why did this event really happen?" Where a philosopher would instead ask a question like,"What does it even mean for a thing to be real anyway?" Which is a very weird, very hard sort of question.
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Weird, hard questions about obvious things that we normally take for granted.
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That's the philosopher's job.
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We'll try to do some of that today.
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Let's just start with a little bit of really big picture biblical context, as has probably been emphasized by many of your guests here this year, the Bible and the Old Testament in particular is not a single book.
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The Bible is a collection of books.
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The word Bible literally means books, plural, not book singular. That's good, I think. These books, they need each other.
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They are in open conversation with each other.
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To understand these books is not just to understand what's being said on any given page, but to see how that page is in active conversation with a number of other very different pages that may address the same topic from very different perspectives.
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Though they share the same God and are inspired by the same spirit, these books come from many different times and places and perspectives, and most of those are very different from ours, very different from the world in which you and I live, very different from the sort of assumptions that you about the world or about religion.
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I think a good general interpretive rule for the Bible in general and the Old Testament in particular, and for scripture even more broadly, is to keep the parts in circulation with each other, to keep them all in conversation with each other, and especially to keep all of the parts of the Bible and all of the parts of our scriptures in conversation with Jesus Christ. If we fall into the trap of expecting any one verse or any one chapter or any one book to be telling us exactly what we need to know and that's it and that's all there is, then I think we'll miss the point.
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The point is the way that God has initiated a conversation with us as human beings, that this conversation has been recorded in part for us in our scriptures, that the conversation is open, ongoing, and invites us to participate in an active way in that conversation with all of it always circling back to Jesus Christ.
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If we follow that as a kind of general rule, then most of the concerns that we tend to have about any given passage of scripture can find their proper place and we can find a way to see what is being offered in that scripture even if it's not what we expected or even needed at that moment.
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It's not univocal. It's almost like a choir.
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All these different authors offer something different each.
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Sometimes they come in direct conflict with each other and that's okay.
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I like an open and ongoing conversation.
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I love that we're going through a book of scripture every year. Hank, haven't you been pleasantly delighted with how a different guest will see the same segment we did four years ago differently, give us new thoughts and insights.
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I used to think I knew stuff, but I know nothing. And as we start doing this, it's been really fun to see how much there is to learn every time.
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Talking about dealing with loss, the loss of confidence in your own knowledge over the years.
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Exactly.
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When you're young, you think you know everything and by the end you think, I know nothing.
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As the book of Proverbs emphasizes, that's a big part of what divine wisdom looks like, knowing how little you know, not trusting what you thought you knew, and it's then putting all of your trust in God.
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What's the Book of Mormon verse that says we have to consider ourselves fools before God? Yeah, we are.
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A little bit about the foolishness of God.
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Yeah, the foolishness of God to become fools with Christ and for Christ.
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Do you ever wonder when the Lord sees us all in these conversations if he's up there going like this, how far we're missing the point or whatever?
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We think we're really getting into it and the Lord's going, oh, boy.
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It seems to me when I am sitting with someone like Adam and entering scripture, I'm less sure of everything I know.
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There's a healthy feeling to it.
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I know it doesn't sound like it's a good thing to be less sure of everything you know.
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I think it means you're more open to learning, which Yeah, I think it's crucial to the learning experience.
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It's crucial to finding yourself at that moment where at the limit of what you know, you put your trust in something that's not you.
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You put your trust in God and let him carry the weight.
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I love it.
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Two other general points I think about reading scripture, interpretive points.
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I think it's also very helpful to keep in mind that genre, understanding genre can be especially important to knowing and following what's going on in any of these particular books in the Old Testament.
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And genre can be especially important for understanding books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which are doing a different kind of thing than most of what the rest of the Bible is doing, right?
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Different genres have different kinds of rules and different kinds of goals and use different sorts of rhetoric, than other genres do.
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And this respect, as we already mentioned, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are examples of wisdom books rather than being narrative or history or law or prophecy, like most of the rest of what we have gotten or will get here in our course of Old Testament study this year.
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There's something more like an inspired set of parallel reflections on the meaning of life and law and prophecy.
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It's as if in the middle of the Old Testament, someone called timeout from the steady stream of story and prophecy to say,"Let's sit for a moment with this." Depending on how we count, there are four wisdom books in the Bible.
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Sometimes the Psalms are included in that list, but I think really the Psalms are a whole separate thing to themselves.
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The four wisdom books, as I would count them, include Proverbs here, Ecclesiastes, Job, and the Song of Solomon, sometimes called The Song of Songs. Proverbs, as John has already noted, is not a surprising inclusion in the Bible.
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Primarily consists of pretty conventional wisdom about what you would need to do in order to negotiate your way through the world in a more or less successful way.
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Fingers crossed.
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It's a pretty straightforwardly pious and optimistic book, so I don't think it's any surprise that we have Proverbs in there.
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And as you noted, Hank, it's a powerful book and can be a great entry point to our experience of a Hebrew way of thinking about the world.
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But the other three here in our list, Ecclesiastes, Job, and the Song of Songs, are all quite surprising, all very surprising in terms of the kinds of things that they have to say, and maybe even just in terms of the fact that they're in the Bible at all.
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As we take a close look at the details of Ecclesiastes today, one of the first questions we might end up asking ourselves is how and why is this in the Bible? Ecclesiastes.
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One of these things is not like the others.
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Yes, exactly.
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Where did this come from?
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Exactly. As long as we keep them in conversation with the rest of the Bible, and especially keep them in conversation with Jesus Christ, these are also some of the most rewarding and valuable books in the Bible precisely because of how surprising and unusual they are, and because of the ways that they, as a result, can challenge us to think harder, to think more deeply, to connect more truly with the gospel message itself. And Job, as you recall, you get kind of an extended argument about the nature of divine justice and the relationship between justice and human suffering.
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And spoiler alert, it turns out that the relationship between justice and suffering is not at all what we thought, and that recognizing this can open onto a direct experience of God, which in some ways is pretty surprising conclusion to reach, though perhaps not in relationship to the teachings of Jesus Christ. It's a surprising inclusion though in the canon of the Old Testament.
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The Song of Solomon is a surprising inclusion because as short as it is, it's a powerful 2,000 year old love poem that not only treats human intimacy as a divine gift, but that has long been understood as an allegory for developing a deep and intimate connection with God. The third of those is Ecclesiastes, the third of the surprising inclusions here in the wisdom books.
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Ecclesiastes may be the most surprising of all of these three wisdom books and may be the most challenging of all three of those surprising wisdom books, and may be one of my favorite books of scripture, period.
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I even, at one point, once published a small little bespoke paraphrase of the whole book in contemporary English to try to capture for people what's so valuable about it and why they might care about the experience of reading Ecclesiastes.
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It's a weird, hard book that refuses to take for granted many of the conventional ideas that we typically assume are obvious, that the book of Proverbs itself may take for granted as obvious.
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You can see then why, as a result, it might appeal, especially to a philosopher.
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If our business as philosophers is to not take for granted as obvious the things that seem obvious to everybody else, well, Ecclesiastes does a great job of doing just that.
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The Lord wanted to put in something for philosophers, right? Like, we can't have them missing out here.
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He throws us the occasional bone, yeah, that's nice.
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I will say this before we go any further, to everyone listening, you're already loving what Adam has to say. Go back four years ago, walk through the book of Job with us. Go find that episode.
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I remember being so unsatisfied with the ending because Adam showed us Job never gets his questions answered.
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Right.
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The Lord comes with something but not answers to questions, and then the book ends and you feel like, no, where's the wrap up?
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Where's the part where all of the questions get answered?
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And it didn't happen. And that left me kind of uncomfortable, but also, again, I think it's a healthy uncomfortable.
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Yeah, Job spends 40 chapters, he and his friends, asking these questions about suffering and justice, and Job just begging God to show up and answer his questions.
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And to everyone's surprise, at the end of the book of Job, God does show up, but instead of answering any of Job's questions, he spends four chapters of his own asking Job question after question.
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And then he wraps the whole thing up, God does by saying, And Job was right to ask his questions.
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You friends who told him to sit down and be quiet, you were wrong.
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Job was right to ask them, even though God only responds with questions of his own and never answers.
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It's a truly remarkable thing, the book of Job.
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You can easily find that on our YouTube channel, go back and find Adam. John, you know how I feel about Adam. You feel the same way.
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It's always a profound experience.
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Yeah. If it's mind expanding, it's soul expanding, and I just think it puts us in a position, hopefully for some inspiration, to be hungry and to be wondering. You'll love it.
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Be open to analyzing why you are certain, or maybe should you be so certain about things. I appreciate that.
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Adam and his friend, Joe Spencer, who we've had on the show, have helped me appreciate philosophy in ways I never thought possible or even had the, opened me up to a world of thinking that I didn't even know existed.
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As John noted, to be hungry and to be wondering is a good place to be spiritually.
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Let me note one last thing here in terms of setting up our reading of the pair of them.
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What's maybe most surprising about Ecclesiastes at the end of the day is how skeptical and irreverent and oldly pessimistic it is as a book to the point that many people have not only wondered why it's in the Bible, how did it even get there, to the point that, well, no one's ever had the courage to cut it from the Bible.
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A later ending to the book was added to help soften the blow of its claims by editors who were concerned for unsuspecting readers simply stumbling upon it.
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Here's the kind of unsurprising and relatively conventional find in the book of Proverbs. This is, for example, Proverbs chapter three, verse 33, "The Lord's curse is on the household of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the righteous." No surprises here. Exactly what you might expect to have been said.
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The wicked will be cursed and the righteous will be this.
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In Proverbs 15:17.
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This is a great one.
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"Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened ox where there is hatred." That's also just good sound I think conventional wisdom.
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You're better off just with a salad where everyone's happy than a meal, a rich feast where everybody's angry and upset.
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Good plain, unsurprising, proverbial advice.
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Here on the other hand are the alarming lines that you find in Ecclesiastes. Here, for example, is the opening line of Ecclesiastes.
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Verse two.
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I'll use a variety of translations here as we skip around back and forth, depending on what's most useful. This is from the New English translation.
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Futile, futile, laments the teacher. Absolutely futile.
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Everything is futile.
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That's the opening line. The opening line of Ecclesiastes.
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Use that in a talk. Put that on your missionary plaque.
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Yes. This is getting used all the time, I'm sure, by missionaries and different sorts of Facebook memes etc.
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to promote interest.
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Or here is the original closing verse of Ecclesiastes, 12 chapters later. This is verse eight of chapter 12.
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This is the NIV version. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher.
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Everything is meaningless. That's the closing line of the book.
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The opening line of the book, futile, futile, everything is futile.
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The closing line of the book, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.
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An unusual position for a biblical book to take.
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The million dollar question then again though is why?
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Why does Ecclesiastes say this?
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What does it have to do with Proverbs and what happens when we put this cry of despair from Ecclesiastes in conversation with the teachings of Jesus Christ?
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The original ending of Ecclesiastes is pretty clearly chapter 12, verse eight. Even in contemporary translations, the scene is obvious because the discourse switches from first person to third person, all the way through the book, the preacher, quote unquote, the speaker has been speaking in the first person directly to us. Then it switches to the third person here in verses nine through 12, and you get a little commentary on what people have just read that also gives it a kind of a slight more pious, less skeptical and irreverent spin.
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And it wraps up by saying,"Since every deed will God bring to judgment for every hidden act, be it good or evil, at the end of the day, fear God and do good.
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Which is a pretty pious ending to a resolutely impious at least from a conventional perspective and skeptical book.
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It reminds me of the book of Mark, which ends with you never see the resurrected Lord.
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It's the women saw the angels and ran away and someone did not like that ending. They added quite a bit. And it's after verse eight,
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8. It says they went out from the sepulchre.
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They were afraid. They didn't say anything to anyone.
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And that's the original ending. That's the ending.
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Someone was uncomfortable with that.
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The tomb is empty, yeah. We can be sympathetic, I think, with people being uncomfortable ending just with an empty tomb.
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But it's also a kind of extraordinary move on the part of the earliest manuscripts that we have, at least for the Gospel of Mark, that it has the courage and audacity to leave their gospel ending with a kind of question for us to answer then as believers or not in response to the fact that the tomb was empty.
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The basic problem has to do here with the way that there's something really obvious about the world that in general you and I can't see or don't see or don't want to see or even refuse to see.
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And that this is what prevents us from being wise, such that the first step toward redemption is to open our eyes and willingly see what it is that we have not wanted to see.
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As the book of Proverbs says, we end up living as fools or dupes, or as Robert Alter puts it, dolts is his translation.
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Because of this ignorance, then we do end up doing foolish and destructive things.
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We end up pursuing happiness in impossible ways that fail to match up with how the world really is and with what God really wants for us.
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We have to see with clear eyes the world as it actually is.
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That sort of sober wisdom I think is what Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are both meant to help equip us.
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I have to be disabused of the idea that my happiness depends on getting something and response to my own desires so that I can discover instead that my happiness depends really on knowing something, or even better, someone, that someone is God.
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What I have to know is what Jesus sees and knows, that the world is full of loss and suffering as everyone dies and all things pass away. This is what Jesus sees more clearly than anyone else.
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Jesus never hides.
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He never turns his face from fear or loss or pain or suffering.
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He always looks it square in the eye.
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He sees it as clearly as it can possibly be seen.
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But then I also have to do what then Jesus does.
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I have to greet all this inevitable loss of all things with my own willing sacrifice and consecration of all things.
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And this as Jesus shows is ironically the only way to save and redeem all things is by greeting their loss with willing sacrifice.
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And that sacrifice is a kind of transformative alchemy that gives us back everything that we would lose as we love and care for it, even as it passes away.
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Jesus is the model there at the end of the day, though I think Mormon gives us a look at it in miniature.
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But that's what's at stake, I think, in both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
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I'm still thinking about that I myself am a dolt and uh.
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We all are.
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There's a really hopeful phrase for me in,
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11, that his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them or who have ignorantly sinned.
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I just think there's hope for dolts because a lot of us have ignorantly sinned.
00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:37.519
That gives me some hope that yeah, we're a lot of dolts and I've had my moments of great doltage myself.
00:34:37.880 --> 00:34:52.840
Adam, I have two items I would love for you to comment on. One, you brought up Mormon in the Book of Mormon. To me, one facet of many of my testimony of the Book of Mormon is it's wisdom.
00:34:53.039 --> 00:34:57.639
And it seems that you have to live a while to get that kind of wisdom.
00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:02.400
You just have to be on the earth observing for quite a while.
00:35:02.440 --> 00:35:06.039
And here you have this young 20s farmer.
00:35:07.679 --> 00:35:10.820
Lehi has wisdom of an older person.
00:35:11.420 --> 00:35:16.460
Mormon has the wisdom of, you even watch Mormon change throughout the book.
00:35:17.340 --> 00:35:19.460
You can watch him soften.
00:35:19.480 --> 00:35:20.659
From 10 years old to...
00:35:21.320 --> 00:35:22.780
Yeah, as he writes.
00:35:23.760 --> 00:35:27.519
I would love to ask you about the wisdom you've seen in the Book of Mormon.
00:35:29.400 --> 00:35:48.920
Yeah, I think the Book of Mormon is full of wisdom and the Book of Mormon, like the Bible, is a good example of what it looks like to see an unfolding, ongoing, growing conversation about what it looks like to experience the kind of wisdom that allows for redemption.
00:35:49.440 --> 00:35:52.980
You can see the way that that conversation unfolds in individual people's lives.
00:35:53.579 --> 00:36:05.572
As you noted in the Book of Mormon, you can see the way that Nephi undergoes a whole series of transformations that deepen and expand what he understands about God and about God's work.
00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:26.500
You can see the way that it unfolds over the span of the whole Book of Mormon, the way that the Book of Mormon embodies a whole series of perspectives on wisdom that are irreducible to one point of view, but that in conversation with one another all help point toward and deepen our understanding of Jesus Christ.
00:36:27.199 --> 00:36:30.340
Adam, I'm going to save my second question for a little bit later.
00:36:30.739 --> 00:36:32.659
It's a little bit of a teaser. It'll keep you here.
00:36:33.139 --> 00:36:36.179
Because what we've been talking about is kind of spelled out in the book of
00:36:36.239 --> 00:36:47.579
11,"For wisdom is better than rubies." There's a bit of an Adam Miller feel to that, to that verse.
00:36:48.400 --> 00:36:50.059
Yeah, wisdom is better than rubies.
00:36:50.639 --> 00:37:01.119
That I think is a version of something that I floated a few minutes ago that at the end of the day, happiness does not depend on getting something, but it depends instead on knowing something.
00:37:01.699 --> 00:37:11.139
It depends on acquiring a certain sort of wisdom that understands the nature of the world, your place in it, and what all that has to do then with your relationship to God.
00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:13.719
The comparison to rubies is helpful here.
00:37:13.900 --> 00:37:29.500
It's the kind of comparison that the book of Proverbs frequently makes because it wants to emphasize how then valuable wisdom is and how much more valuable wisdom is than the kinds of things that we normally spend our time trying to acquire.
00:37:30.119 --> 00:37:49.940
Let's take a closer look now at the book of Proverbs and then at some of the details of the book of Ecclesiastes, both of which I think are well worth our time. The book of Proverbs is itself a collection of sayings compiled over several centuries from a variety of different sources.
00:37:50.860 --> 00:37:52.760
The book of Proverbs doesn't hide this.
00:37:53.800 --> 00:38:02.760
The seams are visible and it indicates to you when it's transitioning from one set of sayings to another set of sayings.
00:38:03.679 --> 00:38:13.280
Some of the sayings compiled in Proverbs are attributed directly to King Solomon himself and may go back even that far to the 10th century.
00:38:14.159 --> 00:38:28.920
Some of them we are told were compiled in the time of King Hezekiah in the 8th century, but other sections are also clearly borrowed from even non-Hebrew sources and repurposed.
00:38:29.599 --> 00:38:33.820
Some are explicitly ascribed to sources other than Solomon.
00:38:34.579 --> 00:38:41.199
Eight basic sections to the book, you get a little introduction in the first couple verses of chapter one.
00:38:42.159 --> 00:39:00.360
Then from the remainder of chapter one through chapter nine, you get an extended discourse on wisdom, on the nature of wisdom that's primarily framed as the conversation between a father and a son.
00:38:55.500 --> 00:39:02.079
Like most conversations between fathers and sons is a monologue.
00:39:05.679 --> 00:39:07.000
By the father to the son.
00:39:09.260 --> 00:39:19.840
It's very different than the rest of the book of Proverbs because it's one long, sustained, more or less continuous conversation.
00:39:20.639 --> 00:39:37.059
Most of the rest of the book of Proverbs consists of little teeny, tiny, two-line couplets, very pithy sayings that you could essentially read in any order and are more or less self-contained in their own right.
00:39:37.480 --> 00:39:47.360
Most of the rest of the book of Proverbs, you could cut up with a pair of scissors verse by verse, put them into a lottery ball hopper, spin them around and pull them out in any order and you'd be just fine.
00:39:47.860 --> 00:39:49.940
Nothing would be lost in the process.
00:39:50.460 --> 00:39:52.980
But those first nine chapters are not like that.
00:39:53.420 --> 00:40:01.400
It's that opening section on the nature of divine wisdom you will be surprised to learn is what interests me most.
00:40:02.579 --> 00:40:03.413
We are shocked.
00:40:04.139 --> 00:40:04.972
Shocked.
00:40:05.460 --> 00:40:10.460
The practical advice that you get in the middle, people are welcome to spend time with that, but that's not what I'm going to focus on.
00:40:12.079 --> 00:40:22.460
One of the most striking features of those opening nine chapters especially is the way that at various points, wisdom is personified as a woman.
00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:34.420
Wisdom as a woman speaks directly to the son, to the father's son, petitioning herself for the son to care about the nature of wisdom.
00:40:35.539 --> 00:40:44.159
That's a pretty unusual thing in the context of Hebrew literature for an abstraction like wisdom to be personified in this way.
00:40:44.860 --> 00:41:13.199
Not unusual maybe for wisdom to be associated with the feminine qualities, but unusual for abstractions in general to be personified in Hebrew thinking. But this carries through in general across the biblical canon, the idea that divine wisdom is almost a kind of quasi personage who has been involved with God's work from the very beginning and has expressed God's will throughout the course of time.
00:41:13.820 --> 00:41:36.360
It's passages like this that also supply a template for what John does at the beginning of his gospel. When John says,"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." That kind of personification of the Word, of logos, of reason, of wisdom, they're associated with Jesus Christ.
00:41:36.760 --> 00:41:40.719
We find a early template for that way of talking here in the book of Proverbs.
00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:46.539
In the Book of Mormon, this is Mosiah 8:20,"O how marvelous are the works of the Lord.
00:41:46.599 --> 00:41:48.260
How long doth he suffer with his people?
00:41:48.980 --> 00:41:54.260
Yea and how blind and impenetrable are the understandings of the children of men for they will not seek wisdom.
00:41:54.820 --> 00:42:03.900
Neither do they desire that she should rule over them." Book of Mormon too has wisdom as a she. You can see my wife nodding at this part.
00:42:04.800 --> 00:42:08.480
Adam, you're right. She speaks first person.
00:42:09.159 --> 00:42:20.260
Right in chapter one,"She crieth in the chief place of concourse in the city. She uttereth her words saying, How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity?
00:42:21.239 --> 00:42:22.300
Ye simple ones?
00:42:22.900 --> 00:42:23.760
Ye simple ones.
00:42:24.099 --> 00:42:27.679
How long will you dolts hang on to your ignorance?
00:42:29.940 --> 00:42:38.639
Our appetite for wisdom will depend on our appetite for correction. Are we willing to be corrected?
00:42:38.820 --> 00:42:39.619
Corrected.
00:42:39.619 --> 00:42:43.159
We will only be as wise as we are willing to be corrected.
00:42:43.739 --> 00:42:54.552
We will only acquire as much wisdom as we are willing to bear what seems to outsiders to be what is fearful, the fear of the Lord.
00:42:55.139 --> 00:43:07.039
I'm especially going to use for this section some of Robert Alter's translations, which I think are some of the cleanest, clearest, most contemporary translations.
00:43:03.659 --> 00:43:12.619
Here's Proverbs chapter one, verses one through seven.
00:43:07.840 --> 00:43:33.860
"The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel, to know wisdom and reproof, to understand discerning maxims, to accept the reproof of insight, righteousness, justice, and uprightness. To give shrewdness to the simple, to allow knowledge and cunning.
00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:39.340
Let the wise man hear and gain learning and the discerning acquire designs.
00:43:40.199 --> 00:43:44.360
To understand proverbs and adages, the words of the wise and their riddles.
00:43:45.280 --> 00:43:47.659
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
00:43:48.599 --> 00:43:53.480
Wisdom and reproof dolts despise.
00:43:48.599 --> 00:43:59.432
That's the official prologue here essentially to the rest of the book of Proverbs.
00:44:00.119 --> 00:44:34.760
And what's less clear in the King James version that is really emphasized here in Alter's version is the role of reproof and correction. For instance, in King James, verse two gets translated as,"To know wisdom and instruction to perceive the words of understanding." Instruction is fine as a translation, but it's a pretty weak translation of instruction in the sense of you're going to now be instructed about what you need to change, about how you need to be corrected.
00:44:35.300 --> 00:44:38.980
Reproof is straightforwardly how Alter translates that.
00:44:39.340 --> 00:44:42.920
To know wisdom and reproof.
00:44:39.340 --> 00:44:42.920
Those two things go together.
00:44:43.920 --> 00:44:49.000
To accept the reproof of insight, that's what's at stake here in knowledge.
00:44:49.079 --> 00:44:52.500
Will I accept the reproof or will I reject it?
00:44:53.179 --> 00:45:01.840
To borrow another famous line from the Book of Mormon, with respect to the nature of wisdom, the wicked take the truth to be hard.
00:44:58.019 --> 00:45:11.099
This is a good sign of the fact that something might be true, that I take it to be hard, that I don't want to hear it, but I would prefer it not to be the case, that I reject it and refuse it.
00:45:12.179 --> 00:45:15.280
That's a good sign that I might pause and reconsider.
00:45:15.860 --> 00:45:19.320
And something quite important, in fact, might be at stake here instead.
00:45:20.079 --> 00:45:24.880
Wisdom and reproof dolts despise. Alter has it.
00:45:26.260 --> 00:45:36.539
Part of what's always going to be at stake here in what wisdom is trying to show us is that wisdom is trying to show us that our desires are not a good measure for truth.
00:45:37.880 --> 00:45:44.559
It's going to hurt to discover that I'm probably not going to get what I thought I wanted. I'm not going to want to hear it.
00:45:45.119 --> 00:45:58.420
Seeing the truth is always going to involve my willingness to lay down my will and accept reality and endorse the Lord's will instead. And that always pinches. It always hurts that sort of correction.
00:45:59.019 --> 00:46:04.952
The fear of the Lord then is the beginning of wisdom as Proverbs puts it here.
00:46:05.619 --> 00:46:18.559
These verses later in chapter one that you already pointed us toward, Hank, verses 20 through 25, and then 29, read like this.
00:46:19.679 --> 00:46:23.880
This is wisdom personified. Wisdom cries out in the streets in the squares.
00:46:23.980 --> 00:46:30.820
She lifts her voice at the bustling crossroads, she calls at the entrance to the gate, says her sayings.
00:46:31.880 --> 00:46:36.719
How long dupes will you love being duped? That's great.
00:46:37.739 --> 00:46:39.900
I really like Alter's translation here.
00:46:40.099 --> 00:46:48.980
How long dupes will you love being duped? In scoffers, lust, scoffing, in fools, hate knowledge.
00:46:50.119 --> 00:46:54.940
Turn back to my rebuke. Look, I would pour out my spirit to you.
00:46:55.219 --> 00:47:00.099
I would make my words known with you.
00:46:55.219 --> 00:47:13.539
Because I called and you resisted, I reached out my hand and none paid heed and you flung aside on my counsel and you did not want my rebuke because they hated knowledge and the Lord's fear they did not choose.
00:47:15.139 --> 00:47:17.760
How long dupes will you love being duped?
00:47:18.599 --> 00:47:36.159
There's a certain sort of innocence to our ignorance given the way that as a human being, you're born as a baby, you don't know things, everybody needs time and space to learn and grow. When you arrive, you're a blank slate.
00:47:32.340 --> 00:47:36.159
There's no shame in that.
00:47:36.980 --> 00:48:17.900
But over time here, especially as we grow attached to trying to understand reality in terms of our own desires, an element of self-deception becomes involved here where we become culpable in a way for our attachment to this distorted way of seeing reality that refuses to recognize the really obvious truth about how the world is passing away, about how it won't line up with our desires, and about how we're called as a result to sacrifice instead of cling to all the things that we've been given, such that as dupes, we end up loving being duped.
00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:35.239
The more successful we can be in our self-deception that no, we really are great and we really do deserve it and we really are going to get what we want. The better we can preserve that fantasy, the more we like it and the more resistant we become to the truth that wisdom is in fact offering instead the hard truth that we need to hear.
00:48:35.800 --> 00:48:38.219
That's why Ecclesiastes is going to hit me so hard.
00:48:39.019 --> 00:48:39.739
Indeed.
00:48:39.739 --> 00:48:43.079
Everything you're chasing is meaningless and futile.
00:48:44.059 --> 00:48:44.900
I don't want to hear that.
00:48:45.719 --> 00:48:49.539
Yeah, zero punches pulled once we get to Ecclesiastes.
00:48:49.559 --> 00:48:52.880
Proverbs does a nice job of setting up the pins for us here in many respects.
00:48:53.679 --> 00:49:10.380
A lot of the contemporary world is quite intentionally built to reinforce and coddle our tendency toward distraction and self-deception and avoidance to not see the real problems, to actually respond to them with care and love that they require.
00:49:11.019 --> 00:49:20.199
I noticed that wisdom said, she asks,"How long ye dupes will you love being duped?" Not how long dupes will you be duped, but you actually -.
00:49:20.440 --> 00:49:21.320
You will enjoy it.
00:49:21.420 --> 00:49:22.739
You love this part.
00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:25.119
Yeah, we love it.
00:49:25.119 --> 00:49:42.880
I often joke with my students that it used to be the case that when I was in school and I found myself in a classroom where I didn't want to be, that I would have to myself do all the hard work of fantasizing that I was someplace else doing something else with someone else.
00:49:43.699 --> 00:50:02.260
I would pony up and do the hard work of being duped in a way that I loved to be duped by my own fantasies and daydreams. For them, that's a pretty rare experience actually for my students today that if they're in a classroom wishing that they were somewhere else doing something else, that they don't have to do that work themselves.
00:50:02.920 --> 00:50:21.773
They can offload all that work of fantasizing and being distracted and running away from how things actually are and where they're actually at by flicking open their phones and letting the world bear the burden of helping them to love being dupes who love being duped.
00:50:22.360 --> 00:50:26.360
It's so easy. It's not even. I don't have to daydream anymore.
00:50:26.739 --> 00:50:31.300
My daydreams are right on my screen.
00:50:26.739 --> 00:50:31.300
It'll take me somewhere else mentally.
00:50:32.119 --> 00:50:39.119
Yeah, we'll pay good money to have someone else dupe us more effectively than we could dupe ourselves because we love being duped so much.
00:50:40.380 --> 00:50:45.360
I think it's been referred to as the dupification of the new generation, right?
00:50:45.400 --> 00:50:46.760
I've heard that before, yes.
00:50:48.820 --> 00:50:53.579
Yeah, not how long will you be duped?
00:50:48.820 --> 00:50:53.579
How long will you love being duped?
00:50:53.599 --> 00:50:57.500
Scoffers lust scoffing, he says. Fools hate knowledge.
00:50:57.980 --> 00:50:59.159
I called and you resisted.
00:50:59.800 --> 00:51:07.619
Maybe that's why it's difficult to compete with media and phones as a teacher, as a parent sometimes, even as myself.
00:51:08.619 --> 00:51:16.539
I'd rather be doing something else somewhere else with someone else. I'm going to rescue that king who's in a tunnel full of boulders.
00:51:18.820 --> 00:51:22.500
Better go jump these trains.
00:51:22.579 --> 00:51:29.440
How interesting. I like that. I didn't ever thought of it that way, but yeah, I want to be somewhere else doing something else.
00:51:30.360 --> 00:51:37.519
We see this again and again with, in the social media, the truth loses to desire every time.
00:51:38.280 --> 00:51:50.800
What we wish for the case, what we wanted to be true, what rings our bells and colludes with our fantasies, that will win out every time over what we don't want to hear and don't want to see and what is actually the case.
00:51:51.639 --> 00:51:56.440
The algorithm wants it to be that way, because you'll come back.
00:51:57.440 --> 00:52:00.139
Well, this is the price then of real wisdom.
00:52:00.599 --> 00:52:18.519
You have to hear and see and feel what you didn't want to hear and see and feel. You have to be like Mormon of sober mind and quick to observe the way things actually are and how it departs from what you thought you wanted things to be.
00:52:19.679 --> 00:52:20.960
John, where is it in the Book of Mormon?
00:52:21.039 --> 00:52:24.340
The spirit will showeth you things as they really are.
00:52:25.380 --> 00:52:29.320
There might be an addition there and it will be really uncomfortable.
00:52:30.599 --> 00:52:31.432
Right?
00:52:31.920 --> 00:52:35.579
13, I think.
00:52:31.920 --> 00:52:35.579
And you won't like it.
00:52:36.360 --> 00:52:37.940
Yeah, and you probably won't love it.
00:52:38.800 --> 00:52:41.039
I love what you've taught me here.
00:52:41.679 --> 00:52:49.980
When I see the word instruction in King James, I've always thought I'm just learning something, but this kind of instruction is this is what you're doing wrong.
00:52:50.079 --> 00:52:54.840
This is reproof. This is what you thought you knew but isn't right.
00:52:54.940 --> 00:52:56.599
That's humbling and helpful though.
00:52:57.559 --> 00:53:02.773
Am I willing to receive instruction or reproof from my dupification?
00:53:04.239 --> 00:53:05.420
Yep, that's the price of wisdom.
00:53:05.659 --> 00:53:08.099
That's the door through which we must be willing to enter.
00:53:09.320 --> 00:53:30.539
Once you pass through that door and see the truth that the world is passing away and you will lose everything, then you will be called to actually sacrifice willingly everything in order to save it and care for it and redeem it, which is also a hard thing that we are keen to avoid.
00:53:32.079 --> 00:53:33.119
Keen to avoid.
00:53:34.079 --> 00:53:55.400
Here in chapter three, we get very famous and rightly so, set of verses and five through 12,"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your discernment. Through all your ways, know him and he will make your path straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes.
00:53:56.179 --> 00:53:58.780
Fear the Lord and swerve from evil.
00:53:59.900 --> 00:54:07.539
Let it be healing for your flesh and a balm to your bones." Or as we get it in the King James, even better here.
00:54:08.300 --> 00:54:12.019
"It shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones.
00:54:12.400 --> 00:54:19.659
Honor the Lord more than your wealth than the first fruits of your crop and your barns will be filled with abundance.
00:54:16.219 --> 00:54:19.659
Your vats will burst with new wine.
00:54:20.460 --> 00:54:25.239
The Lord's reproof my son do not spurn and do not despise his rebuke.".
00:54:26.639 --> 00:54:35.500
Adam, in chapter three verse eight,"It shall be health to thy navel." Is, that's a pronoun there, it. Is it wisdom?
00:54:36.199 --> 00:54:37.260
The trust of...
00:54:37.780 --> 00:54:40.519
Be not wise in thine own eyes.
00:54:37.780 --> 00:54:40.519
Fear the Lord. Depart from evil.
00:54:40.960 --> 00:54:43.260
It shall be health to thy navel. That.
00:54:43.679 --> 00:54:46.679
This behavior will be?
00:54:43.679 --> 00:54:46.679
That's a good question.
00:54:47.059 --> 00:54:47.893
Yeah, it's a good question.
00:54:48.800 --> 00:55:02.940
My inclination is to see the whole of verses five through seven as the it, this whole complex of trusting in the Lord, not leaning to your own understanding, being not wise in your own eyes and fearing the Lord.
00:55:03.719 --> 00:55:06.179
Those things collectively are what constitute wisdom.
00:55:07.460 --> 00:55:15.940
That wisdom then will be health to your navel and marrow to your bones. Yeah, it's a powerful phrase, health to your navel. Your navel is your belly button.
00:55:16.920 --> 00:55:35.179
It's the place where in the womb, strength and nourishment, it's the place where it comes from, where it flows into you, health here to the navel, strength and power and growth coming to you from God and marrow to your bones, a powerful image.
00:55:36.619 --> 00:55:41.000
Let it be healing for your flesh and a balm to your bones is how Alter has it.
00:55:42.519 --> 00:55:49.052
One of my favorite verses here in all of Proverbs in chapter four, verse seven.
00:55:49.780 --> 00:55:50.612
Oh, I love it.
00:55:52.380 --> 00:56:00.480
Here I really prefer the King James translation, but I'll give you Alter's first.
00:55:55.980 --> 00:56:01.579
Alter's translation of chapter four, verse seven goes like this.
00:56:02.400 --> 00:56:05.719
The beginning of wisdom is get wisdom.
00:56:09.980 --> 00:56:15.713
That's great. The beginning of wisdom is get wisdom and in all that you get, get discernment.
00:56:16.380 --> 00:56:25.400
I suspect the Hebrew here might even be pithier and more entertaining than the English rendition.
00:56:21.340 --> 00:56:25.400
The King James goes like this.
00:56:26.179 --> 00:56:34.820
Wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom. And then this, my favorite bit. And with all thy getting, get understanding.
00:56:36.860 --> 00:56:38.840
With all thy getting, get understanding.
00:56:39.519 --> 00:56:40.900
So there are two ways to understand this.
00:56:40.980 --> 00:56:50.780
I think you might see it as urging us to always and only get wisdom. With all of your getting, the thing that you should be getting is wisdom.
00:56:52.079 --> 00:57:12.760
But also I think you could read it in the sense that, as Alter seems to suggest, that in all that you get, also get discernment such that whatever you're doing, whatever you're trying to get, whatever work is at hand, you should also simultaneously be acquiring wisdom. You should be getting discernment.
00:57:13.500 --> 00:57:21.679
Your understanding should be increasing regardless of whatever the particular task is that you are engaged in at the moment.
00:57:21.800 --> 00:57:29.699
Wisdom should simultaneously be accruing. With all of your getting, get understanding. Keep your eyes wide open the whole time.
00:57:29.960 --> 00:57:32.559
Always be quick to observe. Always be sober.
00:57:33.019 --> 00:57:37.940
Never be duped by your love for being duped. It's nice.
00:57:39.000 --> 00:57:41.500
The beginning of wisdom, get wisdom.
00:57:44.639 --> 00:57:46.760
That seems so simple when you put it like that.
00:57:47.159 --> 00:57:47.992
Right.
00:57:50.840 --> 00:57:53.519
Just a handful more here in this same spirit.
00:57:54.059 --> 00:58:01.480
Verses 18 and 19 in chapter four, "But the path of the righteous is like lights, radiance, ever brighter till day has come.
00:58:01.860 --> 00:58:03.500
The way of the wicked is like darkness.
00:58:04.360 --> 00:58:18.179
They know not on what they stumble." Whereas the King James has it,"The path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness.
00:58:18.679 --> 00:58:29.679
They know not at what they stumble." That's a good example too of like the real value of also always simultaneously keeping an eye on the King James translation.
00:58:30.820 --> 00:59:07.519
The way that it might have been cleaner and clearer what the Hebrew was saying in the contemporary translation, but if you skip the King James altogether, then you miss the way that we're getting biblical language that is picked up and repurposed elsewhere all the time in other passages of scripture, in songs, et cetera. This notion of the path of the just being a shine our light that shines more and more brightly unto the perfect day, that's language that has resonance across the whole of scripture and into our contemporary way of speaking as Latter-day Saints.
00:59:07.960 --> 00:59:15.000
You'll miss that if you skip out on the King James altogether, even if it's also really valuable to read contemporary translations.
00:59:16.139 --> 00:59:23.679
The path of the just, is that the commandments? Is The path of the just is maybe the beginning of wisdom.
00:59:23.739 --> 00:59:31.460
That's why maybe the Lord has given us commandments is to get you started down that road and give you a gleam of light.
00:59:33.619 --> 00:59:38.739
Yeah, and I think it has to do here with the way that this sort of wisdom is not a theoretical endeavor.
00:59:39.659 --> 00:59:47.320
It's something that accrues as you engage practically in obedience, in service, in sacrifice.
00:59:48.380 --> 00:59:55.500
And as you serve and obey and sacrifice more, the wisdom will increase in parallel, right?
00:59:55.539 --> 01:00:03.639
It's the kind of wisdom that you can only have at the end of the day by having done what you were asked to do.
00:59:59.039 --> 01:00:03.639
You can't have it in the abstract.
01:00:04.739 --> 01:00:07.980
You can only get it from the inside out by experiencing it for yourself.
01:00:08.380 --> 01:00:12.380
That unfolds in this very gradual, very careful way over time.
01:00:13.260 --> 01:00:15.260
A cruise with engagement.
01:00:13.260 --> 01:00:15.260
I really like that.
01:00:16.480 --> 01:00:18.880
But the way of the wicked is darkness instead.
01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:38.099
One characteristic feature of wickedness is the way that you will constantly stumble because the world will not be what you want it to be, but also you won't understand why you're stumbling because you don't actually grasp the true nature of reality.
01:00:34.039 --> 01:00:46.739
You've refused to see it, so you keep stubbing your toes and you keep getting frustrated and disappointed by how things turn out when you try to force them to be what you want.
01:00:47.360 --> 01:01:05.579
You're not willing to accept the sort of correction that would allow wisdom to actually arise so that you could see the sacrifices that need to be made in order for love and justice and mercy to prevail. It would seem, and this is of course how you would think about it automatically as a kid.
01:01:06.500 --> 01:01:16.739
It would seem like the way to care for your own soul would be to privilege your own desires, to try to get those desires satisfied.
01:01:17.679 --> 01:01:21.659
But that's not actually the case.
01:01:17.679 --> 01:01:39.760
What you have to do instead, it turns out as Jesus puts it right, if you want to save your soul, you can't save your soul. You can't save your soul by saving your soul, you have to lose it to save it and you have to be willing to accept here the sort of instruction that brings your heart and mind back around to reality in order to avoid despising your own soul here.
01:01:40.820 --> 01:01:47.340
I love the idea of, in a human way, to have mentors who are willing to give you correction.
01:01:48.139 --> 01:01:57.659
Some of my last advice I got from my mission president was to go home and find mentors and to be willing to say, "Do I have any blind spots?
01:01:57.699 --> 01:02:06.780
Am I doing anything wrong that you see that's hurting me?" To be willing to invite reprove that way, which was terrific advice.
01:02:08.219 --> 01:02:10.719
Yeah, mentors are really important in that respect.
01:02:11.400 --> 01:02:43.820
This is not the kind of thing you can outsource to an app or a chatbot whose entire orientation is to flatter you and agree with you and aid and abet all of your fantasies and your desire to be duped because that's good business. It drives engagement, as they say, captures our attention. When what you really need are people who, because they love you, will tell you what you need to hear, even, or especially if you don't want to hear it.
01:02:44.360 --> 01:03:02.489
The gospel is a kind of apprenticeship model where we have to sign up to work with people who are far enough along that they know what they're doing so that they can show us how to do what they've been doing so that we then can discover it for ourselves and show it to others in turn.
01:03:03.789 --> 01:03:04.623
But you have to do it.
01:03:05.510 --> 01:03:08.670
I've heard Hank quote verse 13 dozens of times.
01:03:09.090 --> 01:03:12.329
"A merry heart, maketh a cheerful countenance." It's very similar to what I quoted.
01:03:14.030 --> 01:03:21.849
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Maybe I thing that comes natural to me. Is a merry heart.
01:03:22.550 --> 01:03:27.090
Well, who else did it come natural to?
01:03:22.550 --> 01:03:27.090
We all need some, what do we call it?
01:03:28.329 --> 01:03:33.329
Vitamin NCT. Joseph Smith said he had a native cheery temperament.
01:03:35.849 --> 01:03:45.329
That's a super valuable thing and it points out the way that our happiness here does not depend on getting something.
01:03:40.469 --> 01:03:45.329
It depends on a certain state of mind.
01:03:45.610 --> 01:03:47.969
It depends on understanding something, seeing something.
01:03:48.030 --> 01:04:11.429
It depends on the native cheery temperament, the That's where the truth of our happiness lies. And that's a very powerful, liberating thing to discover that I don't have to depend on the world to give me what I want in order to find joy, but that I can bring to the world by sacrificing for it, caring for it, appreciating it, being grateful for it.
01:04:12.309 --> 01:04:16.710
That's the source of joy is what I bring to it rather than what I had hoped to get from it.
01:04:16.710 --> 01:04:19.909
I'm trying to put this in a way I might understand it better.
01:04:20.449 --> 01:04:27.809
Almost like he that refuses to eat healthy and exercise doesn't really like his own body.
01:04:28.989 --> 01:04:31.590
Even though that's not what the body wants, seemingly.
01:04:32.489 --> 01:04:41.510
When I get up early to exercise, my body doesn't seem to want it, yet I'm doing it because I want to care for my body.
01:04:41.849 --> 01:04:43.949
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
01:04:44.650 --> 01:04:50.489
So it does seem like the opposite. If I love my own body, just give it what it wants, not something it doesn't want.
01:04:50.650 --> 01:04:52.280
Twinkies, Ding Dongs. Yeah.
01:04:53.329 --> 01:04:57.530
Yeah, but there's a place for Ding Dongs especially, I think, but -.
01:05:01.010 --> 01:05:05.949
It almost seems like the last thing my body wants, but it's supposedly the one thing it needs.
01:05:07.570 --> 01:05:33.389
Yeah, exercise is a good example of how the body acquires wisdom where you haul it out of bed and you force your body to engage with reality in an intensive way that doesn't match up neatly or obviously with your own desires, but that in the process you then discover things about the nature of reality and about your own nature, about who and what you are that you couldn't have discovered otherwise.
01:05:33.929 --> 01:05:35.650
You start to understand what your body is.
01:05:35.710 --> 01:05:38.190
You start to discover what your body can or cannot do.
01:05:38.909 --> 01:06:12.969
You start to discover what strengths you do or don't have. But if you don't leave desire to the side to engage with reality in this intensive way that exercise requires, then you don't get to see the sunrise, you don't get to feel the blood pumping in your own veins, and you don't discover who and what you are either. The thing about reality, as I think Proverbs emphasizes, is that if you get a taste for it, you will love it and sacrifice everything caring to take care of it, to redeem it, to save it. That's Jesus.
01:06:13.670 --> 01:06:18.382
Jesus sees the whole of it and it just makes him love it and care for it all the more.
01:06:18.889 --> 01:06:20.389
Feels like a paradox at first.
01:06:20.909 --> 01:06:22.530
Yeah, it certainly does.
01:06:23.050 --> 01:06:24.150
There's a Disney film.
01:06:24.909 --> 01:06:33.710
Do you guys remember when the Disney film Cars came out and the older car is trying to teach the younger car, you got to turn left to go right.
01:06:35.269 --> 01:06:36.190
Are you crazy?
01:06:36.809 --> 01:06:42.409
That makes no sense. Well, and you might look at like Alma's advice to Shiblon.
01:06:42.889 --> 01:06:47.882
You have to bridle your passions and then you'll be filled with love. It's like, wait, what?
01:06:49.010 --> 01:06:52.150
Shouldn't I let it go?
01:06:52.210 --> 01:07:02.882
Let's give you one more passage here just for fun from Proverbs and then we'll turn left to go right by looking at Ecclesiastes.
01:07:06.250 --> 01:07:08.050
That's a good way to describe Ecclesiastes.
01:07:08.710 --> 01:07:13.489
It feels like you're taking a hard left when you hope to go right, but then you end up in the right place at the end of the day.
01:07:16.210 --> 01:07:17.519
Chapter 16 verse 31.
01:07:18.250 --> 01:07:22.070
Gray hair is a crown of splendor through righteousness obtained.
01:07:23.449 --> 01:07:25.650
Or, as the new English translation has it.
01:07:26.670 --> 01:07:31.650
Gray hair is like a crown of glory and is attained in the path of righteousness.
01:07:33.610 --> 01:07:38.869
When you started this, Adam, you said, "If we're lucky, we can grow old and gray.".
01:07:38.889 --> 01:07:41.230
If we're lucky, we'll have gray hair.
01:07:41.869 --> 01:07:42.389
Exactly.
01:07:42.389 --> 01:07:47.710
You have to cross your fingers and hope that you will stick around long enough to get that crown of glory.
01:07:49.170 --> 01:07:52.650
We complain about getting old, not realizing what a blessing it is.
01:07:53.789 --> 01:08:05.670
This is what desire does when we try to read the world in light of our own desires and the world refuses to be what we wanted, then complaining is the order of the day.
01:08:06.489 --> 01:08:11.690
It's the telltale sign of the fact that we are dupes, loving being duped.
01:08:12.869 --> 01:08:14.170
Coming up in part two.
01:08:15.230 --> 01:08:33.000
As useful as the book of Proverbs can be, it also can be a trap because it can build into your way of thinking about the world the expectation that if I do X, Y will for sure happen.
01:08:33.539 --> 01:08:43.229
The point of the book of Ecclesiastes is to disabuse you. Profoundly, deeply, repeatedly without mercy.
01:08:43.479 --> 01:08:46.729
To disabuse you of the idea that any such symmetry exists.
