The righteous will never be removed,
But the wicked will not inhabit the earth.
The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom,
But the perverse tongue will be cut out.
The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable,
But the mouth of the wicked what is perverse.
Proverbs 10:30-32 (NKJV).
Throughout scripture, there are declarations made which should not be taken at face value. There are times when the literal words are describing a metaphorical truth, and sometimes when the literal words are describing a literal truth.
This passage is speaking to a metaphorical truth, because let's face it, David came long after the flood and God had promised that he wouldn't wipe out humanity again because of their sin. The wicked inhabit the earth in the literal sense, so you can either take this as one of those nebulous "contradictions" in the Bible, or just realize that it's not speaking literally.
Usually the parts of the passage which are metaphors would give this away, but it's worth repeating.
Or would any assert that the lips of the righteous literally know what is acceptable? I'd love to hear that explained.
Really, lips reflect speech, which is itself called an "overflow of the heart" elsewhere in scripture. Metaphors, lots and lots of metaphors, so when folks start playing the "you have to take everything literally in the Bible" card, you should raise an eyebrow with suspicion because not even the Bible itself claims that.
Moving on, the metaphor here is regarding legacy and behavior. Those who are wicked will make choices that end their lives early, and not just that, but they'll boast of their intent while they're doing it. Wickedness is infatuated with death because God is life. If you're going to rebel against God, you need to be in contrast on important character attributes, and so if God loves life, cherishes it, creates it, then the wicked will, by definition, do the opposite.
We see this with the discussions on abortion. Since nobody can be expected to take responsibility for their choices, such as having unprotected sex, we must make the murder of conceived babies socially and morally acceptable.
Oh sure, the "rape, incest, life-of-mother" distraction gets drug out, but any time spent with the statistics and data show that the significant majority of abortions are about convenience, not about "protecting women", unless you look at it as "protecting women from their own poor choices."
We see this in discussions about political correctness, where the superficial morals of decency are perverted to serve the wicked in trying to cloak their true intent. Everyone is supposed to talk and behave in a certain way, not because it is good, but because it gives certain people leverage in the social arena.
The wicked don't understand "good" or "bad", they aren't making a conscious choice to reject actual "good", they simply perceive "good" as just another "evil". They don't see a comparison on a moral dimension, merely on a practical one, a materialistic mindset where their experiences, not the consequences that come of them, are held up as the real guidance for behavior.
We've heard it from people who will claim they know something is "wrong", but they "don't care". What they're really saying is that they don't think the grounding for "wrong" is real, but they don't want to be rude, so instead of explaining their disdain for the system, they make it sound like they are "above it all", pretending their aloof retorts are a showing of strength and resolve.
Eventually this talk will catch up with them though, in this life or the next. There will be consequences and there is such a thing as an objective measure of "good" and "bad". This is why, despite the superficial alignment to the appearance of "good deeds", in time the true heart of the wicked always comes out, and it is quite literally the job of the righteous to prevent it from being spread further.
Cutting out the tongue of the wicked might be literal, but it can also be metaphorical in the sense that, other than the death penalty, a common punishment for sin in historical Israel was exile. Shunning, kicking people out of society, leaving them to fend for themselves.
We see this dynamic resurface for Christianity, where a "brother" living in "unrepentant sin" is not to be kept in close fellowship with others in the church, but is instead to be ostracized because holiness is more important than preventing people from feeling lonely because they're unrepentant of sin.
This works the same way with removing pastors from the pulpit when they spread only lies. The righteous are to take action, not sit around waiting for God to move, and it's for this reason that Solomon always describes the wise, the righteous, in active fashion, and the wicked as reactive.
The wise and the righteous build towards the future, are refined by God in the process of sanctification.
The wicked have only the consequences of their choices to look forward to.
Is there any confusion still as to why only the righteous have hope for the future?
Showing posts with label Righteous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Righteous. Show all posts
12.6.18
Daily Bible Study - Proverbs 10:27-29
The fear of the Lord prolongs days,
But the years of the wicked will be shortened.
The hope of the righteous will be gladness,
But the expectation of the wicked will perish.
The way of the Lord is strength for the upright,
But destruction will come to the workers of iniquity.
Proverbs 10:27-29 (NKJV).
In a somewhat recent discussion a favored Christian Philosopher of mine, William Lane Craig, discussed the "Meaning of Life". A super-shortened version of his claim is that "without the supernatural, and therefore without God, life is ultimately meaningless, because the universe won't persist forever."
One of the other participants rejected this in favor of the "if you feel like your life has meaning, it does" argument, ignoring the practical reality that was serving as the context for WLC's claim.
In short, that it doesn't matter what happens outside one's life if what happens inside of it had meaning. Yet this view is essentially hedonistic in nature, betraying a childish understanding behind the concepts of "purpose" and "meaning".
If "right" and "wrong" do not objectively exist, then perception truly is reality, and there can be no coherent discussion about even things like "better" or "worse". You just "are" and it's up to you to supply subjective meaning because nothing external to you tangibly exists apart from your ability to perceive it. This is why, without at least the supernatural, all discussions of the meaning and purpose of life fall flat.
If our reality, our current circumstances the result of chance and objective truth does not exist, then there is no "good" or "bad". What you do, the consequences, exist only so far as you are required to perceive them, and they only impact others so far as they perceive them, so "good" is possible just by eliminating the perception of consequences.
Like someone overdosing on drugs.
This is an inherently wicked mindset, and why the passage discusses the disparity in behavior because, long before modern and postmodern philosophies found philosophical rationalization, the themes and premises had already existed in the human mind, they just needed a new coat of paint.
The fear of the Lord brings about respect for God's design of reality, and accepting the consequences that come from bad behavior. There is no accident that those who reject understanding of germs, of infections, of the consequences of their behavior so frequently die before those that do.
In the "Middle Ages", deaths from the "Black Plague" are almost mythical in nature, yet when you look at the numbers, a disproportional amount of deaths occurred among those with a lower intelligence, thus resulting in the average IQ of Europeans going up, not because they were smarter, but because only the smarter survived, even despite the lack of complete or correct understanding as to what caused the plague and how to avoid it.
The "hope of the righteous" is grounded in the idea that God rewards obedience, and the expectation of the wicked is that God won't punish disobedience. Can you see how, in a system designed by God where one's individual beliefs don't change the rules, the wicked who expect to escape the consequences of their choices would end up in such a bad state?
In both a literal and figurative sense, we cannot escape the consequences of our choices, and God set up this reality such that aligning with God aligns with the "rules of reality", and so that is why those in rebellion with God are so frequently challenging the "natural order" of things, so frequently trying to develop technology and laws to alleviate or eliminate the negative consequences from bad choices, so frequently trying to convince themselves that they have the power to re-write the "rules of reality".
Their hope is not in finding favor with God, but in replacing God with themselves. Their inevitable failure is always predictable, if not in the timing, the mechanisms. Evil always loses in the end, not because there's a bad hand dealt or a dice rolled, but because evil is literally fighting against God's design of reality, of existence.
Sin is, in many ways, just the label we apply to rebellion against God, who logically has every right to make recommendations as to the behavior of creatures which didn't deserve to exist in the first place. In turn, the wrath that is poured out due to the infinite ingratitude of those creatures who do not show God any respect or honor for the infinitely great gift of existence versus non-existence is terrifying, but understandeable.
Solomon is highlighting that where those who follow God have hope, those who do not have no hope, for they cannot ever succeed at doing anything but delaying their own perceptions. Consequences will come, one way or another, whether we like it or not.
And consequences scale with the sin. So learn from your own life, before it's too late, from your own failures that were not mortal in nature, lest you get caught up believing that when consequences do grow significantly in severity, you'll be able to escape them just as you think you escaped before.
You won't.
But the years of the wicked will be shortened.
The hope of the righteous will be gladness,
But the expectation of the wicked will perish.
The way of the Lord is strength for the upright,
But destruction will come to the workers of iniquity.
Proverbs 10:27-29 (NKJV).
In a somewhat recent discussion a favored Christian Philosopher of mine, William Lane Craig, discussed the "Meaning of Life". A super-shortened version of his claim is that "without the supernatural, and therefore without God, life is ultimately meaningless, because the universe won't persist forever."
One of the other participants rejected this in favor of the "if you feel like your life has meaning, it does" argument, ignoring the practical reality that was serving as the context for WLC's claim.
In short, that it doesn't matter what happens outside one's life if what happens inside of it had meaning. Yet this view is essentially hedonistic in nature, betraying a childish understanding behind the concepts of "purpose" and "meaning".
If "right" and "wrong" do not objectively exist, then perception truly is reality, and there can be no coherent discussion about even things like "better" or "worse". You just "are" and it's up to you to supply subjective meaning because nothing external to you tangibly exists apart from your ability to perceive it. This is why, without at least the supernatural, all discussions of the meaning and purpose of life fall flat.
If our reality, our current circumstances the result of chance and objective truth does not exist, then there is no "good" or "bad". What you do, the consequences, exist only so far as you are required to perceive them, and they only impact others so far as they perceive them, so "good" is possible just by eliminating the perception of consequences.
Like someone overdosing on drugs.
This is an inherently wicked mindset, and why the passage discusses the disparity in behavior because, long before modern and postmodern philosophies found philosophical rationalization, the themes and premises had already existed in the human mind, they just needed a new coat of paint.
The fear of the Lord brings about respect for God's design of reality, and accepting the consequences that come from bad behavior. There is no accident that those who reject understanding of germs, of infections, of the consequences of their behavior so frequently die before those that do.
In the "Middle Ages", deaths from the "Black Plague" are almost mythical in nature, yet when you look at the numbers, a disproportional amount of deaths occurred among those with a lower intelligence, thus resulting in the average IQ of Europeans going up, not because they were smarter, but because only the smarter survived, even despite the lack of complete or correct understanding as to what caused the plague and how to avoid it.
The "hope of the righteous" is grounded in the idea that God rewards obedience, and the expectation of the wicked is that God won't punish disobedience. Can you see how, in a system designed by God where one's individual beliefs don't change the rules, the wicked who expect to escape the consequences of their choices would end up in such a bad state?
In both a literal and figurative sense, we cannot escape the consequences of our choices, and God set up this reality such that aligning with God aligns with the "rules of reality", and so that is why those in rebellion with God are so frequently challenging the "natural order" of things, so frequently trying to develop technology and laws to alleviate or eliminate the negative consequences from bad choices, so frequently trying to convince themselves that they have the power to re-write the "rules of reality".
Their hope is not in finding favor with God, but in replacing God with themselves. Their inevitable failure is always predictable, if not in the timing, the mechanisms. Evil always loses in the end, not because there's a bad hand dealt or a dice rolled, but because evil is literally fighting against God's design of reality, of existence.
Sin is, in many ways, just the label we apply to rebellion against God, who logically has every right to make recommendations as to the behavior of creatures which didn't deserve to exist in the first place. In turn, the wrath that is poured out due to the infinite ingratitude of those creatures who do not show God any respect or honor for the infinitely great gift of existence versus non-existence is terrifying, but understandeable.
Solomon is highlighting that where those who follow God have hope, those who do not have no hope, for they cannot ever succeed at doing anything but delaying their own perceptions. Consequences will come, one way or another, whether we like it or not.
And consequences scale with the sin. So learn from your own life, before it's too late, from your own failures that were not mortal in nature, lest you get caught up believing that when consequences do grow significantly in severity, you'll be able to escape them just as you think you escaped before.
You won't.
1.6.18
Daily Bible Study - Proverbs 10:16
The labor of the righteous leads to life,
The wages of the wicked to sin.
Proverbs 10:16 (NKJV).
If you've ever known someone who worked hard to try and avoid actually working, then you are already familiar with the sentiment that Solomon seeks to share with us in this verse. Another manifestation might be, after someone has worked hard but not achieved the result they desired, still want some sort of credit for the efforts they put forth regardless.
It is possible to busy yourself and fill your life in such a fashion that you never have any rest, but the reward for your toil is not life but death.
I once chatted with a fellow about a pornography addiction and tools that can be put on a computer to help prevent being able to access such content on the internet. I was somewhat taken aback at the casual manner in which he indicated that he would just find a way to circumvent the mechanisms because his addiction was sufficiently strong.
His wages for such a work, to pursue poison for the mind, is sin.
Conversely, it is not easy to study the Bible. While at times we can be filled with a religious fervor, often we are distracted, tempted away by the concerns and opportunities of this life before us now. Yet if we struggle against those and pursue truth contained within scripture, we will find it and the reward will be life.
When it comes to salvation, this life is everlasting in the presence of God, but the Bible also contains truths that apply to the temporal world regarding wisdom, appropriate behaviors, and ideal paths to walk whilst still in the flesh.
For example, God forbids fornication, but doesn't spend a lot of time explaining the rather long list of reasons why that is an unwise and sinful act. We can see that some people expend considerable effort to fornicate in a maximally pleasurable manner, and since their desires are wicked, the results of their efforts is sin. Others who seek to avoid such interactions, are also having to work hard because we live in an openly sexual society where "everyone is doing it", and so the effort is not so much an active pursuit but ironically a resistance to the barrage of temptation and pressure.
It takes effort to sin or to avoid it, and so how we expend our energy, to what end we seek as well as the means by which we seek, all play a role in the circumstances of life. We do not sit idly by and sin is thrust upon us, at least not in the baseline experience. Even Adam and Eve had to eat of the fruit before their disobedience was complete.
Keep this in mind then, the next time you see someone "working hard", in that just because someone is not lazy or apathetic does not mean they are participating in a process of sanctification. Some are working hard towards their own destruction, whether they know it or not.
The wages of the wicked to sin.
Proverbs 10:16 (NKJV).
If you've ever known someone who worked hard to try and avoid actually working, then you are already familiar with the sentiment that Solomon seeks to share with us in this verse. Another manifestation might be, after someone has worked hard but not achieved the result they desired, still want some sort of credit for the efforts they put forth regardless.
It is possible to busy yourself and fill your life in such a fashion that you never have any rest, but the reward for your toil is not life but death.
I once chatted with a fellow about a pornography addiction and tools that can be put on a computer to help prevent being able to access such content on the internet. I was somewhat taken aback at the casual manner in which he indicated that he would just find a way to circumvent the mechanisms because his addiction was sufficiently strong.
His wages for such a work, to pursue poison for the mind, is sin.
Conversely, it is not easy to study the Bible. While at times we can be filled with a religious fervor, often we are distracted, tempted away by the concerns and opportunities of this life before us now. Yet if we struggle against those and pursue truth contained within scripture, we will find it and the reward will be life.
When it comes to salvation, this life is everlasting in the presence of God, but the Bible also contains truths that apply to the temporal world regarding wisdom, appropriate behaviors, and ideal paths to walk whilst still in the flesh.
For example, God forbids fornication, but doesn't spend a lot of time explaining the rather long list of reasons why that is an unwise and sinful act. We can see that some people expend considerable effort to fornicate in a maximally pleasurable manner, and since their desires are wicked, the results of their efforts is sin. Others who seek to avoid such interactions, are also having to work hard because we live in an openly sexual society where "everyone is doing it", and so the effort is not so much an active pursuit but ironically a resistance to the barrage of temptation and pressure.
It takes effort to sin or to avoid it, and so how we expend our energy, to what end we seek as well as the means by which we seek, all play a role in the circumstances of life. We do not sit idly by and sin is thrust upon us, at least not in the baseline experience. Even Adam and Eve had to eat of the fruit before their disobedience was complete.
Keep this in mind then, the next time you see someone "working hard", in that just because someone is not lazy or apathetic does not mean they are participating in a process of sanctification. Some are working hard towards their own destruction, whether they know it or not.
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