In our modern Western world — where we have a rule of law
but in which technology marches onward —, people are flexible and rootless.
They can live anywhere and believe anything. In such a world how shall we live Christianly
as artisans, artists, architects, designers, skilled tradesmen and professionals?
Consider the Book of Exodus:
Then Moses said to the children
of Israel, “See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of
Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And He has filled him with the Spirit of God, in
wisdom, in understanding and in knowledge and in all craftsmanship . . . . and
Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. . . . as performers of
every work and makers of designs. (Ex 35:30,31,34,35 NASB)
Now Bezalel and Oholiab, and
every man wise of heart in whom the Lord has put wisdom and understanding to
know how to perform all the work in the construction of the sanctuary, shall
perform in accordance with all that the Lord has commanded. Then Moses called
Bezalel and Oholiab and every man wise of heart in whose heart the Lord had put
wisdom, everyone whose heart lifted him up to come to the work to perform it.
(Ex 36:1-2 NASB literal readings)
You [Moses, the prophet] shall
make holy garments for Aaron your brother [the high priest], for glory and for
beauty. (Ex 28:2 NASB)
First, it is striking that, in the service of the Lord
our God, there is no secular and sacred split. Moses the prophet and leader,
Aaron the high priest, and Bezalel the designer and craftsman are all doing the
work of the Lord (Ex 28:2; 35:30). Religious ritual has no value when divorced
from honorable work, righteous living in community, caring about others
(including the poor and oppressed, Isa 1:10-17; Mat. 23:23-24), and dealing
with the mundane matters of daily living. [1]
Next, for every professional and tradesman involved in
the work of the Tabernacle (an elaborate tent structure and grounds for worship),
his “heart lifted him up” (Ex 36:2). Let’s explore that expression for a
moment. As I demonstrated in a graduate thesis, the Hebrew word for “heart”
(actually two: leb and lebab, which are stylistic variants) is the personality
center with thoughts, feelings, desires, and conscience. [2]
The closest English expression is “mind and heart.”
Giving yourself to the work of the Lord – whether minister or professional or
tradesman or laborer or homemaker – involves an action of the whole inward
person. Then the Hebrew says “lifted up.” That is, these people felt inclined
toward and stirred up for the work. They had passion. And the source of their
gifts was the Lord (Ex 36:2), implying that they ought to engage in their work
not only with passion but with some kind of humility before the Giver and
gratitude to the divine Provider.
Third, those involved in the making of the Tabernacle,
its furniture and its priestly clothes had certain characteristics (Ex 35:31) [3].
(1) Wisdom at design and construction – that is, skill. In the Old Testament, “wisdom”
is prudent, consistent, experienced, and competent action to master the
problems of life. So wisdom for design and construction is, more than anything
else, problem solving. (2) Understanding: insight into the nature, character,
and subtleties of things and ideas. (3) Knowledge: acquaintance — by means of
experience — with facts, principles, learning, and formal studies of things and
ideas. (4) Craftsmanship: specialized ability to something well. As part of
these traits, there is also (5) an aesthetic sense (Ex 28:2). These Tabernacle
craftsmen are making things “for glory and for beauty.” That is, their
passionate work will create objects which display dignity and which yield a
sense of delight, transcendence and well-being.
Nils Finne, AIA, is a principal of the award-winning
FINNE Architects in Seattle, Washington USA. He grew up in the USA and in his
20’s spent time in Scandinavia. He told an interviewer:
Sverre Fehn, the renowned
Norwegian architect, was my friend. I believe he has had a profound influence
on my work. I will never forget the afternoons I spent sitting with Sverre in
the living room of his house on Havna Alle in Oslo. Sverre lived in a classic
functionalist house designed by his teacher, Arne Korsmo. He had an uncanny
ability to understand construction and materials and then imbue a certain
poetical dimension to those elements.
The skill, knowledge, and craftsmanship of these
high-level architects is accompanied by profound understanding and an aesthetic
sense, just like the biblical Bezalel. Mr Finne adds about the renowned Mr
Fehn:
He was also a very unassuming
person and was amused when the Americans awarded him the Pritzker Prize (the
Nobel Prize equivalent for architecture). “Oh, yes,” he said. They sent “top
secret” faxes and then flew into Oslo on their private jet. “But then, there
was so much snow in many places that they could only manage to visit a few of
my buildings!” [4]
Mr Fehn had a humility as if his high level of skill was
the gift of Another and that he was just using this gifted skill with passion
and gratitude.
Fourth, there is one huge problem with these five traits
of wisdom/skill, understanding, knowledge, craftsmanship, and aesthetic sense.
They are neutral and can be used for good or evil.
In the 1954 play “The Rainmaker,” N. Richard Nash tells
of a drought-ridden rural town in the American West during the Great Depression.
A spinster Lizzie Curry keeps house for her father and two brothers on the
family cattle ranch. As the farm languishes under a devastating drought and as Lizzie
desperately worries about never having a husband, a charming trickster comes
along and promises rain in exchange for $100. Feeling sorry for Lizzie, he also
commits fornication with her to reassure her of her attractiveness as a woman. Outraged
at the violation of his sister, her brother draws his pistol and is about to
shoot the Rainmaker. But the father grabs the pistol from the brother with the
rebuke, “Noah, you’re so full of what’s right you can’t see what’s good.”
The playwright thereby advocates this philosophy: “There
are no moral boundaries of right and wrong. There are only more beneficial and
less beneficial ways of doing things. If it feels right, do it.” But the Book
of Exodus reminds us that we are under the commandments of God (Ex 36:2) and
not under either the out-of-control fury of the brother or the “most anything
goes” latitudinarianism of the father. There is objective right and wrong which
form the basis of living.
Like a drum accompanying a string quartet, in this
section of Exodus (35:1 – 39:43) there are two sevenfold repetitions of “as the
Lord commanded Moses” (39:1,5,7,21,26,29,31; 40:19,21,23,25,27,29,32). We are
not left in doubt. We are under the authority of God. In the new covenant, the
Christian is “not outside the law of God but under the law of Christ” (1 Cor
9:21). Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. . . . If
anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will
come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep
my words” (John 14:15, 23-24).
Finally, there’s another big problem with these five
traits of the trades and professions — a problem created by the society in
which we live: legalism. After four years of exile in the USA from Soviet
Russia, Alexandr I Solzhenitsyn analyzed the West for the benefit of the
graduates at Harvard University on 6/08/1978. Let’s listen to his solemn voice:
When the modern Western states
were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant
to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness…. Now
at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the
realization of such aspirations: . . . it has become possible to raise young
people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward
physical bloom, happiness, and leisure, the possession of material goods,
money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of
pleasures…. Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited
to its purposes and one I might call legalistic…. Every conflict is solved
according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate
solution. If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required,
nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint
or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this
would simply sound absurd…. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys
up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food
product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make
it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.) ....
The letter of the law is too
cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue
of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of
spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses…. Today's Western
society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the
freedom for evil deeds…. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human
rights as human obligations. On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible
freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce
defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of
liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full
of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom
and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people's right not to look
and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability
to defend itself against the corrosion of evil…. This tilt of freedom toward
evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and
benevolent concept according to which man — the master of the world — does not
bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by
misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely
enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there
still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than
in the destitute and lawless Soviet society. [5]
Christians must rise above the legalistic system of
individual rights to live out true freedom and the love of God – Father, Son
and Holy Spirit – and the love of neighbor. A man from Louisiana never fit in as
a member of his family and left for urban living in the north. Returning to
Christian faith and deciding to relocate (with his wife) near his family, his Louisiana
pastor laid down to him the law of Christ: “You have no choice as a Christian:
you’ve got to love your dad even if he doesn’t love you back in the way that
you want him to. You cannot stand on justice: love matters more than justice,
because the higher justice is love.” [6]
Endnotes
[1] My wisdom literature-related thoughts for this
article were greatly benefited from Robert L Deffinbaugh, “Introduction to
Proverbs,” 6/02/2004. https://bible.org/seriespage/1-introduction-proverbs
[2] For the meaning of “heart,” I rely on my 1973 thesis
“The ‘Heart’ in the Old Testament.” As a sample, note Gen 6:5 thoughts of the heart, Gen 6:6
a feeling of grief in the heart, Gen 8:21 intention (a desire) of the heart,
Gen 20:6 with integrity of heart = with a clear conscience.
[3] For the meaning of the word wisdom [hokmah] and, to a
lesser extent, for the meanings of understanding [tebuneh], knowledge [deʻat], and
craftsmanship [melakah], I benefited from the analysis of Georg Fohrer “Sophia.
Old Testament” in Gerhard Friedrich (ed), Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament; Geoffrey W Bromiley (trans) (Grand Rapids:
W.E. Eerdmans, 1971), Vol 7, pp 476-496. On hokmah, I cite his conclusion.
[4] The Finn quotes are from https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/20376965/list/10-things-architects-want-you-to-know-about-what-they-do
[5] Alexandr I Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart –
Commencement Address Delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978” http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php
[6] Joshua Rothman, “Rod Dreher’s Monastic Vision,” The New Yorker, May 1, 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/01/rod-drehers-monastic-vision
