Wisdom

8. Wisdom(Life, Nature, Diabetes, Wise Person)

8. 지 혜 (생명력, 자연, 당뇨, 지혜자)
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- September 2001
- 2001년 9월
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- About the ‘role of wise person’ as an agent of God
- The Book of Proverbs - A collection of Israelite wise persons’ awakening and wisdom
- 하나님의 대리인으로의 '지혜자의 역할'에 대하여....
_ 이스라엘 현자들의 깨달음, 지혜의 모음집-잠언(서)
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Proverbs 1:1-31
1. The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: 2. for attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight; 3. for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair; 4. for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young - 5. let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance - 6. for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.
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Wisdom is called ‘Hokmah’ in Hebrew.
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‘Hokmah’’s original concept has a basic concept of experience and know-how that have been acquired through active communication between man and man, or between man and things. For that reason, there are many occasions when the wisdom in the Book of Proverbs is often expressed as the fruit of acts that human beings have experienced in their living (see Proverbs 1:31).
It is referred to as ‘wise’ when one is fundamentally free of evil and rather rules or dominates all the evildoing. In addition, the word wisdom in the Proverbs goes besides skillfulness, includes actual living experiences, profound insight into life issues, judiciousness and resourcefulness, and also awareness of God.
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Born in this sense, ‘Hokmah’ expresses various kinds of wisdom.
‘Hokmah’ appears 140 times in the Old Testament, 39 times in the Proverbs. Let’s look at the examples of ‘Hokmah’ used in the Old Testament:
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First, strategy in war (Isaiah 10:13)
Second, specific ability in skills or technical jobs (Exodus 28:3, 31:3, 35:35, 36:1~2)
Third, wisdom in administrative dealings (Deuteronomy 34:9, Isaiah 29:14, Jeremiah 49:7, 2 Samuel 14:20)
Fourth, wisdom referring to sound judgment and sense (2 Samuel 20:22, Jeremiah 9:12, Isaiah 47:10, Daniel 1:4)
Fifth, prudence in religious doings and concerns (Deuteronomy 4:6, Psalm 37:30, 90:12, Isaiah 33:6)
And so forth, meanings are applied variedly.
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The ‘wisdom’ in the Old Testament wore secular looks at first. By and by it grew to be theological. Finally it became a form of Israel’s faith. The Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10 is saying, the fear of God, or faith and religion, is the foundation of cognition and wisdom.
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The Book of Proverbs uses the name of God in Israel concretely so that anybody hear faith and wisdom is the same meaning. From verse 1 to 9, it combines ‘secular and universal wisdom of human race’ and ‘Yahweh faith’ together. In these verses, ‘wisdom’ ‘insight’ ‘discretion’ ‘stupidity’ and such traditional wisdom-related words are being used mingled with ‘justice’ ‘righteousness’ ‘fear of God’ and such religious concepts.
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Also along with ‘wisdom,’ the Proverbs emphasizes how important point there is in teaching, or education. Another word of education, ‘discipline’ is from the Hebrew word ‘musar.’ In Israel community living in fear of God, the essence of wisdom is to teach people what is discerningly the best one, namely Jehovah. On account of this, the Proverbs emphasizes educating positively with discipline for the growth in wisdom. This discipline is also the word used when farther or teacher admonishes his son or student. (see Proverbs 22:15, 23:12~14)
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In the basis of most maxims is the thought of God flowing. This thought is that a certain order or rule reigns throughout all life of man. Man’s circumstances are decided according to how they act. That means in a sense, it is what God has given. For example, an honest person gets happiness. An evil doer pays one’s penalty. Words and deeds Yahweh God hates are sure to be in for bad results for man, so that human beings must avoid those things. We can see there is such thought embedded securely in maxims. (see Proverbs 12:21, 13:6, 24:16, 25:8)
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We can find a ‘feature’ of the Proverbs in how it depend less upon ‘revelation of God’ but more upon ‘humans’ experience.’ We should take a look at the reason why the proverbs were written. It is so that it could transmit wisdom through initiation into desirable manners to each descendant and through intra-communal initiation into knowledge as a way of maintaining the Israel community God sanctioned. Wise persons have taught wisdom is expressed in honesty, justice and fidelity through righteous action.
‘Wisdom that doesn’t stay at its fixed point,’ this is one of the most important teachings of Israelite wise men.
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Wise persons teach human beings have the ability to take morally rightful actions, and that one’s words and deeds are important in the lives as people of God. In the old days where the Bible were written, it was considered to be wise that one did one’s best within the range of the right way as a human being between God and man. But in the modern days where man lost their nature, ‘nature’ is added.
Christianity of the present and the future demands a human being should take their task in their life as and .
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It teaches that a human being is responsible and . In other words, a human being is responsible for understanding what God means and standing before God, neighborhood and nature.
After all, wisdom is a human being’s role as God’s agent, namely a medium who makes peace between God-Humanity-Nature. “Without God, without his fellowmen, man loses their globe.” This saying highlights the role of wisdom uniting God, humanity and nature into one.
These three have to take root in an organic relationship for sure.
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Environmental pollution and natural exploitation bring about unexpected calamities.
TV news is reporting a reddish brown tide in the sea off the coast of Yeosu South Province of Jeolla, and a big threat to the ecosystem because of intense greenish water at the mouth of Nakdong River. Red tide and green tide are natural phenomena of change that have been reported since the ’80s. In 20 years since, the reddish and greenish phenomena of water 2001 are diffusing broadly in a frightening speed. As much, it is a warning that nature is going more and more into disease rapidly, for all the benefits that man owes such as things to eat, things to drink and things to breathe.
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The sea farmers in the blue belt area of the South Sea are helpless out of unexpected damage from disturbances of the elements. In the meantime, most other people in other areas just gain their knowledge of red tide and green tide, but have no special activity or determination to prevent environmental contamination.
Only a minority or groups who are concerned for nature appeal against environmental pollution. Most of the people are living in their happy-go-lucky way of thinking it’s none of their own business, even though they see on TV the fishermen’s faces tearful out of damage of their properties overnight. One’s own house has their faucets running filtrated tap water. They get boiled rice, bread, vegetable, fruit and such other food on the table from stores full of goods....
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Even though the mass media reports day after day ‘the more time passes, the more pollution happens,’ common people have little difficulty in their breathing.... In such a condition, they have little distinct inconveniences in their daily living. So using various living substances such as kitchen detergents and bathroom detergents that are considered necessary in their daily food clothing and shelter, they tend to use them without thinking where the discharged sewage and waste water after use would go and what grim results might come near to them.
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Our country has a large population for its area. It is one of the most densely-populated countries in the world. Upon this property, damaged nature and environmental pollution are unavoidable.
Even those less densely-populated and less naturally-damaged countries consider ‘environmental pollution’ seriously and see about preventives.
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A few years ago, environmental groups once worked hard to popularize the formula that one doesn’t use shampoo but use natural soap while washing their hair, and drops vinegar in water while rinsing their hair. Frankly speaking, washing with good-quality shampoo and rinsing with aromatic rinse rather than with soap is better for hair smell and smoother for hair line. The statement ‘Hair line gets smooth in a month or two’ is not completely suitable. Still remaining is the stiffness of hair line even after a year or two (in my personal experience).
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What is important is, the persons who washed their hair with natural soap are still healthy when they are older, as compared with those who used shampoo and rinse. More important one is, if and only if we take initiative practice for the wellbeing of posterity even if we don’t feel like wishing our hair with natural soap, then our nature can stand to remain or survive.
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Still the same, most of the people looks upon environmental pollution and its damage as none of their business. But in the future, there will be more frequent times where the folks who used to be arrogant before the benefits that they owe to nature feel bitterness over the disasters their nature repay them with in kind for its losses.
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The worldwide have made one dash after another at developing under the fantasy that only ‘development and progress’ would make man’s life abundant. Environmental pollution showed up due to adverse effects of development. And so restoration movement of exploited nature, wounded nature, has been going on since the 70s~80s.
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For example, the streams in the city were smelly and corrupt with daily waste water, and were looked upon as a mere habitat of mosquitoes and harmful insects. It is now used as parking lots, after covering construction of the streams for an increasing number of cars.
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On the other hand, the streams that lost its original function through the covering of asphalt and cement over offered not only roads and parking lots. But it also offered some dysfunctions to urban ecosystem. It is not easy to tell which the dysfunctions to ecosystem are, but various problems that wasn’t brought up at the time of covering over the streams came out. Subsequently, they are uncovering the covered roads and parking lots under construction at some places, so that they may restore things to original (refer to Cheonggye Stream Restoration Project).
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In the case of the stream water within the city are smelly, decaying and mosquito-originating, losses after covering of the streams grow bigger than the gains when considered on long-term basis, and so that is why they restore things to original. Some cases in foreign countries have shown, they destruct even huge dams made with big money big manpower and big time so that they try to regain the rivers’ original flowing.
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Summer in 1977, the area Seoul Metropolitan area had a enormous damage of heavy rain especially around Anyang. So far, nothing has been able to stop the waterspout down from sky. The citizens in the neighborhood of Anyang stream suffered the most. One of the reasons is because the authorities narrowed the stream bed artificially by making banks along the Anyang Stream according to their ‘Urban Development Plan.’ Our country lives in the topographical features in which drought and flood take turns.
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Out of near-sighted thinking that in ordinary times the ‘spacious idle land’ looking as if ‘it were broadly neglected without being used’ is too wasteful and uneconomic, they tend to make banks to narrow the river bed, so that they use the rest of it artificially and arbitrarily according to the concerned city’s planning of development, we can see easily.
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This kind of administrative fallacy is an aftereffect of city development that they have made in no recognition of natural environment. If you make an arrangement by making banks along the river bed that was looked upon as a wasteland in ordinary times, you might feel like you have some extra plot of land and are using the ground very usefully for urban development. However, you cannot deny that by the time of a big flood in just decades, you might suffer an occasion as in Anyang town. (For information, in comparison between highest and lowest quantity of flow, Han River is 1:590, Nakdong River is 1:360, Seine River is 1:10 and Rhine River is 1:30.) Our country lives in the natural environment that is not easy to control water resources as against other countries. In this sense, it is dangerous to ignore the natural environment of the Korean Peninsula and to blindly imitate other countries’ policies.
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Modern environmental pollution has been a cause of a lot of diseases. As a solution, modern time demands a lot of dependence upon artificial remedies. Advanced countries have seen an increasing appearance of a thing called ‘alternative medicine.’ Most of artificial remedies made by man have side effects happening at an unexpected part the body if taken for long (even if not antibiotics). Recent days, reviewed in medical circles are ‘folk remedy’ ‘fresh-oriented diet’ and ‘natural therapy,’ which were previously ignored.
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Each individual body is but a little different in attribute person by person. Dependence upon the same old stereo-typed medicines prescribed by clinics gets to be either cured or not cured. And so is cancer. When cancer cells pervade in the same proportion over the whole bodies of patients, the same treatment can end in either some patients dying or some patients surviving.
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Not different are natural therapy or diet. Even among persons who got discharged with a death sentence, some are brought back to life but some die away, through fresh-food-oriented diet or other folk remedies. In the past, we have been given the medicine with a tendency to ignore some ‘vital force’ of human bodies’ own, ‘self-purifying effect’ or ‘self-restoring effect.” And yet a human body has vitality in its cells themselves and so does nature have an amazing vital force and self-purifying effect.
Modern medicine likewise is turning its eyes back to this fact.
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Speaking of my case, I had type-I diabetes(insulin-dependent, age 17) since right after suicide attempt through the poison RH-787 in 1977, but also had my various internal organs’ functions breaking down and dying away. Diabetes alone, I have a very bad fluctuation between high and low blood sugars as against other diabetes.
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I had an awful suffering due to my feet from 1991 to 95. I did not move intensely nor did anything but walk in carefully-chosen shoes. Even so, while deep into walking, I happened to blisters on toes or heels.... The next day when I resumed walking again, I would have the yesterday’s blisters breaking. And the rips on broken blisters got bigger.... 4 years of suffering on account of feet, I carried disinfectant, bandage, antibiotic ointment, antibiotic injection solution anywhere along, so that I could give an local injection on my injured spot.
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In those days, there was no way I could help it, whenever I got blood on their slippers due to my feet injury when I go to another house or church. What I came up with then was walk on my front feet with heels up.
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As you might have done it, even one or two minutes is hard to walk at first. A certain time by and by, I walked on forefeet whether it was home or near. Our usual distance at a time in daily life is more or less 30 minutes. 5 minutes’ walk and 1~2 minutes’ rest, and then resume.... Thanks to this repeated training, the hurts on the feet that suffered for 4 years without leg muscles easily relieved(?) began to heal up in a few months. My right big toe nail in those days fell off 5 times, yet it has turned up normally. My left big toe nail fell off 8~10 times, yet by now it turns up, if deformed, tinily and slantwise.
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These days not differently, if I walk longer in shoes that are inconvenient even a little, my feet get blisters and my left foot toes are inclined to fall off. Every this happening, I turn on music and dance lightly with heels up in the house. Or I practice the walking on forefeet for about 20~30 minutes. (This part of my life up to October 2005, afterwards I’ve been in foot treatment still now May 2007 since the fall-down October) Upon my long experience, if you find shoes that are real convenient for your feet, buy beforehand some pairs of shoes at once, I’d like to suggest.
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Around 18~20 years from insulin administration, I suffered from too chilly toothache. Especially in winter below minus 5 degrees and at that in the evening or morning when I got back from walking outside, my teeth were so painfully sore that I would be compelled to suffer for over 30 minutes. Around then on, from mid October to April next year where it goes below minus 15 degrees on usual mornings, I had a habituation to mask wearing. I wore change-color or dark glasses on the eyes (essential for eye protection) and a mask on the mouth. So it is natural that the gazes towards me in seminaries and ministers circles were not very good.
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Whenever I suffered from foot pain for every once some years, also whenever I wanted to weep in achingly cold teeth after a constitutional walk outside in winter, I had no occasion of being helped by others’ wisdom. I thought by myself. I agonized by myself. And I practiced by myself. The solutions may be a little too easy and simple. But any book, any various health-related TV program or any diabetes clinic in hospitals for diabetics doesn’t give us advice.
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In fact, it may have been solved just simply, come to know of it. But it wasn’t into hands until I suffered and suffered in real blood and sweat for about 3~4 years. Many among diabetics are still suffering the same symptoms as I have. The more diabetic or the more progressive chronic disease it is, the more important it is to develop how the person oneself lives out along by figuring out circumstances, attitude and constitution as a patient on top of the theories book and hospital taught.
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As long as one is afflicted with diabetes over a long period, his skin grows so much thinner and weaker. According as his diabetic history piles up, he may be troubled with skin scabies. Once he scratches, he has to scratch and scratch to blood to be alleviated.... At last he ends up in hospital. It is common sense that there he receives remedies and prescription like ointment from the doctor.
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The itching symptom that troubles diabetes isn’t solved by ointment alone. The fundamental cause of the itch is the stimulus on the skin and the failure of the skin moisture retentiveness. Especially inside where one has direct heating through heater or stove rather than indirect in winter, the itchiness goes worse. The drier inside, the drier the skin gets. The crumblier the skin gets, the worse itchy symptom goes.
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In my case, as a solution to solve itchiness, I bathe once a day lightly. When I bathe, I keep off using soap if possible while bathing. At the end of bath, I put on oil over the body before wiping water with towel. When the skin is badly dry, I make it a practice to wear drugstore-sold Vaseline on top a little and give it a massage. Then, most of itchy symptom can be solved.
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The person myself don’t have atopic dermatitis. But the folks who suffer from atopic dermatitis are similar. The colder season comes, the warmer water you must practice taking a bath or shower with. Only, you should avoid if possible soap when you take a bath or shower, and instead make a kind of flour lotion with a bubble-beater. Put it over your body instead of soap. Then rinse it off with warm water in a sincere manner.
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Within the flour is an amazing effects of cleansing and nourishing. If one’s skin is dry-type, or if humidity in the air lowers down in fall and winter, you may add some oil to the flour lotion. How much you put in oil depends on how your skin condition is. In this way, make your own secrete health formula fit for your constitution. (Without shampoo, rinse, shower cleaner, soap or any, you can have your skin smooth and shining bright.)
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As for the persons who suffer due to sensitive response to any minute stimulus on their skin of diabetes and atopic dermatitis, it is essentially required to ‘keep no stimulus and retain their moderate water’ for their skin protection. So those concerned, please see to the above-mentioned method of bathing.
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My way of such living is “a part of wisdom through which I may tenaciously subsist my life in the nature God the Creator endowed man with,” in which belief I live on.
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Now, let me conclude.
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‘Hikmah’ in Hebrew is often translated into ‘Wisdom.’ This ‘hikmah’ makes a human as the owner of the cosmos, and makes a human know the existent cosmos’s and and accommodate to them.
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Proverbs writers try to explain their knowledge about God through secular concerns, through humans’ ultimate concerns and through connection with universal experience. But then the world order they themselves figured out is thorough and thorough religious.
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God entrusted human beings with the administration of the world He created. Human beings are commanded to bear their God-given projects responsibly before God and to govern the world they live. In the commandment lies a reciprocal implication of ‘governing and responsibility.’
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Jesus’ dying on the cross is, in other words, the sacrifice to make peace between God and man, man and man and man and nature.
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As created beings, man “must live within creator’s good order,” which is Israelite wise men’s awakening, wisdom, and education they taught their posterity. Also by emphasizing how weak and humble being man is as compared to God the Almighty, they tried to say to the descendants, “Who oversees man’s life and death is the only God alone.”
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That is, they emphasized fearing God is the beginning of Wisdom (Proverbs 1:7, 9:10).
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Bible tells us, for His people who struggle in anguish, feel anxious, and wish to escape in the middle of their lives and yet who must live perseveringly - the agonized who bear their full life tasks and the helpless who may be at a loss without God’s help - Yahweh God acts in His history. In the Bible, through their wisdom of experiences, Israelite wise men awaken the precious belief, “One, who is not true and sincere with his or her life, is not true and solemn with God, either.”
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Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Please take deeply to heart the saying of the Proverbs writer who saw the process of man knowing themselves as ‘wisdom’
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Me and everybody, let us live ‘the life as a wise person’ that the Proverbs says!
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“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10)
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