9 - Wisdom and the Link between the Soul and God
Wisdom and the Link between the Soul and God
If I listen to the ancients, who believed in the soul and linked it to God, and who anticipated the healing of a broken soul only in its reunion with the divine, the concept of “health” has new meaning. Of course, you may not “hear” then ancients in the same way that I do. Or you may disregard the wisdom of the ancients altogether. Yet you do so at your own peril, for foolishness always ends in hopelessness. And the one thing PTSD people know well is hopelessness, and they long to leave it behind. The way to healing is through the soul.
Yet the “healing” power of wisdom is not what we expect. We assume health to be the absence of pain, the banishment of suffering, and the recovery of self-esteem. Wisdom does not do this. Instead it encases un-health in a divine embrace of acceptance. Just like an oyster surrounds an irritant with layer upon layer of smoothness and beauty, so also our un-health is surrounded by layer upon layer of growing intimacy with God. The resulting pearl is beautiful, even though the hidden pain remains very ugly. The resulting beauty is not mine; it is not something I possess or claim to control, but it is both mine and God’s, a gift. Wisdom looks to the future from a past that has been transformed. It is as if a lover gave his/her beloved a beautiful necklace of pearls as a gift of reconciliation after a terrible argument. It is not the argument that is remembered, but the future of hope that is celebrated. The past is not gone, and can never just go away, but it can be “encased” by God in love. And that recognition is the essence of wisdom.
Some definitions.
What is wisdom? Wisdom is experience, reasonably applied to current circumstances, using an innate moral compass.
What does it mean to be “reasonable”? Reasonableness is more than logical analysis. It is the collaboration of analysis and imagination.
What is “experience”? Experience is more than the sequence of cause and effect. It is the paradoxical interaction of inevitability and surprise.
What is a “current circumstance”? A circumstance is more than “what happens”. It is the conjunction of what is happening and what is purposed.
What is a “moral compass”? A moral compass is more than social norms and civil laws. It is an imaginative blend of judgment and compassion. It is not a tool to decide what is right or wrong now and for all eternity. It is a tool to discern what is best for our todays and tomorrows.
What, then, is hope? Hope is what happens when we start to live in a world of significance. Hopeless people live only in a world of form, content, and movement … in short, the modern, secular world. Hopeful people live in the same world, but with the awareness of one additional element: significance. There is an import to existence, but which I mean there is something “imported” into existence that makes my existence “important”. And if something is “imported” into existence, then it must have been “exported” from somewhere beyond existence.
The archetype of the “victim” in scripture is Job. His life is the epitome of trauma. No one can be more traumatized than Job, and so he is a symbol for every traumatized person (whether diagnosed with PTSD or not). Modern readers are always puzzled … and often offended … that the book of Job does not end with an answer for evil. I remember being obsessed with the “problem of evil” … i.e. gratuitous, or undeserved and meaningless trauma, when I was an undergraduate. I read and wrote on the subject. I applied Aristotelian and Boolean logic to the subject. I was even invited to address the American Academy of Religion at the young age of 20 (about eight years after my own desperately traumatic experience) as I tried to explain and resolve the problem of evil. It was a fruitless effort.
Only late in life have I just begun to understand why the story of Job ends as it does. It ends with the discovery or awakening of wisdom as the human soul and God reconnect. There is no “answer” and no “solution”, just as there is no revenge for his persecution or ultimate rebuke of Job’s false friends. There is only wisdom.
"But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the air. Abaddon and Death say, 'We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.' "God understands the way to it, and he knows its place. For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. When he gave to the wind its weight, and apportioned out the waters by measure; when he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the thunderbolt; then he saw it and declared it; he established it, and searched it out. And he said to humankind, 'Truly, the awe of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.'" Job 28:12-28
Such wisdom goes back further in history than we think. Much of the book we call “Proverbs” actually copies much older writing from ancient Egypt. The Egyptians called wisdom “Ma’at” the cornerstone of civilization. The fact that “Ma’at” was often characterized speaking in the first person has always suggested how intimate the relationship between God and the Soul really is. The version in Proverbs reads:
I, wisdom, live with prudence, and I attain knowledge and discretion. The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. I have good advice and sound wisdom; I have insight, I have strength … I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice…
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. … he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
And now, my children, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways. … For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD… Proverbs 8:4-36
Wisdom is experienced in different ways in different contexts. In regard to morality and justice, wisdom is the fear of the Lord. In regard to strength and endurance, wisdom is the awe of the Lord.
Wisdom is often described as a person. In a parallel way, Christ as the “Word-made-Flesh” is a person. For wisdom is not a set of abstract principles or logical methodology. It is a relationship between God and the soul with layers of nuance.
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. The harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. James 3:17-18