Do not envy the oppressor,
And choose none of his ways;
For the perverse person is an abomination to the Lord,
But His secret counsel is with the upright.
The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked,
But He blesses the home of the just.
Surely He scorns the scornful,
But gives grace to the humble.
The wise shall inherit glory,
But shame shall be the legacy of fools.
Proverbs 3:31-35 (NKJV).
This passage reminded me of the quote attributed to Mark Twain which goes "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
There are many ways to gain power in the material world, and when people have power over others the temptation is to exert that power to meet the ends and desires of whoever controls the power. Solomon starts us out by encouraging us not to be envious of those who use power to oppress.
You can't be an oppressor unless you have power, in the same way that an ant can't really oppress an elephant, let alone an entire herd of them.
It's natural, in reaction to oppression, to be tempted to mirror the oppressor, to not only seek to remove your bondage, but to chain them up and seek revenge of "equal measure" against them, to essentially become the oppressor yourself. This is what Solomon advises against.
Power attracts the corrupt, because we are born solipsistic, and will by our nature pursue any means by which that belief in our inherent deity can be confirmed. This is the heart of our "sin nature", in that to do any of that we must be first denying God the throne and constantly trying to fill the seat with anything else, whether ourselves or lesser demons who have made names for themselves in the various world religions.
I have no doubt that an "Allah" exists, or a "Shiva", or a "Jupiter", or a "Loki", and that they are finite spiritual beings which do wield power in this world as subordinates to the prince of this world. I have no doubt that humans in alignment with evil have been granted supernatural capability as a means of validating the "power" of those they serve.
I also know that many Christians can feel like God's power is almost never displayed in the same fashion, that there are many who would claim that "if God did X, then I would believe."
But the problem in that belief is akin to complaining that because the demons and lesser god-wannabe beings are making great sandcastles, that the God who created the sand is somehow denigrated, threatened, or overshadowed by what these finite creatures can accomplish with the sand that God created. Do you see the disparity in actual power being demonstrated?
To use another analogy, it's like complaining that the guy who brought the frozen water block that an ice sculptor then fashions into is "unnecessary", yet without his work, the ice sculptor can't do anything at all to manifest their desires.
It's this same dynamic wherein God is neither impressed or challenged by the smaller "miracles" and achievements of the fallen angels who rule this Earthly realm, nor why God would feel any need to offer a demonstration as a response, because anybody who is really paying attention, genuinely seeking truth, will discover this dynamic and adjust their loyalties to worship the one true God.
The perverse person will deny God's power in favor of that which glorifies themselves, and at any cost. There is no distinct course of actions, it's entirely about motivation and purpose, and those things are not always readily apparent.
Look at how the consequences of wisdom and foolishness are described as being in the future, not in front of us. In the short-term, it may very well appear that subscribing to "foolishness", acting on your own understanding and being wise to your own standards, produces a "good" result. The problem is that, even by chance, evil can find temporary success, and when empowered at all, evil can appear to be the "right choice".
The problem there is that "the end" has already been written. "Evil" loses, badly, it's not even a "fair fight". This is why God so regularly discourages revenge, not because seeking peace and justice in this life are not good things, but because the passion for revenge can distract you from glorifying God.
The temporary injustices we face may be corrected temporally by our hand, but they will all be judged between now and eternity, and even the secret deeds will be brought to light. Nobody escapes judgment, and the judge is a morally perfect being who cannot be in close relationship with any who do not share in that perfect holiness.
This is why the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf is so significant, so free, so undeserved, and so humbling. Even when we were in the midst of trying to replace God, a path of reconciliation, of eternal peace, was being cleared for us through the blood of Christ.
God favors those who glorify God, though not always by temporal means, and when you look at existence beyond the material, beyond the temporal and into the eternal, this makes sense, and provides sound reason for us to behave differently than those around us who may still be in rebellion with God.
We are not to pursue the same idols, to sacrifice to the fallen, the sinful, to repeat the patterns of depravity we see around us, even when they appear beneficial, for it gains us nothing. This does not mean that the specific actions we take are always going to be different, in that we are never to seek power or justice or responsibility or leadership or judgment with respect to temporal matters, as the oppressors do all of those things, but we are to pursue them to the glory of God.
We are purified not by our actions, but by the one whose glory we seek by those actions. God is capable, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to see that we are redeemed, cleansed from evil, our debts repaid. All the other gods are busy trying to deceive you into believing that any other path exists for salvation, in this life or the next. Their paths lead to destruction, to darkness, to eternal separation from God.
While we may not see the full effect of this in our temporal life, none will escape it in eternity. All paths do lead to God, to judgment day, but not all will have reconciled with God through the blood of Christ before their judgment begins, and no action on their part in this life to the glory of any but God will save them from damnation.
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