Wisdom Sighs

Do not invite death by the error of your life,

Or bring on the destruction by the work of your hands;

Because God did not make death,

and he does not delight in the death of the living.

-Wisdom of Solomon 1: 12-13

For you that might be curious about the Bible and the things that almost make it to the pages of Scripture, I give you the Apocryphal book of the Wisdom of Solomon.  As opposed to say the Book of Enoch (the one the lady at the car dealership was all googly about), which is non-canonical Apocrypha.  The formation of the Canon of Scripture, including the canonical Apocrypha of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions is not the result of some sort of shady inter-ecclesial intrigue as writers of fiction like Dan Brown might lead you to believe, but rather a process of determining whether the overall theology and impact of the writings is consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament. To be included in the canon, even the Apocrypha, it needs to meet certain standards, and be considered more constructive and salubrious than not.

The Canonical Apocrypha contains two books of Wisdom literature, comparable to Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes in their content: The Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus Ben (son of) Sirach (also just called Sirach).  The reason why I think these books are valuable is because they provide us with the actual philosophy of the Scripture, rather than just a story.  The Bible is not exactly short on wisdom in a general sense, but the form of literature that we directly classify as Wisdom is a little thin compared with other types of writing.  Proverbs is the big boy, also generally attributed to Solomon, and in chapter 8, Wisdom is described as a woman standing at the crossroads and at the gates of the city: "To you, O people, I call and my cry is to all that live, O simple ones, learn prudence, acquire intelligence, you who lack it." (Proverbs 8: 4-5)

There are things in the world that baffle our ability to understand, and in these places Wisdom is a place to turn for some sort of guidance.  Our ongoing effort to destroy our environment and the way we tacitly allow injustice and poverty to destroy the dignity of our fellow humans, have created a global scenario where war is practically inevitable.  As long as we see our place in creation as consumers and users instead of stewards we will necessarily get to the place where we have to fight and destroy in order to dominate the earth and each other.  This clearly violates God's plan and the voice of Wisdom, but we do not seem to give that much thought.

Last week the Donald said that it was about time for the US to clear on out of Syria and leave that mess to others to sort out.  At first glance, it was one of those things that gave me pause in my ongoing disappointment with our Chief Executive.  It was one of those hopeful moments that I thought, "he might actually do the right thing, even if it is for the wrong reasons," which is pretty much all I have to hang my hope on for the next two to six years. I believe that actually it should not be our job to be the policeman of the world, it should not always be our soldiers in harm's way.  I'm no isolationist, I believe we should be a good global citizen and do our part to protect human rights and such, but we have long passed the horizon of diminishing returns when it comes to Imperialist interventions. No one appreciates our army in their sandbox, least of all any of the Middle Eastern nations we have made a hobby of invading, bombing and generally smacking around for the past 30 years. It's not getting better, and our meddling is probably (definitely?) making it worse.

Alas, I can believe that and say that with minimal consequences, El Presidente cannot. Almost as if on cue, there was a chemical weapon attack in Syria that gave us pictures of dead children to remind us that we really are brutish apes with savage weapons. If you don't see the connection between the two things you are rather willfully obtuse.  Someone, maybe multiple someones, does not want us to get our boots off the ground.  It could be, as the Russians (in good old Cold War style) say, the attack was staged by rebels who are against their puppet monster Assad, because they don't want the US to leave the area.  It could be that Assad, Russia and Iran actually want us to stay because our involvement keeps blood on our hands, keeps us occupied and spending precious dollars, and makes lots and lots of people in that part of the world hate us. I can only guess at who or what is actually behind that, but one thing is pretty clear, they don't want us to take our ball and go home and they are willing to gas kids and families to give us a good and "just" reason to stay. They would probably all like to see the impetuous bully and the country that elected him king get kicked in the family jewels. The Middle East is a complicated place, and it pretty much always has been, which is why people from their really needed to write down anything that could pass as wisdom.  It also probably explained why the Teacher of Ecclesiastes says, "It's all vanity and chasing after the wind."  You honestly can't win, so what he says is just do your best and try not to be a huge jerk.  Wisdom:

The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded

than the shouting of a ruler among fools.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war,

but one bungler destroys much good.

-Ecclesiastes 9: 17-18

Just ouch.