Of wisdom and misery
One of my pastors preached a series on the book of Ecclesiastes this summer. His comments on wisdom (and those of Qoheleth, the teacher/writer of Ecclesiastes) caught my attention. Qoheleth writes:
I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven… but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. (Ecc. 1:13,17b, 18)
And my pastor said this:
Wisdom made Qoheleth miserable. Why? Because it revealed that so much in life was beyond human repair. Wisdom became for Qoheleth a kind of x-ray machine. It showed the break in the arm but it offered no way to heal it.
I’m really curious to hear what others think about these descriptions of the search for wisdom. When I land in place where wisdom is – in a conversation with someone, on this blog (!), while reading a book, in a time of prayer – I experience the opposite of misery. I experience a lightness, a hope, a deeper understanding of the world and God’s work in it.
I’m guessing that the kind of wisdom that Qoheleth found was a different kind of wisdom than we are together looking for.
Talk to me. Help me to contextualize and exegete the Teacher. Search for wisdom…