Is Bill Cosby Right? 6

In my latest reading of Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?), Michael Eric Dyson discusses different views regarding the causes of poverty.  Some blame the poor individual, as if he or she is at fault for not working hard enough.  Some blame society for the lack of opportunities.  Still others appeal to luck as an important factor.  According to Dyson, there are many who may carry around in their minds more than one of these views.  Someone from the African-American middle-class, for example, may pat himself on the back for the hard work that he believes brought him to where he is, and yet he also recognizes that there is structural racism that was a barrier for him, and that is a barrier for other African-Americans.

On page 196, Dyson has a paragraph about the role of religion in influencing the self-perception of some poor people.  Some poor people feel bad because the prosperity Gospel says that those whom God blesses and favors will be materially prosperous, and they look at themselves, see their lack of material prosperity, and wonder if God loves them, or if they are doing something wrong.  Others consider their poverty a blessing or as God’s good will.  Still others believe that God wants to help them to fight for an improvement in their social or economic condition, “if not for themselves, then for their children’s sake.”

I thought about the Book of Proverbs as I read this.  I have been reading Proverbs for my Daily Quiet Time, and what I notice is that it manifests a variety of attitudes about the poor.  It conveys the message that those who do not work hard will likely end up poor, yet it acknowledges that oppression and injustice often hold people down economically.  It is optimistic, however, that God will intervene and punish the oppressors.  Does God intervene by helping the poor in their political or organizational push to improve their conditions, according to Proverbs?  I haven’t seen that in Proverbs so far.  The idea in Proverbs seems to be that God unilaterally steps in and punishes oppressors.  It does not favor people sitting back and letting God do all the work, however, for it promotes charity and generosity for the poor as something that pleases God, and that God will likely reward.

There are times when the Book of Proverbs appears to romanticize poverty, as if it is part of a simple, humbler lifestyle, which contrasts with the pride and the strife among the rich and powerful.  But there are other parts of Proverbs that are quite honest about the misery of poverty, especially in terms of the lack of social support that poor people have because people scorn them for their poverty.  This may be to promote compassion towards them, to encourage people to work hard so they don’t end up poor (and what about the working poor?), or both.

Psalm 111

I studied Psalm 111 for my weekly quiet time.  Psalm 111 concludes by saying, "The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do [his commandments]: his praise endureth for ever" (King James Version).

How does the fear of the LORD lead to wisdom, according to Psalm 111?  Wisdom includes people doing what is conducive to their own self-interest.  That's why wisdom literature, such as the Book of Proverbs, tells readers that those who fear God and do the right thing will experience prosperity, whereas those who behave unwisely or wickedly are hurting themselves.  There is an appeal to self-interest there.
According to Psalm 111, people act according to their own self-interest when they fear the LORD.  The reason is that God is active in the world, rewards people according to their commitment to God's covenant, and provides for those who fear him.  The Psalmist appeals to God's activity in history (i.e., giving Israel the land of the Canaanites) to validate such points.  Why should we fear the LORD, according to Psalm 111?  Because God is on the winning side, and we will be be among the winners, too, if we side with God.

But what's important is not just that God acts, as if we should fear the LORD just because he is bigger and stronger than we are.  Rather, God acts, not arbitrarily, but righteously and with honor.  And God created the world to reflect God's righteousness, which may be at least part of what v 7 means when it affirms that "The works of his hands [are] verity and judgment; all his commandments [are] sure."  When one obeys God, one is acting in accordance with the cosmos.  Sin, however, results in chaos and is ultimately self-destructive to those who practice it.  Wisdom entails a regard for one's own well-being, and the fear of the LORD is partially a recognition that God is powerful and thus we should do what God says for things to go well with us.  But there is much more to wisdom and the fear of the LORD than that: there is an adoration of God on account of God's righteousness, and wisdom entails us partaking of what is beautiful, tried, and true.

I detailed some of my problems with a "reward and punishment" view of God's activity in the world, as well as the belief that the biblical commandments are tried and true, in my post here, which concerns Psalm 12.  In terms of my own faith, though, I take the following from Psalm 111 as I attempt to apply it to my own life:

----There is a God who acts righteously, even though there are many times when God appears to be silent.  In the end, good will prevail.

----Overall, when people behave righteously, society is better off than it would be were most people to behave wickedly.  You know the old saying: "There's no honor among thieves."  Thus, as Psalm 111 affirms, there is a sense in which God's precepts are true and permanent.

----There is something beautiful about righteousness.  If you want to regard righteousness as conformity to rules, then I don't think that's entirely wrong, for one can look at God's laws and profitably seek to discern what is orderly and wholesome about them.  But righteousness is not just conformity to rules.  It includes God's passionate love for us.  If you are a Christian, you most likely include in that love God's act of self-sacrifice in Jesus Christ.

Wisdom Literature: Elite, Popular, or Both?

I started Ben Witherington III's Jesus the Sage.

On page 6, Witherington says that mass literacy is a modern phenomenon, for writing in the ancient world took money and leisure----both in terms of the cumbersome and expensive writing materials, and also in terms of the writing itself. Witherington states that "Surveys of as literate a culture as ancient Egypt suggest only a 1-10% degree of literacy." (Yet, see Witherington's blog posts on Jewish literacy in the time of Jesus: here, here, here, and here.) For Witherington, a significant amount of wisdom literature was produced within the royal court, for there are indications that the authors were advisers to the king, plus their agricultural references indicate an upper-class milieu. At the same time, Witherington maintains that wisdom literature could be preserving oral material from a variety of sources: "rich and poor, family, clan and court" (page 6). Witherington says that there is a lack of evidence for the existence of royal schools during Israel's monarchical period, which is when he dates Proverbs, since he does not see any exilic or post-exilic themes within it (but he dates Ecclesiastes to the Hellenistic Period, on the basis of its late Hebrew and its themes). For Witherington, when Proverbs refers to instruction from the father and the mother, it is talking about the family, not the school.

An interesting point that Witherington makes is that biblical wisdom literature such as Proverbs was seeking to provide an alternative to fertility religions. It warns about sexual immorality and it makes wisdom at most "a personification of an attribute of God or perhaps of God's creation" (as opposed to being a goddess, perhaps; page 10). (Witherington seems to presume, at least here, that sexual acts were a part of ancient fertility cults, when that is disputed by scholars, at least when it comes to Ugaritic and other ancient Near Eastern religions.) He also states that wisdom literature sought to make Yahwism applicable to Israelites' day-to-day lives, since Yahwism tended to focus largely on major events of Israel's history rather than daily life, which was more the focus of fertility cults. Although Witherington ascribes an elite milieu to wisdom literature, he also appears to believe that it was relevant to many other Israelites.

Elitist Wisdom Literature

Source: M. Gilbert, "Wisdom Literature," Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 283.

"Solomon played a still more important part in the development of wisdom in Israel. As organizer of the new state, he had to have capable administrators around him, and it is possible that schools or academies were set up for this purpose, to train the flower of the youth adequately, since they were called to take on responsibilities in the city or state."

I'm not sure what biblical scholars say about the authorship of Proverbs, but M. Gilbert treats wisdom literature as an elitist exercise. And I've heard this from other sources as well. For example, Proverbs and Ben Sira say that people shouldn't provide surety for someone else's debt, since the indebted one may not be able to pay his debtor back. A TA at Harvard said such a perspective reflects the elitist, conservative worldview of wisdom literature. And it wasn't always too generous (though it does have a lot supporting almsgiving)!

I think an elitist mileau may play a role in how wisdom literature addresses evil. Proverbs assumes that the wicked are punished and the righteous are rewarded. And Ecclesiastes seems to think it strange that life has problems and unfairness, when that would be pretty obvious to your average Israelite.

At the same time, Ben Sira writes as someone who sees social mobility: the poor can easily become rich, and the rich can easily become poor. For him, it all depends on God's favor to a person. Would Ben Sira write this, if he could take his comfortable position for granted? And Ben Sira also prays for deliverance from his enemies. How comfortable was he, socially speaking?

I'm not sure what role wisdom literature played when Ben Sira wrote. At that time, Israel did not have a monarchy, and I assume she was ruled by a foreign power, since the Hasmoneans had not yet declared Israel's independence. But maybe he was still part of an elite that trained people for power, for some Judeans had to run the show, even though ultimate power laid overseas.