Wisdom can be flipped

January 24, 2009

Today's Reading: Genesis 47-48 and Proverbs 9

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, have you ever wondered why the things are the way they are? Why is it that professional athletes make enormous salaries, and teachers do not? Why is it we pay for bottled water that is hardly different from that we can get free from the tap?

In short, we do we do the things we do, especially when they don’t really make sense when we think about them. Comedians have been getting paid for noticing things like this for years.

In some cases, it has just sort of happened like that, and we adapted. For example, do you know why a QWERTY keyboard is not in order? As it turns out, the first typewriters kept jamming when the letters were put in order, so scientist figured out a way to space the letters apart so that a user could type with fewer jams. Now that typewriters are all put history now, we still use this system, because we have all learned to type on QWERTYs.

However, what if things were different, and things that we take for granted were suddenly…flipped? Maybe all our laptops, netbooks, and computer keyboards should be changed to ABCDEF keyboards, or what about the way we eat corn on the cob? Sure, we normally hold it horizontally, but why not hold it vertically?

I think we all know who created the immutable laws of God, but things that aren’t under the stone tablet category are really just customs.

Like in today’s reading, when Israel lays hands on Joseph’s sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Apparently, he was supposed to lay his right hand on the oldest, but he didn’t. Joseph didn’t like the crossed arms, and when he tried to fix it, Israel kind of got riled.

So why didn’t Joseph like that? I guess it violates the law of primogeniture, or something. Still, who established that? I don’t think that is even mentioned until later in the Old Testament.

In other words, why not flip some stuff around? Why not make the one who sold his brother’s birthright the man that we cheer for later? Clearly God likes to just screw things up every once in a while, maybe just to keep things interesting.

In the reading of Proverbs, it says that Wisdom calls out saying “leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of understanding”. I can think of no simpler way of living than to cast aside every attitude that says: “we’ve always done it this way”.

Instead, do it some other way, just because it can be done in another way and there is nothing wrong with it! This makes following wisdom not a limiting thing, but a way of opening a world of possibilities.