29.4.18

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 10:6-7

Blessings are on the head of the righteous,
But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
The memory of the righteous is blessed,
But the name of the wicked will rot.

Proverbs 10:6-7 (NKJV).

Life is not without struggles, whether you are in allegiance with God or still living in an unrepentant rebellion. The difference is in what significance those struggles play in your life, and thus how you will be remembered by those who hear tails of your exploits.

For the righteous, struggles are part of the path towards incremental refinement. Temptation is the warning that there is an area of weakness, a warning sign for an avenue for sin to manifest. This weakness is never going to go away completely because we are imperfect beings, and despite our efforts to convince ourselves otherwise, we can't conquer the desires of the flesh without help.

That's where the biggest contrast between the righteous and the wicked comes from, where we place faith. The righteous place their faith in God, in Jesus Christ, as their savior. The wicked place it in themselves, or some other temporal being of significantly more finite power. These beliefs then affect behavior, in the same way that placing a colored lens over a light will make it produce that color of light.

For the righteous, struggles are a stop along the way to a different destination, but for the wicked, the struggles end up defining them, being the end of their journey, because they put their faith in power which denies reality instead of aligns with it. The wicked see the struggle as something to avoid, and in so doing, they will not generate the strength, the inertia, to break through to the "other side".

As an example, if you have small children, they try your patience on a regular basis. They are difficult little solipsists who do not understand reality and will demand that you bend every rule in existence to keep them happy.

The wicked would rather just kill the child, or prevent its conception, and avoid the difficulty altogether because raising a child would distract them from more important achievements in this life. They're not wrong in that children do cost time and money which could otherwise be spent on whatever your heart desired, but it's a short-sighted and myopic view of existence.

Hedonism, by any other name, would still be just as selfish.

This also explains why the wicked are so often surrounded by death. Recently a child was left to die by medical professionals who refused to give the child back to the parents who had secured a means to try and treat their child. They weren't even allowed to try and fight to keep their child alive, they were told that they needed to just let him die and then move on.

Pray tell, how can anything else that comes from the mouth of someone who says that ever be heard? If someone has just told you that you have to accept death, that you cannot struggle, that you cannot expend resources as you see fit, but that you must submit to their higher authority and rule? These folks speak of "freedom" and "empowerment", and yet they must control and micromanage the lives of others to accomplish their goals.

Does it then make sense why the "mouth of the wicked" would be "covered by violence" if what they do and what they say to not match? Their words don't matter in contrast with their actions.

You see, the wicked want to be God. They mimic the relationship dynamics through laws and social manipulation in believing that if they can wrest control over someone else's life, then perhaps they can even one day overturn God's sovereignty over their own existence.

It's that very power they wield which ends up destroying them, because they keep gathering until it overcomes them. There is no point at which "ok I am close enough" ever crosses their mind, it's an all-or-nothing pursuit to become infinite.

This is why struggle refines the righteous and defines the wicked, both now and on into the future, because the "test of time" only makes the disparity all the more clear in hindsight.

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