Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that’s aware that some of its subscribers are only in it for the welcome jokes at the beginning. And that’s okay.
It was encouraging to discover that so many of you felt God’s vivid presence in dramatic ways when you listened to the audio I dropped in last week’s article.
Today’s article is somewhat related since the music from last week’s feature was created by non-believers. (Just the music, not the lyrics or the vocals.)
The question before the house right now is, “Can Christians benefit from consuming non-Christian art, music, books, podcasts, films, etc. (with discernment, of course)?”
I’ve previously addressed the issue in the following (but there’s more):
Seeing God’s Eternal Purpose in Music and Film
Over the years, I’ve pointed out that God put His wisdom in creation (since the universe was created by Wisdom incarnate — Christ).
He’s also put His rhythm in the spheres, hence, why non-believers can tap into divine insights and we can learn from them.
A good example of this is the high-level entrepreneurs in the world today who have great wisdom that comports with Scripture, yet many of these individuals don’t know God.
(In the Surviving Your Storm course, I discuss why some non-Christians can offer helpful advice that’s practical and rarely found among today’s Christian teachers.)
A biblical example of this truth is found in the book of Proverbs, some of which comes from a non-Israelite source (King Lemuel).
On that score, the following was written by my friend John Nugent — one of my conversation partners on The Insurgence Podcast. I agree with it fully.
“It is quite commonplace for scholars to recognize that a certain section of Proverbs builds on some wisdom material first recorded in Egypt. Not the bulk of Proverbs or anything like that, but a specific section that has numerous parallels. I was taught that a long time ago. It’s in all the Proverbs commentaries. But this is inherent in wisdom literature.
Wisdom literature is not special revelation from God; it is a collection of truths that humans discover as they reflect rationally on human experience within the created order. So the more an experience or observation is universal the more likely it is to be a timeless truth wired into the universe.
Wise men, like Solomon, intentionally gathered wisdom from all around the world because the more widespread an observation and the more it transcends space and time, the more reliable it is as a universal truth gleaned from creation. It is in insult to a king’s wisdom collection that it would be narrowly limited to people and places nearby. It is an asset that he draws wisdom from kings and kingdoms far and wide. So we’ve got wisdom from Egypt that resonates with Palestinian experience. Cool!
That is wisdom that transcends empires, cultures, agricultures, languages, and continents. Proverbs ends with a poem that an non-Israelite king, King Lemuel, was taught by his mother. We don’t know who either of them are nor where they are from.
Such assimilation from diverse sources is not plagiarizing as much as wisdom literature doing what is the nature of wisdom literature to do. It is inherent in the genre itself and accredits the collection because of its diverse of origins. Some people have narrow theories of inspiration that this chaffs against, but those theories don’t emerge from Scripture itself. It they did, then they would have to be dynamic enough to account for the kind of intentional, transparent borrowing we find in Proverbs.
But wisdom lit is just one genre. And biblical wisdom lit–Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes–all have statements to the effect that wisdom is limited in what it can teach us and that we need more–the more that we get from God and from Torah.
So Proverbs emphasizes time and again that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Job shows that the best human wisdom cannot comprehend the mysterious things of God because humans are too small and our perspective too limited. And Ecclesiastes ends by teaching that, at the end of the day, we should fear God and keep his commandments.
So we do learn from wisdom lit that there is a time and place to be in conversation with the best ideas the wider world has to offer, but those ideas gleaned from general revelation have great limitations and must be subordinated to the special revelation that God has given us.
This is necessary because the Fall has skewed our brains and twisted this world out of sorts, such that we cannot simply arrive at the truth by using our fallen brains to reflect on fallen creation. We needed God to become flesh and show us the way, the truth, and the life.”
Until next Thursday,
Your brother,
fv
Goosebumps, Chills, Shivers, Tears