“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” Psalm 111:10
As we begin a new term, I welcome you to Rollins Chapel and to this weekly worship service. I hope that you will make these brief Thursday services part of your routine, and that you will invite others to join you here. For any who do not know me, I am Richard Crocker, the college chaplain, and the acting dean of the William Jewett Tucker Foundation. I am very glad that you are here. These services, which are brief and small, are nonetheless very important to me and to those who attend each week. I intend to begin today a series of meditations on the subject of wisdom. As we proceed, I invite any of you to share your wisdom as well.
Wisdom.
Certain things are obvious. Human beings are born into a strange world. We know very little, but we have the capacity to learn. We do not know where we are or who we are or why we are here. We can not talk; we communicate our needs and desires by crying, and, soon, by smiles and coos. We do not know how to sustain ourselves; our instincts tell us to breathe and to suck. Everything else we must learn. Who are these other creatures around us? Who will come to me when I cry? What do I call these people – and these other creatures not like me? What can I put in my mouth safely, and what can I not? What will hurt me? Whom can I trust? Who/what will do me harm? All of these things must be learned, and human beings develop a culture that preserves their learning. The culture relies upon the development of language. Without language, we can hardly know anything. Culture is a repository of knowledge about what is good to eat and what is not; how to find food; how to find or construct shelter; how to treat pain and illness; how to reproduce, and how to raise children; how to interpret and prepare for death. Human culture is essential to human beings. No one lives without it. Cultures vary; their teachings are not all the same, but they all serve the same functions. You have been learning about culture from your birth, and you have had many teachers. At first, your teachers, probably, were your parents. But then there were others. Playmates. Grandparents and other relatives. Television characters. And then you went to school, and there were books, and authorized teachers, and a standard curriculum of things that our culture considers it important for you to learn. For the majority of your lives, you have been in school, learning the basic lessons of culture. And while it is true that Everything you really needed to know you probably learned in kindergarten, you have still been learning, And here you are, those of you who are students, at Dartmouth, to learn some more. And here we are, those of us who are staff and teachers, to teach you. The world you are learning about now is very complex and rich, full of books and movies and Internet sites and people from throughout the world. You are here to learn about it in a depth and breadth that is new. When you finish, you will have devoted the first quarter – or third - of your expected life to schooling. Then you will be sent off to “earn a living”.
Those of you familiar with the stories in the book of Genesis about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden – the stories about the origins of human life - will recognize parallels between my description and those ancient stories. Adam and Eve find themselves existing; they are situated in a garden where trees produce food for them to eat, yet one tree produces fruit that they should not eat. They must learn, through experience and loss, what is good and what is not good. After their fall, they must have clothing, and shelter, and they must work to earn a living – to produce the food that will sustain them. They learn language – names for themselves and for the other creatures. Before the fall, they live in harmony with these creatures. After, they begin to eat the creatures. And there is fear and death, symbolized by a snake.
I speak now to new students, but also to others. There are many people who will tell you that you that Dartmouth is paradise. And in many ways, it is as close as you will ever get. Almost everything will be provided for you here. This environment is as safe as anyplace in the world. You are surrounded by people who wish you well. But that is not the whole story. This is not paradise. There are many dangers here. There are dangers of physical harm from accidents or substances – mainly alcohol – that you will be urged to consume. Despite the myth of being surrounded by the best friends of your life, you will be lonely at times - intensely so. And you will be sad and confused because you do not know what to do.
Sometimes the knowledge you lack will be knowledge of a theoretical or practical kind. You may not be able to solve a physics problem. But more often the knowledge you lack will be of a personal, existential kind. What you will want is wisdom, which is the ability to judge between alternatives and to make good decisions; the ability to discern what is truly good amid alternatives that are alluring but false or hurtful or dangerous; the ability to hear competing voices, competing ideas, contradictory beliefs and to respond only to those that make for goodness and health and compassion. Knowledge is essential, but knowledge without wisdom is a ship without a rudder, or a compass, or a destination.
Our text today proclaims that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. At one time there would have been a cultural consensus here at Dartmouth that supported that assertion, and that found, in scripture, the wisdom of God. This chapel symbolizes that heritage. But now fewer people seem to value that tradition. No one will tell you, officially, what wisdom is. The best that we have to offer is tolerance. And tolerance for difference is a very good thing. But tolerance alone lacks judgment. Is everything to be tolerated? If not, why not?
There has been a slew of books lately about the perils of religion and the greatness of atheism. You will encounter those ideas, and it is hard to argue against their central claim: people never do evil so cheerfully as when they do it in the name of God. But it is also true that people never resist evil so firmly as when thy do so in the name of God. But there also is an emerging group of books about the loss of soul in American universities. What is it that we have to teach? Engineering only? Or dead knowledge about trivial subjects in literature? Do we have anything to say about the purpose of life and what makes it good? That subject requires wisdom.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Some will take offense at those words, saying that religion is a system of fear, of social control, of intimidation and restriction. And so it sometimes has been. They propose as an alternative self esteem built on – what? Good grades? Money? Looks? Athletic ability? Competition? The fear of the Lord does not mean that we should cower before reality. It does mean that wisdom consist in knowing that there is more than us, that we are not the highest standard of reality and judgment and goodness. There is more. Every human culture has known, intuitively or naturally, that there is more. Some of the rituals honoring the more may seem to us primitive and unworthy. But their source is understandable. We know in part, and we understand in part. And the more that we know, the more we know that we do not know.
In many ways, though all of us are smart, we are still awakening to existence, not knowing who we are or where we have come from or what we are doing. My prayer for us all is that. Together, we may seek wisdom and find it, from one another, and from those who have gone before us – and especially from those who have left a testimony in the words that are so valuable, so holy, so penetrating, so timeless that generations of people have called them scripture. Amen.
