I grew up with formulas—as you probably did, too. Study hard, and you’ll get a good job. Be good to others, and they’ll be good to you. Raise a child in the way he (or she) should go, and when he is old, he won’t depart from it. Then I grew up. College friends lost their young husbands and wives to cancer. I lost a job. People whom I loved—my father, for instance—died.

In 1968 or so, when the rest of the world was reeling with revolution, someone gave me a Jesus Person Pocket Promise Book, a slender little paperback with a list of quotations. Each was a biblical promise. Every promise portended a bright future for me. Every promise promised that things would be okay.

I grew up with formulas—as you probably did, too. Study hard, and you’ll get a good job. Be good to others, and they’ll be good to you. Raise a child in the way he (or she) should go, and when he is old, he won’t depart from it.

Then I grew up. College friends lost their young husbands and wives to cancer. I lost a job. People whom I loved—my father, for instance—died. I spent years disappointed at failed pregnancies. I spent nights and days in emergency rooms with a heart that wouldn’t settle down. I watched students who studied hard find no job at the end of the college rainbow. I saw my friends’ children raised in the faith turn from it. Yes, I grew up.

That’s why I teach the Wisdom Tradition in the Bible (books like Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) by starting with one verse, Ecclesiastes 2:13:

               The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness.

Eugene Peterson in The Message translates it this way:

                It’s better to be smart than stupid, just as light is better than dark.

This looks like it jumped from the pages of the Jesus Person Pocket Promise Book: be wise, and you’ll be better off; be smart, and you’ll do well in life. I think it’s a good rule of thumb. It is better to be smart than stupid. But wisdom can’t protect you from life, from reality, from the rough and tumble of existence.

So The Teacher (the supposed author of Ecclesiastes) eviscerates this formula. He tears it apart. For the next few paragraphs, he rips this proverb open, like a tiger devouring a zebra.
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