The Fear of God is the Beginning of Wisdom...

The book of Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible. It is located in the books of wisdom. In the book of Job, there is a verse, "The Fear of God is the BEGINNING of WISDOM".

I used to read this verse as, " The Fear of God is the Beginning of wisdom"..

The emphasis on the former is that one has to fear God to even begin to understand. Such are the supernaturalists in their understanding of text and tradition and life, itself!

But, now, I understand that it means fearing "God" is Just the Beginning of Wisdom. Wisdom is practical knowledge about life throught experience, not knowledge about "God" and the supernatural.

This latter understanding is more in line with the original Jewish understanding. Wasn't it Job who suffered under the hands of those who thought they know what "God" wanted, and knew what God was doing in Job's life?

What did Job learn? Didn't Job learn that the whole creation was a mystery and that life was a gift to be lived in the present and be grasped by an awe inspiring worship?

Job's "answer" was not about a "how to", or answers the text has to offer, but life itself.

Life is hard, at times. It behooves all of us to understand that we shouldn't lay undue burdens upon others backs by being like Job's comforters.

(But, for the sake of balance, one cannot live without understanding what they will value, as this is the "stuff" where one's commitments will be. The Supernaturalists just believe that "God" should be their life commitment.)

Politics, Tradition, Reason and Thankfulness for Faith

The political realm is the "real world", the world in which we do our jobs, love our families, share our concerns, live our lives and understand our faith. Faith is whatever defines our lives.

Human beings must understand their faith as secular, political and/or transcendental. Each aspect of faith is understood within a frame of what is important. Tradition develops how the transcendental realm understands faith for it is about "God". Reason develops the realm of the secular as sacred, as all of life is understood as a blessing, while experience understands our faith within the political realm of relationship. Each part, reason, experience and tradition is important in developing a full understanding of one's faith. Tradition has history, reason has a philosophy and experience has the political realm; all involve the person's understanding of themselves in thier situatedness.

A full grown faith is not understood as dependent on any certain way of understanding for each person understands their place in this world in a different way. Faith is about being itself, for no one understands all about life, God or relationships with others. We live our lives in the best understanding we have at the time and trust that life is good and blessed because we have it.

What Does History Have to Do With Ethics?

We often encounter ethical dilemmas, but some do not recognize the ethical nature in their choices. Why do we make decisions without recognizing the fuller implications of our decision upon another? There are many answers to this, one of the main ones is a lack of information. Decisions are made that are ill-informed or researched. But, sometimes our decisions are made because of our own "pride" and resistance to hear another perspective. Pride leads to an ethnocentric mentality. And ethnocentricity is an identification. "Self" is defined within contexts that maintain sturcture, security, and meaning and create personal "history". The structure's function in developing a sense of "self" is not wrong, but it often leads to a lack of understanding differences between people. These differences are not so much what morality is about, but our response to the differences is. Ethics determines the overarching reasons why we choose between the complex moral dilemmas that we encounter. There are always reasons for our choices and behavior.

Every human alive wants to be loved, understood, belong and have meaning. Humans find these natural "needs" within different types of communities. Identification happens within the communities that meet these needs. The first community is our family of origin. We know and answer the question of "who we are" based upon these idenfication markers. The other side of our natural need and identification is a challenge of affirming all of life as God's. Social psychologists have discovered that our very identifications are the "root" of "ethnici cleansing", genocide, and many other societal atrocities. Prejuidice, by definition, is pre-judgment. And pre-judgment is not "listening", but "labeling". Labelling defines us as unique or distinct from another, while dismissing our common humanity. Humanity is what Christianity is about. Jesus was the moral example of humanitarianism.

Some Christians understand that this is a call to re-define Christianity on "other" terms than traditionally understood. Our Global world is a social and political one, where the Christian is called to be salt and light. But, that does not mean that our light is the only light. It is a light that was born in Jewish understanding of humanitie's need for an ethical understanding and affirmation of all of life, where there is no longer a wall between the sacred and secular. The question confronting the individual of any religion is what decision should be made, on what rationale is that decision made, and what conviction or universal does the decision underline?