August 16, 2009 | 8:00 a.m.

Wisdom and Intelligence

Jocelyn C. Cadwallader
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 111
1 Kings 2:10–12, 3:3–14
Ephesians 5:15–20

“Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people,
able to discern between good and evil.”

1 Kings 3:9 (NRSV)

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

“If you walk in my ways . . .”

Yikes, that’s a tough one! Particularly for Solomon. You see, something that we know about Solomon is that he was the beginning of the end of the kingdom. He was the first of the kings to set the pattern for the rest of the kings. In the account of the books of Kings in our scriptures, we are given a collection of chronological narratives about royal deeds and prophetic words and acts that articulate the fate of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Some kings are described at length, but most are granted limited face time. However, there is a lot of information about the reign of Solomon, David’s son, who takes the throne, the kingship of the kingdom secured in the Davidic line. Solomon’s story is the one in which we are offered the most information. Scholars propose several theories as to why there is more information about Solomon, as opposed to the others, and the theory most articulated is that Solomon seems to be the trendsetter in kingship. His story is one that repeats itself. Like an old mentor of mine always says, “Nothing we do is done for the first time. Where are you in the scriptures today?” So Solomon is the mold we have to work with, and we can infer the successive kings worked within his model.

Biblical scholar and professor Richard D. Nelson provides us a good structure to understand the pattern of Solomon’s reign, a reign that is repeated over and over in various permutations by successive kings. He tells us that there are three main movements in Solomon’s kingship. First, Solomon initiates his reign in uprightness. He seeks God’s wisdom. He finds favor with the Lord. Although eventually this leads to doing “evil in the sight of the Lord” (as seen in 1 Kings 11:6), this movement from uprightness to doing evil in the sight of the Lord initiates the criterion of judgment that will be applied to each king who follows. Did he do what was right or what was evil?

Second, Solomon’s apostasy, or unfaithfulness to God, with foreign gods will be repeated again and again by the kings of both north and south, until it is specifically undone by Josiah’s reformation in 2 Kings 23.

And, third, Solomon’s construction of the temple introduces a new prospect for sin. Although Solomon’s temple makes it possible for the first time to obey the law mandating the centralization of sacrifices as described in Deuteronomy 12, paradoxically it also means that disobedience is now possible. Sacrifice to the Lord outside Jerusalem will soon begin in chapter 12, inaugurating the nation’s other great act of apostasy. This will also continue until Josiah’s reformation.

Now let’s go back and take a closer look at this first movement that Nelson describes: Solomon’s reign was initiated in uprightness. Solomon seeks wisdom from God, but what is this wisdom that Solomon seeks from God? He appeals to God for the ability to discern what is right and what is wrong—specifically what is good and what is evil. He seeks God’s wisdom in knowing these things so that he may govern his people well, as he is called to do. And we see God respond well to Solomon’s request. But what do we do with the fact that we see in the scriptures that God grants Solomon this wisdom he requests, along with wealth and length of life, yet eventually Solomon still succumbs to evil acts in the eyes of the Lord? Eventually, against God’s wisdom, Solomon makes the poor decision, according to God, to marry foreign women. God warned against this for fear that if Solomon became involved with these foreign women, they would turn his heart from God and to the worship of their gods, and frankly, God was right. So this leads me to several questions about this wisdom that God granted Solomon: for instance, if Solomon had been granted the wisdom of God to govern his people, how in the world was it possible for him to act foolishly?

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A few days ago, as I was working through the week, reading and learning about this text, a question popped into my mind. My question was this: Did relativism lead to Solomon’s apostasy? Kind of a scary question, I think—especially for a politically and theologically progressive person such as myself. But it was my question, nonetheless. So, relativism . . .

Relativism is the idea that some elements or aspects of experience or culture are relative to, or dependent on, other elements or aspects, meaning everything’s relative. For example, “That’s true for you but not for me” or “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or “You can’t judge other cultures by the standards of your own.” Everything is relative, and because everything is relative, decisions made for one might not be the best decisions for another.

So the subject of my question is about Solomon’s specific apostasy of turning his heart from God for the sake of international relations. We learn later in chapter 11 that Solomon married foreign women. He began to do this for the sake of sustaining international peace, as was articulated as one of his goals and calls as king. Solomon built relationships with neighboring kingdoms, and as a sign of trust, a sign of peace, he married women of these allies as a gesture of goodwill. Now to us as Americans sitting in the pews today, though marrying women of different countries is not necessarily the preferred strategy of our country’s leadership, we sympathize with Solomon, who desires to foster positive international relations within his reign as king. We understand international relations to be important and vital to the success of our nation.

But in Solomon’s case, regardless of the intention of good foreign relations, God had commanded him not to marry foreign women for fear Solomon would worship their gods. One would believe that if Solomon had God’s wisdom, then he simply would not marry the foreign women. Yet somewhere along the way, he deemed these marriages, these international relationships, important and a way in which he was serving his people well. Solomon had built the temple, which was a wise decision, for God and for the people. Seemingly his next item on the agenda was to foster international relations. The times are changing, and so do the priorities of the nation. I can see Solomon’s dilemma: certainly, he could marry these women for the sake of love and the nation and keep his heart on God. Right? Certainly God wouldn’t be so irrelevant as to not understand international relations? Certainly God would understand. Yet as the story unfolds, Solomon does go against God’s wisdom, marries the foreign women, and ultimately his heart is turned from God, regardless of the fact that he once sought God’s wisdom. It seems as if things are becoming a bit more complicated for Solomon, a little less clear as to what decision to make.

Perhaps Solomon became entrenched in his kingdom, in his life, involved in the everyday workings of the business. Perhaps he became bogged down in the details, listening to the desires of the people for peace whilst hearing all other business of the kingdom, making decisions to the best of his ability to serve the people well and give them what they wanted. And in the midst of his downfall, in the midst of getting entrenched in his role as king, we do not see Solomon asking for God’s wisdom again. Did he still understand God’s wisdom to be in him at this point? What happened to that wisdom? Did God revoke the wisdom because Solomon violated God’s commandment not to intermarry? Was there a time limit applied to God’s wisdom? I’m not sure of the answers to these questions—which leads me to wonder if this account of Solomon asking for God’s wisdom and God granting it is to encourage the reader to understand that, quite simply, seeking God’s wisdom is powerful enough? Perhaps the lesson here is not necessarily in the details of the transgression that Solomon eventually committed or how he might commit it when the element of God’s granted wisdom is on the table. Perhaps the lesson here, in this text, this portion of the story, is in Solomon’s desire for God’s wisdom. We know that at one point in his life, Solomon sought God’s wisdom and God granted him wisdom, and that was a positive experience.

It’s easy to get entrenched in our own lives, isn’t it? In fact, it’s inevitable really. It is easy for us to come to church each Sunday, to say our prayers in the morning and in the evening, yet in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, we find ourselves stressed to the max about what’s happening with the file that was due two hours ago or how to get one child here and another there at the same exact time. It’s easy to begin to listen to those voices in our lives that direct our actions, that direct our self-image, that direct our understanding of the world. It’s easy to get bogged down in the gossip of our own community, to believe that the actions of one community member are more important than the rest of us: “Did you hear what he did?” “Did you see what she was wearing?” It’s easy to become entrenched in our own lives. It’s easy for us to become comfortable with wise decisions becoming OK decisions or decisions that are OK for the time being. It’s easy for us to lose sight of the goal, of the wider picture, of the community as a whole, when we are entrenched in what surrounds us.

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Have you ever read the last chapter of a book before reading the rest of the book? You know, you read the first chapter, are completely drawn into the story and just need to know what happens in the end? So you read the end of the book, discover the conclusion, and come back to the beginning to start all over. I feel a little like that with this text this morning. We know the fate of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. We know they ultimately fall and are destroyed. Yet there is this story in the beginning, this narrative of a moment when God grants Solomon God’s wisdom. We could wrestle with this text for days, months, years and not ask all the theological questions pertaining to God’s wisdom and God’s role in this narrative, but for today, we are privy to a simple message: we are reminded of a time to seek God’s wisdom.

We are reminded that though we may become entrenched in our own lives, as Solomon did, God is present to us, as God was to Solomon. God’s wisdom is in our presence, and even the act of remembering the existence of God’s wisdom on our part has a profound impact on the decisions that we make. It’s not about whether or not there is a time limit on God’s wisdom; there’s not. It’s not about whether we possess God’s wisdom ourselves; we don’t. It’s about our ability to remember God is present, God is with us, and we make our decisions in the presence of God in all we do, remembering that God loves us and desires the best for us—not the easiest, not the more convenient, but the best for us—and encourages us to make decisions remembering that God is there in that moment as well. As we find ourselves entrenched in the midst of our own lives, as we make decisions for ourselves, for our families, our workplaces, our community, might we remember that we are in the presence of the Wise One, and may that presence impact the decisions we make. Amen.