Bigoted Theology: Reflections on Wisdom of Solomon 12

As I announced some weeks ago, I intend to base my second blog post each week on the texts offered up as alternative first readings by the compilers of the Common Lectionary. Today for our delectation they give us a slice of the Wisdom of Solomon from the Apocrypha. I know well that few Protestants give such material a second thought (if not a single first thought!), but these books played significant roles in Catholic thought and liturgy for at least 1500 years, up until the Reformation, and even in the 21st century scholars spend time with these writings. It is not then amiss to spend one week of our time on some of them, too

Yet, alas, I have very little good to say about this collection of writings. It used to be thought that there was some lost Hebrew original of Wisdom, but that has generally fallen out of favor. The book is in Greek, a very fine Greek with few Hebraisms beyond certain expected forms, and all old manuscripts are in that language. It is a kind of late Platonist book, redolent of philosophical thinking of a late Hellenistic variety. In the main it is a sustained attack on any who would affirm any God belief that is not a traditional one. Hence, any brand of idolatry, no matter how innocent it may sound, is to be rejected and pilloried without mercy. In short, I find the book filled with constantly unrelieved bigotry that would find a too ready home in many of our houses of worship in the 21st century. Chapter 12, the piece chosen by the lectionary folk, is a prime example.

The few verses that we are to address attempt to soften the bigotry that has been announced again and again in material that precedes and follows them. “Although you (God) are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us, for you have power to act whenever you choose” (Wisdom 12:18). A lovely sentiment, I agree, but when it is compared with the material to follow in 12:23-27, a hate-psalm against the Egyptians, it is clear that this “mild” God is not really so mild after all.

Indeed, the ancient Egyptians, the enslavers of Israel are those “who lived unrighteously, in a life of folly, you tormented them through their own abominations” (Wisdom 12:23). In other words, God rewards and God punishes, and one can always recognize the wicked and the righteous by the lives they have lived and by the rewards and punishments they have justly received as a result. Wisdom writes his book as if the book of Job never existed, as if no problems had ever arisen with this absurd theology, as if no truly righteous person had ever suffered at all. For this author, the foolish Egyptians imagined that animals were gods, thus “were deceived like foolish infants” (Wisdom 12:24). “Therefore,” this writer concludes, “you sent your judgment to mock them” (Wisdom 12:25). Still, these fools “did not heed your mild rebukes” (ah, here God is mild!) and so “experienced the deserved judgment of God.” As a result of their unwillingness to listen to mild rebukes, “the utmost condemnation came upon them” (Wisdom 12:27). Of course, that utmost condemnation was the death of the Egyptian first-born sons at the hands of the all-powerful God of the universe.

It is, I fear, this sort of foul theology that gives us religious types a very bad name. The Egyptians were slaughtered, says the author of Wisdom, because they rejected the true God for a herd of animals. The terrible death of their beloved children was a result. This notion is nothing less than monstrous, and the author of Job, fully 500 years before this author wrote, recognized all too well the monstrousness of it. We simply cannot allow such notions to persist about the God we claim to worship and glorify. If God acts like this, we should loudly reject such a beast and search for another. If not, our witness in the modern world is laughable at best and terrifying at worst.

I know all too well that portions of the Hebrew Bible record a similar idea, that God’s hands can be discerned in God’s acceptance of the righteous and rejection of the sinner. Such a notion can readily be seen as the vacuous idea it is when it can be noted that it is plainly not true! By any light, good people die young and forgotten, while bad people live long and seemingly happy lives, dying in silk sheets, trumpeted to their graves from the front pages of newspapers and the covers of magazines. Why does this ridiculous ideology persist among us?

Quite simply, it sells. It is powerful in its simplicity and deeply attractive to those who are at the top of the heap. I am successful, because God is with me, and God is with me, therefore I am successful. The poor are poor, because they are lazy and dependent and foolish. The rich are rich because they are wise and clever and hard working. The latest Republican attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act with something different makes that point all too well. We need to cut Medicaid, they claim, because far too many poor people use it to gain access to medical care, thus demonstrating their government dependence, rather than their individual initiative. Cut Medicare, they say, and offer instead health accounts from which they may pay their own insurance costs and gain thereby their lost accountability and independence. Too bad that many millions will then have little or no access to health care, will be forced to use public hospital emergency rooms to find care, forcing taxpayers to supplement that rationed and limited care all the more. Lying below this cruel and unworkable law is a cruel and unworkable theology, enshrined in books like the Wisdom of Solomon. (Happy update: as of July 17, 2017, the Republican Health Care bill is officially dead! But there will be other odious attempts to gut the Affordable Care Act, we may be sure.)

This is not by any measure wisdom; it is folly and deeply dangerous in the bargain. For enshrined in it one may find that dark idea that in the end God is less concerned for some and more concerned for others. In these ideas God cares for the halves and their success and has little concern for the halve-nots, because they do not do what they ought to do and thus suffer “the deserved judgment of God.”

Give me instead that superb and disturbing riff on the Exodus story, offered by some very early biblical commentators. When the Israelites passed through the waters of the sea, and witnessed the destruction of their Egyptian enemies, the great song of their victory wafted up to the realms of heaven. It was apparently a slow day in heaven, and the angels were anxious for something to do, so when they heard the song of Miriam and the Israelite chorus, they caught the joy and fervor of it and began to sing and dance along with their earthly friends. And just as the fun was rolling in heaven and on earth, a huge voice boomed from the clouds, “You dare to sing while my children are drowning?!” And in an instant, the story changed; once the Egyptians are fully God’s people as much as the Israelites, the appropriate reaction is not joy at my success, but sorrow at the death of any of God’s beloved. That old bit of rabbinic reflection has served me well as a warning that all are God’s and therefore God is not in the reward/punishment business.

Thus, I am happy to read some new material from the unknown author of Wisdom, but I must reject such noxious ideas that he has injected into our theological conversations. God loves and cares deeply for all; if not, then God is no God worthy at all. (See a statue of Woman Wisdom below)