If “God did not make death and does not delight in the death of the living,” [Wis. Sol. 1:13], then why would we even think to ask why God lets bad things happen to us? When someone walks into a school or a newspaper office and kills a bunch of people, we feel powerless and depressed and angry. Some people blame it on the guns; some people blame it on the people who go on the murderous rampage. Other people might blame it on the government, the police, love-gone-wrong, on an injurious upbringing, Satan… and there are those who blame it on God. “God, if you are the sort that will let this happen, then I have no use for you.” The response to tragedy is made of many things, and blame is usually a big component. “Who did this? Did they get the guy?”
The thing about acquiring wisdom is that we begin to learn what belongs to God, and what belongs to us. If God created all things so that they might exist, then sickness or injury and death, AND especially murder, are not God’s intent and certainly not God’s fault. “The generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them. God created us for incorruption and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world and those who belong to his company experience it.”
The book we call the Wisdom of Solomon was a Jewish writing meant to teach about the difference between wickedness and righteousness, according to the commentary by Lester Crabbe in the New Oxford Annotated Bible. Crabbe says that Wisdom is thought to be equated with a holy and disciplined Spirit [V. 5], and the Spirit of the Lord” [V.7] so when we are learning about wisdom, we’re learning about life lived in the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God. We live in and are guided by the Holy Spirit, who in turn helps learn to be holier spirits than we think we can be. If God has created us for incorruption in the image of God’s own identity, then God’s own heart must break when we corrupt God’s image, by choosing what suits us rather than what reflects God.
We hear that word “corruption” a lot, especially around election season, when we’re flooded with campaign messages from people who promise to save us from corruption. You might think of corruption as the thing that happens when a person abuses their authority and power. And that’s certainly that’s one meaning. But corruption can be broader than that. It’s similar to distortion, or as they say in the land of clichés, “a loose interpretation of the original.” It means that whatever or whoever is corrupted is not a high fidelity version of the original blueprint. And when we see someone behave in ways that are inconsistent with God’s own image of eternity, we try to use science and logic to figure out what went wrong. Sometimes, we just don’t know, whatever the apparent reason may be given us. But if we seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we can be assured, that it is NOT God who causes bad things to happen, but humans who make evil choices.
God created us for incorruption: to be a generative and wholesome force in the world, and our souls immortal, “for righteousness is immortal.” We are not meant to be distorted versions of the image of God.
Our bodies are physical creations that are subject to illness, injury, aging and ultimately death. Our physical bodies are not immortal and they are not eternal. But these bodies are just vessels, yes? Jars of clay? And they are the college for wisdom where we prepare for eternity. So let’s just take a moment to talk about eternity. What is the image of eternity? Does it mean that we live forever? Perhaps. And no problem there, because God is made out of spirit, and promised that we too will live forever as transformed spiritual beings That is what is meant by immortality. Eternity doesn’t necessarily refer only to time, but also other immeasurable things. We can’t measure the extent of several things about God, not just God’s timelessness, but also God’s size, God’s ability to be everywhere at once, God’s knowledge, creativity, and most importantly: God’s steadfast love. This is a special love. The Hebrew word is hesed, and it is usually translated as “steadfast loving kindness,” so it’s not a feeling—it’s a doing. If eternity means that something is so vast that it is immeasurable, then we are created in the image of all of God’s immeasurable attributes, including God’s hesed. It means that we are created in the image of unlimited love, unlimited potential, and yes, immortality.
So if you are left feeling a little flat by all of the violence in the world, God is looking for a few sturdy jars of clay that are prepared to keep seeking wisdom and becoming the generative forces of the world. Jars of clay that are determined to turn every bad thing that happens into an opportunity to make good on everything that God has encoded us with to fulfill the potential of being created in the image of God’s own eternity.