The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom… Solomon, Proverbs 9:10 NIV
Something common to all humans is that we seek the “good life,” and since ancient times many people have pursued wisdom as a means of finding it. The Scriptures have a good bit to say about wisdom, Proverbs being the most notable of the Bible’s books on the topic.
It’s not clear why Solomon, the author of The Proverbs and the man so distinguished for wisdom, came to find it lacking. Something in his pursuit of the “good life” became disillusioning, evidenced by this statement in Ecclesiastes: “I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (1.13-14 NIV) Solomon’s words are perplexing given how his proverbs expressed such certainty compared to the disheartenment he expressed in Ecclesiastes. Maybe we could interpret the vacillation as Solomon’s recognition that wise sayings alone are unable to provide the “good life”. Whatever the explanation, this same man who told us that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” seems to have lost his way, or maybe he just lost touch with the fear of the LORD.
Eugene Peterson describes the fear of the LORD in this way:
“Fear-of-the-LORD is a cultivated awareness that I’m not the center of my existence, that I’m not the sum total of what matters, that I don’t know what will happen next.
This type of fear is an all-consuming response to God that keeps us from acting presumptuously and taking center stage.
It places God at the center and keeps him there.
This dynamic keeps us in our place, a place of awe and reverent submission.” 1
In Peterson’s mind, the fundamental effect of the fear of the LORD includes the displacing of self from God’s preeminent position, the awareness that God is God and we are not, and that someone else is more important and powerful. The fact that we don’t know “what will happen next” produces anticipation, hope and maybe even excitement. In other words, when we’re fearing God, He is anything but a boring person. When we’re fearing God, we become so awed, so impressed, so captivated by Him that we would never think of upstaging Him. We only want more of His glorious radiance and our natural response is to submit ourselves to God because of the clear awareness that He is the source of the “good life”.
It’s curious to me that Peterson would call attention to the fact that we must cultivate awareness that I’m not the center of my existence, which I can only assume means that our inclination to live as the center of my existence is permanent in this life. Therefore, to give our souls what they will need (continued visions of God’s glory), we will need to keep pursuing God in the places and in ways He is revealed, otherwise we will easily “curve back in on ourselves” 2 .
From even a cursory reading of Ecclesiastes it seems that Solomon was no longer awed by God’s glory and presence. In spite of his vast knowledge and extensive experiences, it seems that he became a fool, seeking to hedonistically indulge every appetite while being confused as to why his indulgences proved meaningless. In spite of the depressed tone of the book, Solomon does seem to have a purpose in writing that should be recognized as wise. I say this based on his conclusive statements:
The Quester [presumably Solomon] did his best to find the right words and write the plain truth…The last and final word is this:
Fear God.
Do what he tells you.
And that’s it. Eventually God will bring everything that we do out into the open and judge it according to its hidden intent, whether it’s good or evil. (Ecc. 12:10-14 NIV)
Solomon’s last recorded statement calls attention to the coming judgment of God. This, too, is part of what it means to fear God, that is, the One who created us and the universe in which we live has a right to call us into account for how we have lived. On that great day, we will stand before Him soberly and in awesome wonder of His greatness, to be judged. That judgment will primarily be in reference to who He is, our Lord, Creator and Sustainer. The account we will give will be our response to: His authority, His design, and His provision.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. In other words, wisdom begins with the recognition that we are accountable. Our wise response is to arrange ourselves under his authority, acknowledge we can only function according to his design and receive from him what we need to function accordingly. But, that is not to say that the fear of the LORD is only a primer step in a long succession of steps. Instead, the fear of the LORD provides a perspective, a lens though which we look at ourselves and God’s world that enables us to take the knowledge we acquire, especially from Scripture, and skillfully live lives of worship resulting in a sense of well-being and wholeness. This is wisdom, and the fear of the LORD is not just its beginning but an ongoing essential.
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1 Eugene Peterson, Conversations, The Message with Its Translator, NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO, 2007, p. 1540.
2 A term coined by Augustine of Hippo in Confessions, meaning self-centered.