Might Have to Change!”

“Know thyself.” (The Delphic Oracle, as quoted by Socrates)

“The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;

they do not know over what they stumble.” (Proverbs 4:19, English Standard Version)

I have a confession: Sometimes, I don’t really want to know. Perhaps I should explain.

I do want to know all kinds of things. How old is Carol Burnett? What does “OG” mean in text-speak? How many people in America have earned Ph Ds? What is the Spanish word for “find”?

On and on my curiosity goes,

and where it stops, nobody knows.

But, in point of fact, I do know where my curiosity stops. I don’t really want to know certain things about myself. The knowledge itself would be unpleasant. And then, the real unpleasantness might begin. Why? Well, I might have to change. There is a psalm about people like me—Psalm 36. I wrote about it in very general terms in yesterday’s blog post. Here is the verse that I especially want to have a look at today:

“For he flatters himself in his own eyes

that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.” (Proverbs 4:2, English Standard Version)

This verse could be taken in either of two ways. It might mean that the wicked person flatters himself because he has pulled the wool over eyes. He says to himself, “I’ve covered my tracks! No one will ever know!”

On the other hand, the verse could mean that the wicked person thinks so much of his cleverness that he is no longer can detect his own evil. “Who, me?! Never!”

There is no way to be sure, based on the Hebrew, which way to go with this one. Therefore, I’m going to take the pathway that Yogi Berra indicated: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” (Of course, Berra also is reported to have said, “I didn’t really say all the things I said,” so perhaps it was someone else who spoke of taking the fork in the road.)

If this verse means that the wicked person has covered his tracks so carefully that even he can’t detect his wickedness, that raises a chilling thought for me. Am I wicked, and don’t even know it?

But there is an even more disturbing question: What if I don’t even want to know? And the truth is that, often, I really don’t want to know.

And why is that? I might have to change! Who wants to do that?! I am reminded of what Bilbo Baggins said about adventures: “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!”

It may, in fact, be true that coming to grips with my own wickedness is the ultimate adventure. However, that doesn’t mean that they won’t be nasty disturbing uncomfortable things. And then there’s being late for dinner.

Of course, none of what I’ve written here is new or revolutionary. We all speak of people who have blind spots. Everybody else can see what they can’t. However, there is one person that I know who has no blind spots at all: me!

Ellen T. Charry makes some stellar comments on Psalm 36:1-4. She titles this section of her comments, “Self-Deceiving Audacity” and she drives home her point with a quote from St. Augustine:

“In pretending to find his own iniquity and hate it: this suggests that he acted in such a way as to make sure he would not find it. Some people make a show of trying to find their iniquity, but they are afraid of finding it, because if they do find it, they will be challenged: ‘Give it up .  . . [The sinner] pretends to seek it here, seek it there, but always he is afraid of finding it. His search is a sham.”

Then Charry comments, “One wonders if Augustine is not reflecting on his own struggle to give up sex prior to his baptism.”[1]

[1] Ellen T. Charry, Psalms 1-50, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015), 191-192.