The Wisdom of God
“O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. . . Such wisdom is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.”
(Psalm 139:1,6)
The subway station at Broadway and 116th Street in New York City is used by the students from several educational institutions situated in that neighborhood: Columbia University, Barnard College, Union Theological Seminary, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The subway station walls are lined with theatre posters on which the passing parade of people are always scribbling some slogan like: “Stop the war in Bosnia”, or, “Get Castro out of Cuba.” During my student days there the favorite line was, “Kilroy was here.”
Some years ago I remember seeing scrawled on a poster in that 116th Street station, where the contemporary student world goes by, this line: “God is dead” (in quotes) then a dash, indicating the author of that quote – Nietsche” But right underneath another line had been written by another scholar with another philosophical orientation: “Nietsche is dead – God”
One of the reasons most frequently given by people of religious faith for their belief in the existence of God is the discernable wisdom that underlies this universe. Though Blaise Pascal was impressed by God’s infinite care in hiding himself from human eyes, Pascal and countless others have never-the-less been also impressed with the innumerable clues and pointers to God’s existence which are scattered about everywhere indicating not only the colossal wisdom of the Planner and Executor of the design of this ordered universe but also hinting about the nature of that wisdom.
The Psalmist looked about him at the stars in the skies, the fields of waving grain, the orderly procession of the seasons and declared his faith in the words of the 19th Psalm: “The heavens declare the glory of God: And the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night showeth knowledge.”
Though the death and destruction caused by hurricane “Opal” two weeks ago along our Florida and Alabama seacoast may cause us to wonder about the goodness of God, never-the-less such a natural disaster also serves to underscore the remarkable wisdom that under-girds the amazing dependability of favorable conditions supporting human life on this earth. Just think of it: a spinning ball hurtling through space, with a fiery molten rock center, with three fifths of its surface covered by water, and yet the boundaries of the land and sea on the surface of that ball so securely fixed that men build their cities to the very water’s edge and live out their days in the confidence that only a bizarre catastrophe like a hurricane, or an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption will disturb, by more than just a few feet, the ebb and flow of the tide.
Then there is the wisdom of the human body in its intelligent, though unself-conscious efforts to battle the germs of disease, to compensate for the loss of a kidney or a lung, to make the necessary adjustments to heat and cold – or even to weightlessness in outer space. What a constant marvel to the wisest of human beings is this wisdom of the body. Who built in this wisdom that is wise without one’s conscious effort? — certainly some intelligence greater than the creature’s intelligence.
The most exciting and enriching adventures of this scientific age in which we live are launched on the premise of the existence of this superior wisdom in the universe. The scientists are the very ones who are busy poking here and there to discover some hidden power, or capacity, or law, in the natural world, pull it out, measure it, harness it, and put it to work in the service of mankind. And we are betting on their success as they work to discover some alternate source of energy to take the place of our earth’s dwindling supply of fossil fuels, and as they make endless experiments to come up with a cure for the deadly AIDS virus.
So, through the centuries people of various religions have affirmed their faith that the wisdom discernable in the design and order of this universe persuades them of the existence of God.
But the man who wrote the 139th Psalm that we read responsively just now seems to be not so much impressed with the wisdom discernable in the natural order, the swinging planets and the steady seasons, nor in the amazing wisdom the Creator packed into each body of his earthly children, as he is obsessed in this Psalm with the uncanny wisdom of the creator made manifest to him in God’s moral order.
Listen to this poet’s testimony of his personal experience that, whatever he does, he is viewed and judged with either approval or disapproval by this moral wisdom of the universe. “Thou (O God) knowest when I sit down and when I rise up. . . If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall hide me; even the night shall be light about me.”
The prophet, Jonah, had the same experience. When he tried to escape from the Presence within that laid moral conviction upon his heart to go preach the judgment of God upon the wicked people of Nineveh, even though he took a ship going in the opposite direction to escape what he knew to be his moral duty, still Jonah was confronted at the end of the world by this moral wisdom of the universe.
But this wisdom not only knows where the Psalmist is and what he is doing, the Psalmist experienced that it penetrated even deeper. It is a wisdom that knows what he is thinking: “Lord, thou has searched me and known me. . . For there is not a word in my tongue, O Lord, but thou knowest it altogether.” “Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me the way everlasting.”
As the wise headmaster of a boy’s school often knows what his boys are about to think, even before they think it, even more so does the Creator and Maker of men and women know their thoughts entirely before they think them, not just for judgment, but for inspiration also.
Who of us has not known experiences like these Dag Hammarskjold describes in his lines: “Thou takest the pen, and the lines dance. Thou takest the flute and the notes shimmer. Thou takest the brush and the colors sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in space beyond time where thou art. How can I hold anything back from thee?” (Dag Hammarskjold — Markings)
But deeper still goes the Eternal Wisdom to discern and know and control our future. The Psalmist says that even when he was being formed in his mother’s womb, already his destiny was formed in God’s book of events to come. “My days were being ordained as yet there was none of them.” Here is belief in Predestination with a vengeance!
Jesus affirmed that the wisdom of God is always at work sorting out our prayers and petitions. Of our most passionate and persistent requests for the things we think are most good for us and that we want desperately, God, from His vantage point of infinite wisdom, sees what will harm us and will not grant those requests. “If a child seeing a scorpion and mistaking it for an egg, reaches out an imploring hand to beg for it, the Father, knowing it is a scorpion, will not give it to his child.”
The validation of such wisdom operative in our lives is not discernable save in retrospect. But when in faith and obedience we have lived and prayed and looked back across the years we can clearly see it and we will call it providence and predestination.
What then is the conclusion to faith’s assertion, as we Presbyterians put it in our catechism’s definition of God: “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” “In His Wisdom.” Is not this our inescapable conclusion? It is absolutely impossible for mortal men and women to deceive God who is infinite and ultimate wisdom. We cannot escape him or deceive Him.
In an O. Henry short story a man sits “one evening smoking a big cigar in the park, in a self-satisfied contentment. He had swindled a child out of a dollar bill for breakfast, and tricked a simple minded old man out of a wad of notes for dinner; and his eyes were fat and smiling – until the clock struck nine, and he saw a young woman hurrying home. She was dressed in simple white. Years ago he had known her. He had sat on the same bench with her at school. And suddenly he got up and turned down a side street and laid his burning face against the cool iron of a lamp post and said dully: “God I wish I could die!” (Paul Scherer – Event in Eternity)
How explain moments we have all known like that? There is a moral wisdom that permeates the universe. Yes, God knows us altogether and we cannot escape him. And in infinite understanding for our condition, and love beyond all comprehension, he comes to us in Jesus Christ and says: “Come home now, sinner. Come home.”
For the Gospel adds another verse to Psalm 139’s anthem of praise to the wisdom of God. It joyfully sings that this divine wisdom is a pursuing wisdom propelled by an infinite, untiring love. George Matheson described it as “a love that will not let us go,” and Francis Thompson confessed that he came to know it as the Hound of Heaven who pursued him “down the nights and down the days. . .down the arches of the years.”
For Thompson wrote of his own experiences:
“I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the midst of tears. . . (I fled from Him)
From those strong feet that followed,
followed after.
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace,
They beat – and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet –
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest me.’”