NOTES for Isa 5:16-25

"Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever before themselves!" These words are very hard to receive, because feeling unwise and unintelligent is unpleasant, and at times simply disastrous.

In Moscow there is a very good school for physics and mathematics, where the most talented children are gathered. This school produced an astonishing cluster of people active in science and education; among its graduates are many professors, and not only in physics and mathematics. But one day a boy who studied at this school took his own life and left a note that said, "I do not want to be a fool." And a girl who also studied at this school then had to spend many years treating her depression. And these two, alas, were by no means the only ones wounded in this way, wounded even to death. Is this good? Then why does the Bible call us to something like that: to feel unwise, unintelligent, in other words simply foolish, if that is so frightening?!

In fact, it is exactly the opposite: it is from this terrible darkness that the Lord warns us with these words. For what was the fall of the first human being? He wanted to be like God ("and you will be like gods" Gen 3:5), and God is, first of all, wise. But further: "...you will be like gods, knowing good and evil." And today the prophet also says, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil." That is, woe to those who, knowing good, call it evil. Here the trouble is no longer that we know, but that, knowing, we pretend that we do not know: a kind of second fall "in the opposite direction."

So why should we fall away from God in that direction, or in the opposite one? If one somehow understands very deeply inwardly that God is many times wiser than the wisest among us human beings, if one always remembers this height, unattainable and unquestionable, then all our differences from one another are leveled out. They become barely noticeable, as the difference between houses, even skyscrapers, and shacks is barely noticeable when you look at them from an airplane window. The question itself simply loses meaning.

When you think about your own nothingness, your own foolishness, sinfulness, and uselessness, you inevitably come to the thought, "Then why am I alive?" Only one thing will save us: God, who is so wise, wiser than any wisest human being, loves me, wants me to live, "willed me to be." And then the question, "Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right?" simply ceases to exist. He loves me, He brought me here and blessed me for life, for "with each person God speaks before He creates..." (R. M. Rilke)