Year 2, Day 122: Job 28

The Mastery of Mankind

As I studied this passage, I was confronted by a question.  It seems like a modern question, but it is really the question that Job honestly asks – although let’s remember the end of this chapter which demonstrates that he honestly knows the answer as well.  Here’s the question: is there anything that man cannot master?

Look at the examples that Job gives.  Mankind has dug through the earth.  Mankind has moved mountains.  You might wonder at this comment and humanity’s ability to move mountains in the days of Job, but remember that anyone who was anyone had surely heard about what the Egyptians were doing prior to and during the time of Job: building pyramids.  That is easily seen as being able to cut open the earth and move mountains!

Want another example?  Mankind pulls iron out of the earth – and yes, iron was known to the people of Job’s day.  Steel might not have been known, but iron certainly was!  But what these verses are talking about is mankind’s ability to take minerals out of the earth and forge them into incredible tools.  Sure, we’ve gotten better at it as time went on, but they were already pretty good at pulling out copper, tin, lead, silver, gold, and turning these minerals into useful items.

We even pull out gemstones from within the earth.  We can pull out sapphires, rubies, pearls, diamonds, and other such gems.  We can take them and adorn ourselves with them.  But we can also take them and do some amazing other stuff with them – especially given the sheer hardness of diamond.

More examples of what mankind can do?  Well, we can reshape the courses of rivers.  Job certainly was aware of how the Babylonians had altered the river that went through their capitol city!  We can use dams to create power – the ancient people were skilled at using dams to create the power behind things like the grinding of wheat.  And I’m sure they had more than that!

I can keep going on, but I think you get my point.  As human beings, we can do some pretty amazing stuff.  Even during Job’s lifetime we could do some amazing things.  If we take a look around and see our modern technological advancements, we can only add to Job’s list of what we can accomplish.

So I echo the question underlying Job’s poem here in this chapter.  Is there anything that mankind cannot do?

A Truthful Reply

As Job ends his speech here, we find the answer.  Mankind cannot own wisdom.  We cannot possess wisdom.  We cannot dig wisdom out of the earth.  We cannot forge wisdom.  We cannot divert wisdom from where it is and cause it to flow into us.  We might be technologically advanced and we might be intelligent.  But as a race, we are not wise.

If anyone doubts this, just look around.  I don’t mean to jump from soapbox to soapbox, but I ask for a little leeway here.  Let’s look at politics.  Does anyone think it is wise to continue to have a political system where the overarching opinion has become “we can’t trust any of them?”  Or let’s look at the legal system.  We’ve created a monster where judges hand out huge settlements because people don’t realize that coffee is hot and Nutella might not be the world’s next health food.  Maybe we should look at our pastimes.  As a fan of hockey and football, I’m not foolish enough to fail to understand that we throw millions – perhaps billions? – of dollars every year into entertainment, violent tendencies, and competitions that are fundamentally meaningless.  {Sorry guys, but let’s be honest.  Does it really matter who wins the Stanley Cup or the Lombardi Trophy?  Other than bragging rights and “woo-hoo” moments that fade in a week … do those things really matter?}

Do you see what I am saying?  Our cultures are not built on wisdom!  Want some examples?

America – and most of the “developed” world – is not too far from facing a potable water shortage.  But do we hear much about it?  Our government – and most of the developed world outside of Switzerland – is flailing in its own lack of fiduciary control.  But is anything being done about it?  Our hobbies and pastimes lead us into short attention spans and over-competitiveness.  But we follow headlong anyway.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love football, hockey, TV, movies, a good book, rock music, and letting someone else be in charge of the government as much as the next guy.  But those things do not bring about wisdom.  Wisdom is the one thing that mankind will never master.  We won’t master it because we don’t have the patience, the desire, or the righteousness to master it.  It’s not in us.  Period.

How can I make that claim?

Look at how Job ends this chapter.  The fear of the Lord is wisdom.  Turning away from evil is understanding.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a world that is willing to turn away from evil much less fear God.  If we can’t even see those as good things worthy of pursuing, why would we ever think we shall master wisdom?

I’m sorry this has been a pretty depressing blog post.  But it is a pretty real one, too.  It is good to remember that as human beings we tend to repeatedly focus on the wrong things in life.  We think we have all the answers when in truth the beginning of finding the answers is admitting that we don’t usually even know how to ask the right questions.

Wisdom?  Ha.  It will always elude humanity.

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