Wisdom, goodness, and suffering

I've been trying to do more Bible reading this year, and a resource that I've stumbled upon which I've really appreciated is The Bible Project videos up on YouTube.  They go book by book, looking at how the different biblical texts are structured and what the writers were likely trying to emphasize within their socio-historical context.

I just finished the Wisdom section, and it's been interesting to read this in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has overcome many places around the world.

Since we came to Nicaragua, the question about poverty traps and bad luck has always been a present one.  For example, there's a family we know who in the last couple years were struggling financially as the father/grandfather was in poor health.  A family member lost his job pumping gas.  They opened a little tortilla stand by a bus stop along the highway.  In an evening trip by motorcycle for supplies, a young couple from the family was rear-ended in a hit-and-run. Then they had to close the stand because it wasn't profitable and about that time the father/grandfather passed away.  They tried again, this time in one of Managua's markets, setting up a stand for rice, beans, and kitchen basics.  Their sales weren't great there either, and then when COVID-19 showed up, the sales were worse and they were concerned about health in the market, so they pulled out.  What does it take to get out and get on top of these emotional and financial troubles?

I appreciated hearing about the perspective of the Wisdom books as a set of three, each with a unique angle on wisdom, goodness, and suffering.

There are a lot of good lines and good reminders in Proverbs.  (On these hot days I need to read these about being slow to anger for understanding.)  And a lot of it is good sense about living decently, sharing that good karma and it coming back around; the personal good is the collective good.  But there are lines that are uncomfortable as well.  Such as the suggestion that a person who is lazy will be poor ("a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like a robber...," 6:10-11). Or that if a person is hard-working they will have long life and prosperity ("a slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich," 10:4).  Maybe Proverbs works in general terms, but it doesn't explain a lot of the inequity and trouble in the world.

Ecclesiastes and Job might not completely get to these answers either, but these books make a much more direct effort at looking at these problems.  Ecclesiastes recognizes the randomness and injustice in life (the righteous perish and the wicked prolong their life in evildoing, 7:15). "Everything is Hevel," the Teacher in Ecclesiastes says. The Bible Project videos say that while this is usually translated "meaningless" or "vanity," the Hebrew word is "smoke" or "vapor," so it is hard to grasp, chasing after the wind.  In the book of Job, he also also tries to make sense of suffering through a long dialogue and between Job and his friends.  The conclusion there seems to be that humans are too small to understand the universe and God's wisdom.

So while Proverbs makes it sound like you get to choose your own adventure in life, Ecclesiastes and Job seem somewhat fatalistic: you don't have control, trust God and have the best attitude you can in your circumstances. On the one hand, we are responsible to do our part in shaping goodness within our world, and at the same time, we are finite beings who choose to have faith that God's steadfast love is at work in ways we don't always understand. It makes for an interesting set of books. It makes for something of a conversation between perspectives; a conversation which, like our world and our lives, continues unsettled.