Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 16, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Perhaps some of remember the satirist Tom Lehrer. Apparently he’s still around, but I know him from satirical songs he wrote and recorded back in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of his songs were really funny, but Lehrer’s satire could also be macabre or bitter. He sang his anger, and even his despair, at much of what he saw, at all of the cruelty, violence, and hypocrisy that is indeed so rampant in the world. And in his anger and his despair he sometimes expressed profound truth and raised many vital issues.

One of his songs that did that was a song he wrote about the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. Wernher von Braun, you will recall, was the scientist who developed the V2 rocket for the Hitler regime that rained destruction on London during World War II. After the war he came to this country and worked for NASA, making major contributions to the American space and ICBM programs. Lehrer was appalled by von Braun’s apparent amorality, his commitment only to his science with no apparent concern for the use to which the politicians, German or American, put his science. In his song about von Braun Lehrer wrote: “When the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Werner von Braun.” Lehrer’s song about von Braun raises a vitally important question, namely, what is the relationship between knowledge and wisdom? That is, what is the relationship between human knowledge of scientific and other physical facts and human knowledge of ultimate facts, of right and wrong, of good and evil? Our scripture readings this morning raise the same questions.

In our reading from 1 Kings, Solomon, son of King David, has succeeded to the throne of his father as king of Israel. God appears to him in a dream and asks Solomon “What should I give you?” Solomon replies that he wants God to give him “an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil.” God grants the request and says that because Solomon’s request was not selfish but was for the good of the people, “I give you a wise and discerning mind.” Thus Solomon became the wise king of the Hebrew people. His wisdom became, and remains legendary.

To understand what this story has to do with our understanding of wisdom, note what Solomon did not ask for. He did not ask for knowledge. He asked for “understanding,” which the text understands as a synonym for wise, as we see in God’s response of giving Solomon a “wise and discerning” mind. Solomon doesn’t ask for God to give him the knowledge of a Ph.D. in political science. He doesn’t ask for knowledge of laws, or of political, social, and economic systems, or even of human psychology, much less of systems theory. Rather, he asks for an “understanding mind…able to discern between good and evil.” In other words, he asks for wisdom and not for mere knowledge. Solomon’s request gives us a pretty good definition of wisdom. Wisdom is understanding, or knowledge, combined with the ability to discern between good and evil.

Which raises the question: How do we discern between good and evil? In other words, how do we acquire wisdom as opposed to mere knowledge? We all know how to acquire knowledge. We’ve all already acquired a lot of knowledge. We get it from books. We get it from Wikipedia. We get it from Google searches. We get it from teachers. We get it from hands on experience, through trial and error. We all know how to get knowledge.

But what about wisdom? What about acquiring that ability to discern between good and evil that is the essence of wisdom? That’s a more difficult question, but one thing we know for sure. All the knowledge in the world will never add up to wisdom. Our culture as a whole doesn’t get that. It either says that knowledge is all that matters, or it says that all our problems will be solved, that is, that we will attain to wisdom, if we just know more stuff. The first error is the Wernher von Braun error. It says to the seeker after knowledge “seek knowledge only for its own sake. You needn’t be concerned with anything else.” “When the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun.” And says most of the American academic and scientific establishments. The moral flaw here is, I think, obvious.

The second error is the error of scientism. Scientism says that the physical world is all there is. Therefore, the way to wisdom is simply to learn more about the physical world. Knowledge of the physical world will save us. Humans have problems, this error says, because we don’t know enough yet. If we just keep expanding the frontiers of human knowledge, all of our problems will eventually be solved. The problem with this error is that it ignores the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. More knowledge just means more knowledge. More knowledge never crosses the line to wisdom, because wisdom is a very different thing from knowledge.

So we’re back to the question: How do we gain wisdom? How do we acquire, as Solomon says, the ability to discern between good and evil? Another of our scripture readings this morning gives us at least the beginning of an answer to that question. It’s Psalm 111, which I snuck in on you as a call to worship rather than as a straight scripture reading. One of the lines of that Psalm says: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” Now, that line may require some explanation because of its use of the term “fear of the LORD.” To us the word fear means being afraid of something. When we hear the ancient Hebrew phrase “the fear of the LORD,” we think it means being afraid of God. That’s not what it means. The Hebrew phrase that gets translated “fear of the LORD” means something more like “live in awe of and in reverence before God”. It means believe in God, and it means seek to live according to God’s ordinances, according to God’s will and desire for us humans. That’s what the phrase “the fear of the LORD” means here. In more modern parlance we would say belief in God is the beginning of wisdom. That, I am convinced, is true. Wisdom, the ability to discern between good and evil, is grounded in God and not in mere human knowledge.

Why is that? Why does wisdom have to be connected with God? Well, I think that wisdom has to be connected with God because there is nothing in creation, nothing in the world, nothing in mere human thought, that can truly be the basis of the distinction between good and evil. For the concept good and evil to have real meaning, they have to grounded in something ultimate, not in something finite. When we look only to finite human ideas as the basis of our understanding of good and evil, we find no basis for rejecting a cynical utilitarianism in which other people become means to an end, not ends in themselves. The door is thrown wide open for the use of violence against and oppression of some people under a spurious claim that the violence and oppression of some is necessary for the “greater good” of society. That kind of thinking has led to some of the worst evil humanity has ever seen, and human knowledge has no basis for contradicting and denying it.

That’s why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Only when our understanding of good and evil is grounded in a reality that transcends the limitations of humanity can that understanding stand up against cynicism, the hypocrisy, and self-serving manipulation of people who claim to be acting in the common good but whose actions actually bring suffering and destruction upon countless numbers of people. Trust me on this one. I lived in the Soviet Union for a year. I studied and taught the history of the Soviet Union, and Soviet Communism is probably the best example of what I’m talking about. In the name of an ideal society that was supposed to be an earthly paradise for everyone, and using an ideology from which God was intentionally and entirely excluded, Lenin, Stalin, and their henchmen killed literally tens of millions of people. Without God, there was no ultimate basis on which the opponents of the madness could stand. Their opposition became an argument only about means, not about the ultimate values of good and evil. Without a grounding in God wisdom, that is, discernment of good and evil, becomes ultimately impossible.

Perhaps if Wernher von Braun had had an active Christian faith, or a Jewish one, or participated in some other great faith tradition, he would have seen that where his rockets came down was his department. Discerning right and wrong, good and evil, is the concern of all human beings. And only faith in God can give that discernment roots. Humanity cannot live by knowledge alone. We need wisdom, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The Psalmist knew it three thousand years ago. We’d better not forget it. Amen.