I wanted to revisit my discussion of The Bible Project to point out some weak spots. Their portrayal of the Wisdom Books — Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job — is incomplete. What’s missing is in the authors’ worldview; they don’t get heart-led.
Yes, Proverbs shows that God has revealed the truth of our fallen reality, and has placed that truth within reach of anyone who genuinely seeks it. Even without direct divine revelation, it’s there within reach because our own human nature contains elements of His divine character. It does require some work to overcome the blindness of the Fall, but it’s there, written into Creation and we can get it. It’s called “wisdom.”
And Ecclesiastes does serve as a warning that our human perception will not always support that message. It will seem to us that plenty of things happen contrary to what wisdom would tell us to expect. Wisdom has limits, but it’s far better than anything else we could have in this life.
Finally, Job points out quite dramatically that no matter how much wisdom we dig out of this life, there are plenty of things coming at us with no earthly explanation. We are supposed to catch on that Job is in no position to understand the maneuverings and intrigue going on at the level of the Spirit Realm. It’s not his place to know such things; what he is supposed to know is that there is a God who makes demands, and therein lies the whole of his duty. In the final scene God humbles him afresh to remind him of those limits.
Maybe you notice I’ve added a few things in my review that the little animated videos don’t cover. Yes, they come close to what I outlined, but they miss parts of it. Those three books hold their place in a wider objective for Scripture: To drive us into mysticism and an otherworldly outlook. We are supposed to understand that our perception of reality will inevitably be flawed in our fallen state. Our experience will always contain inexplicable elements. But the answer is never totally beyond our reach if we rely on the heart-led awareness.
It’s the leading of the heart that teaches us to bear the imperfections of life in this world, not because reality is unreliable. Nor is it God’s fault things don’t make sense compared to His revelation. The whole problem rests on our own weakness. We are supposed to distrust our perceptions, and to cling to what God says versus our senses and logic. That’s what faith is. It’s a commitment to the truth, and offers the rationale that it’s good for us eternally regardless of how it comes out in terms of external events. It’s to make us focus on the internal process of faith and heart-led experience, to discount the external experience.
If you keep chasing outcomes in this realm of existence, you will never be living in faith. Cling to the eternal truth, not what you can make of things with your human senses and reason.
