Second Sunday of Lent: Study and Recklessness

No sooner has Perception finished speaking than his wife, Dame Study, chastises him for giving advice to Will:

            “How very wise you are,” she said, “Showing such wisdom

            To any fool or flatterer or crazy folk.”

            Then she said, “Christ said not to cast your pearls

            Among the swine who have their hawthorns at will,

            They’ll only slobber on them—slop they prefer

            To all the precious jewels in any princely treasury.”

Knowledge is no use if your life is not virtuous as well, says Study, and she rails against those who pursue knowledge to find fame or fortune or power and have no time for the hungry outside their doors.  After Will asks her pardon and tells her he is searching for Dowel, Study directs him to her cousin Theology (Middle English “Clergie”) and his wife Scripture.  Theology tells Will that Dowel is to believe all the church teaches about the Incarnation of Christ and the Trinity, but Scripture, much as Study had, indicates to Theology that his teaching of Will will do no good, and she quotes a Latin proverb to illustrate why:  multi multa sciunt et seipsos nesciunt, many people know many things and yet do not know themselves.

Will is pained with her words, and soon falls asleep, entering into a dream within his dream.  There Fortune meets him with three young ladies, Desire-of-the-Flesh, Greed-of-the-Eyes, and Pride-of-Perfect-Living (cf. 1 John 2:16) who say they will help him make the most of life.  Old Age stands up and tells Will not to trust them, but his voice is quickly drowned out by a stronger one, that of Recklessness:

            “Sir Despair was kin to him, as some men had told me,

            For Recklessness in his foolishness spoke thus:

            “Whether to hell or heaven, I shall not go alone!”

Recklessness declares that there’s no reason to worry about salvation, because it’s all just a matter of God’s predestination and we have no say in it:  Aristotle was a wise man and they put him in hell, while King David was a murderer and they put him in heaven!  And furthermore, he says, there’s no reason to worry about theology and learning either:

            “I, Recklessness, have read records and books,

            And never, in faith, did I find, to tell the truth,

            Anywhere “theology” was commended from the mouth of Christ.”

Most theologians will tell you that simple faith is better anyway, says Recklessness.  Hearing these words, Will continues on in the company of Fortune’s ladies, abandoning the search for Dowel and valuing Theology’s advice at nothing.

At the beginning of this passus, as in the passus before, Will was confident that solving the mystery of Dowel would be just a matter of finding the right people to learn from.  And, in a sense, he was not wrong.  What he did not anticipate, however, was that when he found those right people—Study, Theology, Scripture—they would tell him that mental knowledge is not the only thing you have to learn to understand Dowel.  Study warns him of the dangers of seeking knowledge without love of neighbor, and Scripture wants to dismiss him because he does not know himself.  And both seem to have been quite right about Will’s not being ready, because, instead of taking up the challenge they offer him, he retreats into a deeper dream and the company of Recklessness and Fortune.

Recklessness may be a voice from the 1300s, but his arguments certainly have an all-too-familiar sound to them.  “Why does it matter how I act?  It’s all up to God anyway.”  “Jesus seems like a simple guy to me.  We don’t need all this complicated church and theology business.”  But those men who told Will that Recklessness was kin to Despair were certainly right.  Because what we’re really doing when we say things like that is giving up, giving up on the life God has called us to lead, giving up on the knowledge God wants to give us.  And like Recklessness, we have a knack for making it all very reasonable and convincing.  We take the truth that it is God who saves us and use it to support the lie that we don’t have to be transformed.  We take the truth that Christianity isn’t all about knowledge and use it to justify the sin of willful ignorance.  We all do this and things like it.  What can we say?  Recklessness is a charismatic guy and Study and Scripture seemed just so stern and judgmental.  Who wants to hang out with them?

“Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.  But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.  Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.”  (James 3:13-15)