Rollins Chapel
Dartmouth College
September 27, 2007
Richard R. Crocker, Ph.D., College Chaplain
“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.
Copyright © 2007
Richard R. Crocker
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