Philosophy

Ecclesiastes 1:18 ESV
For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

One of the first things family and friends will say during interviews after a tragic act of violence or suicide is that they cannot believe what that person has done. They say that was not the actions of the person they had known. In fact they did not actually know that person. There are many reasons for this, whether the person hid their real self or the people around saw the signs and didn’t take the time to see the real person right there next to them in pain or living with anger. Another reason being that people are caught up in their own lives being too busy or distracted to notice what was happening right before them. In many ways we don’t really know the person next us this rings true for our relationship with God.

Many times I have heard or read comments objecting to some attribute of God someone has attributed to God. “That is not the God I know!” “That’s not how God is” “my God is loving and would not do that” “my God only rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked”. All of this can be boiled down to a philosophical view or understanding of God that one believes. Indeed everyone I have met has a philosophy on which they have lived their lives. A philosophy on which they see the world. A philosophy on which they connect with others. It is important to note that people have a positive and negative connotation towards even the word philosophy. To me it seems useless to know a word without context, to use a word with a bad Definition, so lets look at the definition of philosophy.

Now with the understanding that philosophy is a word the means love of wisdom we can extrapolate better reasoning that there are two kinds of people, those who seek wisdom and those who follow wisdom. Further more there are those who seek worldly wisdom and wisdom that comes from our creator. There are those are fine with the simpler things and those who were created with a need to search for deeper wisdom. I would define the difference between the two as this, the philosopher who seeks wisdom as Solomon, and the practitioners of the philosophers philosophy.

There are indeed problems with whichever category a person may land on. It gets tricky when you seek wisdom. It pleased God when Solomon ask for wisdom. Therefore we can say the pursuit of wisdom can not be inherently bad. In fact when we humble ourselves and say I lack the wisdom and seek God he liberally gives us such wisdom. However we do see that wisdom is like a drug. Sometimes seeking wisdom tastes sweeter than digesting the wisdom God provides. Therefore we can conclude that gluttony for wisdom is as dangerous as any other drug that man can ingest.

I disclose all of this with a grain of salt. When seeking wisdom we have two sources for which there is good and true knowledge and wisdom, the word of God itself and those who consult knowledge and wisdom of the bible through the lens of the Holy Spirit which discerns between good and bad philosophy. Notice there also that discernment is not judgment. We all digest good and bad philosophy daily whether we mean to or not and for good reason we are told not to be a judge of people because God indeed forgives our own ignorance as we forgive our brothers and sisters ignorance. To know God and his ways we must be true philosophers (seekers of true wisdom and knowledge) of his word. To know God we must have a whole truth found in the whole bible. His righteousness, his grace, the reason for his wrath, what and who he hates, what and who he loves. What and why he calls sin.