A long list defines righteousness

Scriptures deepen our understanding by pointing out the blatant truth. Blatant, however, doesn’t change us. We must be willing to be changed. The first two verses in the Book of Wisdom may well take a lifetime to adopt.

Repentance, or turning back to God, does not stop. We must practice loving righteousness. What the heck is righteousness, though?

Aaack. My brain hurts. Righteousness sounds hard. Maybe I'll just go get a cheeseburger.

Righteousness turns our attention to God


http://usccb.org/bible/readings/111119.cfm
Wisdom 1:1-7
Luke 17:1-6


When we grasp the kernel of some truth that can’t be dismissed our brains should click into another level. We should learn and be changed. To do so is to discover wisdom, the very nature of God himself. Truth grabs our attention. Wisdom states the obvious that wasn’t obvious to us before. "Aha!" we shout.

Then what?

Few of us are so sure of ourselves to remain attentive to God. We may truly know something new, but we don’t always make that shift to another level. The book of Wisdom, special sayings set aside from Solomon, gives great advice on how to train ourselves to operate under the truth. Solomon tells us to be attentive to God. The book begins by telling us something that is true, but first reinforces that truth with two principles — God is good, and we should seek him with a pure heart.

But even before those principles another principle directs us toward wisdom — love righteousness. The truth, then, shown in bold, gets our attention.

Love righteousness, you who judge the earth;
think of the LORD in goodness,
and seek him in integrity of heart;
Because he is found by those who do not test him,
and manifests himself to those who do not disbelieve him.
(Wisdom 1:1-2)

Scriptures deepen our understanding by pointing out the blatant truth. Even without the bold text you probably saw the insight in not testing God and not "disbelievinig" in him. Blatant, however, doesn’t change us. We must be willing to be changed. These two verses — from righteousness to "found" and "manifest" — may well take a lifetime to adopt.

Repentance, or turning back to God, does not stop. We know we sin on an infuriating and regular basis. We continually must repent. We must also practice loving righteousness. We need to repeat our love of righteousness over and over in order to experience God.

What the heck is righteousness, though? If we don’t understand the premise of righteousness, the starting point for the entire book of Wisdom, we’ll wander, flail about, and then go get a cheeseburger. We’re hungry for Wisdom, or we wouldn’t be here reading the book of Wisdom. Unsatisfied with $160 words like righeousness that don’t look that hard, we’ll satisfy ourselves eventually with more accommodating comfort food like a cheesburger that runs about four bucks.

The unfortunate thing about righteousness is the sheer mountain of amazingness that the word encapsulates. The word is gaining popularity in religious circles for a reason. Here’s a direct copy of the Oxford dictionary similes for righteousness. You’ll see everything good about goodness itself in this very long list:

  • virtue
  • virtuousness
  • uprightness
  • decency
  • integrity
  • worthiness
  • rectitude
  • probity
  • morality
  • ethicalness
  • high-mindedness
  • justice
  • honesty
  • honor
  • honorableness
  • innocence
  • blamelessness
  • guiltlessness
  • irreproachability
  • sinlessness
  • saintliness
  • purity
  • nobility
  • noble-mindedness
  • piety
  • piousness

It helps to summarize a few of the many concepts of righteousness — decency, nobility, and saintliness. Pick any three you like. They’ll say basically the same things — morality, purity, and honesty. Everything good about everything there is sits on that list. Earlier translations of the Greek word dikaiosyen used “justice” instead of righteousness. Scholars now largely agree that the breadth of righteousness better captures the intent of scriptures, certainly here in this deutero-canonical text.

“Love righteousness.”

Before everything else to be said we should “love” righteousness — everything in that lovely list of good stuff. Great start. No problem with that. Makes perfect sense. We could probably chat a while about love, too, but let’s just assume we’ve got the picture.

“You who judge the earth.”

And who would that be? Any of us. All of us. Humans judge the earth from its climate to its inhabitants. We have a position on almost everything. When I said cheeseburger earlier I triggered some judgment from more than a few of you. Just that one word brought up many judgmental thoughts — yummy, too greasy, Wendy’s over Burger King, no cheese on mine, etc. The book of Wisdom, then, was written for all of us judgmental types.

Now we get to the two principles, the two things that will set us up for truth.

“Think of the LORD in goodness,
and seek him in integrity of heart.”

The most important mindset for a human being is to assume God is good. Any other thoughts should be set aside. Who else could God be? God is not evil, and has no evil in him. Likewise, we should also be in a holy mindset, a thinking way of goodness, when we approach God.

Also, we should seek God with integrity, with the very righteousness that we have been told to love. These words are all we need to know to establish our relationship to God. God is good. Come to God with integrity of heart, a purposeful honesty and an expectant openness. A communicating God will then become evident — found and manifest.

The position of thinking God is good and seeking God with purity of intent sets us up for the truth that Wisdom tells us.

“Because he is found by those who test him not,
and he manifests himself to those who do not disbelieve him.”

The common line heard regarding “testing” God comes out as, “Do ‘X’ for me God and I’ll do ‘Y.’” I’ve also said myself, “If you’ll show yourself to me, God, I’ll believe.” The poor logic in these demands upon God is the assumption that God is not already loving us and showing himself. Testing God presumes that God hasn’t performed as he should. We, then, limit the power of God to a formula of magic words from us, or some clever proof that only we can conjure for God’s appearance.

God is good, and so must we wish to be. God is pure, and so must we wish to be. These are the postures of “not testing” God. We are certainly not all good, but we can confirm in our thinking that God is all goodness. We are certainly not pure of heart, but we can open our hearts to his purity. God is already these things, so we have no need to test him.

The second truth is that seeking out God requires believing that God speaks to us. He who is Good and Pure and everything that is righteous can be discovered, because God can be known. The change to our hearts and minds takes time and repetitive attention. God has no failing here. God has no fault here. God has no fear of us, and no forgone conclusions.

It is us, not God, who must be attentive.

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