Wisdom and Vanity

When I was in high school, Rice Sutherland, my Methodist Youth Fellowship guru (no they did not have words like that in Providence, Kentucky at that time, but she was my angel, and I thank her), gave me a Revised Standard Version of the Bible with my name embossed on the cover. Her instructions were, when I was troubled or down (we also did not have words like “stressed” or “depressed” back then), I should open the book to random pages, and look for passages that spoke to me. When I found them I should circle them and write a date.

I still have that Bible. I’ve had to have it re-covered (kept my name on it), but I still have it.  There are a lot of circled passages and dates written, all from the early 60s. As I analyze (that’s what old professors do, you know), I find two themes to wonder about. 

First there is “wisdom”. I circled and dated  a lot of passages over several years that dealt with the importance of seeking wisdom. I can remember meditating (sort of) on the notion of wisdom as opposed to knowledge as I wallowed in ennui and angst in the basement of my house on Normal Drive (loved that address) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The questions—what is wisdom and how do I get some—still rattle around in my consciousness as I wonder about my place in the universe.

The other theme is “vanity”. Ah, vanity, thy name is (what was that, again?). All is vanity. I still believe this is important. I can criticize the Catholic Church for taking Jesus’ teachings and turning them on their head to create a super structure that would make the Pharisees  of Jesus’ time blush. But to do so is vanity. I can criticize a man who got caught with his pants down and created a church in which it is valuable to have multiple wives, in the U.S. , in the 19^th Century.  But to do so is vanity. I can poke fun at all manner of frivolity and foolishness, but when it all boils down, to do so is to feed my vanity.

I write blogs. Vanity, thy name is me.

I criticize the Catholic Church, yet am smitten by the Latin Mass, and the ne’er do well Jesuits. I criticize Baptists and Methodists, yet understand the good that they do to people in need (and love the fried chicken dinners them Methodists cook). I criticize the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hindus, yet know that I’ve been in this world before in some form or other and will be here again in some form or other after I’ve left Lakewood, Colorado and am cremated and rolled into joints and smoked by my closest friends.

The ultimate in vanity is for a human being like me to believe that I can know the nature of my creator. The ultimate in vanity (times infinity) is for a human being like me to try to persuade a human being like you to believe that I am right and you are wrong and my god’s greater than your god, and therefore it is right for me to make fun of you and yours.

But as I study those old circled passages, I wonder if the ultimate in vanity, period, would be for me to decry Sharia Law while taking up arms to enforce my particular version of Christian Law.

While wisdom hides in the corner.