A foolish woman is clamorous;
She is simple, and knows nothing.
For she sits at the door of her house,
On a seat by the highest places of the city,
To call to those who pass by,
Who go straight on their way:
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here”;
And as for him who lacks understanding, she says to him,
“Stolen water is sweet,
And bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
But he does not know that the dead are there,
That her guests are in the depths of hell.
Proverbs 9:13-18 (NKJV).
If you've ever been to a party or political event, or perhaps just have a social media account, you can easily bear witness to some of the most self-destructive behaviors that men and women subject themselves to, and try to justify, in the process of denying God's designs in this world.
Time and again, the Bible extols the different virtues and follies of men and women. Each has a distinctive role in relation to each other and in relation to the remainder of creation, and each of them received a different prescription for the state they would find themselves in because of their sin.
Yet despite this difference, our modern culture tries to blend the two into androgyny and turn God's curses into virtues, evil into good.
Note that nothing the "foolish woman" does is compulsory. Her hands are not forced, she's not being put out on the street, she's simply bored and stupid, looking to create drama and excitement by snaring ignorant men who happen to pass by. These men are also just as bored and stupid, thinking that partaking in adultery is going to be beneficial to them in any way.
At no point is anyone forced in this entire situation. Everyone is willingly participating in their own destruction, presuming that "they know best" and that the choices they are making are sufficiently well thought out. They are "leaning on their own understanding", and will bear the full responsibility for the decisions they have acted out on.
Much ado has been made in our modern culture about the dynamic of compulsion, about victims, about oppressors, about abuses, and yet all of it is carefully crafted in such a way that, while everyone is apparently harming everyone else, nobody is really responsible for anything at all.
Whether genetics, your parents, your school, what someone did, what someone said, what someone believes, the list of reasons as to why one is absolved of any individual responsibility is long and growing by the day, the more fantastical the more enthusiasm will be found in adding it.
But here's the thing: we're just doing it to ourselves.
Nobody is forcing us to sin.
Nobody can force us to sin, and if hypothetically killed for refusing, God is not ignorant as to whose glory you were proclaiming in your dying breath, but that's another topic altogether.
On top of this, how men and women sin, the material or temporal nature of our sin, is different, and that is seen back in Genesis if you need to understand the nature of specifically how men and women failed from the beginning and have continued to fail to this day. While all have sinned and fallen short, in one fashion or another, we always make decisions in the context of who we are and what our place is in reality.
The circumstances were real, and so were our choices and the actions that flowed from them.
While both the "foolish woman" and the "ignorant man" sin, the nature of their sin is different, and the material consequences for each of them would be different as well. The motivations may be simplified to the same dynamic, but each of them is playing a different role.
So why the focus on the differences? Why focus on individual responsibilities?
Because teaching your sons and daughters how to avoid being the foolish woman or the ignorant man is going to require different lessons for each of them. The temptations they will face will be different, and trying to teach a boy not to be a foolish woman or a girl not to be an ignorant man should sound ridiculous but is what is put forth as "natural" in our "post-gender" society, as part of sustaining the various narratives regarding victims and oppressors.
Nowadays, you're not supposed to teach your daughters to be lovely, and your sons to be respectable, to teach your daughters to be chaste, and your sons to recognize empty flattery. Teaching different things is viewed as discriminatory, instead of just being accurate and pertinent.
But this will end only in death, and we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.
Thus is why turning to God, relying on genuine wisdom, is so important. Having that reconciled relationship is so critical to moving forward in this life, because on our own, trusting only our own instincts, we'd be hopelessly lost.
Learn who you are, what God designed you to be, the role God intended for you to fulfill, and embrace it. You'll need God's help, but even wanting to change is signs that God is already working in your heart on your behalf. If you do not resist that work and your eyes will be opened to the truth.
Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts
20.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 8:32-36
“Now therefore, listen to me, my children,
For blessed are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
And do not disdain it.
Blessed is the man who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the Lord;
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul;
All those who hate me love death.”
Proverbs 8:32-36 (NKJV).
Blessed are those who find wisdom and heed it, but those who hate wisdom love death.
Without objective truths existing, this type of passage in scripture becomes nonsensical. If objective truth, truth which is not contingent from our perspective, does not exist, then extolling a particular lifestyle or set of behaviors simply doesn't work.
For example, look at adultery. If adultery is always a bad idea, then it's always wise to avoid adultery. If it's only a bad idea because people aren't good at "getting away with it", then it's only wise to avoid adultery if you aren't good at "getting away with it". It changes the connotation of "wisdom" from being universally applicable to only being conditionally applicable.
This is why it's a "cop-out" if someone ever claims that debating proverbs can't be done, because the philosophical foundation of such writings requires objective truth to exist. The ideas presented are done so universally, and so if the tenet put forth is not universal, you've got an argument that the wisdom being shared is not all that wise after all, or perhaps is at best conditionally wise.
The dynamic plays out in both the temporal and eternal frames as well, in that if sin is only physical, only material, then regardless of what you do in this life, your eternal destiny is likely to be unaffected. If sin carries an eternal burden, then even if you don't face consequences in this life, you might in the next, so especially if you're going to be reincarnated based on how you lived this life, you should adjust your behavior even if you can't fully comprehend all the possible consequences.
What's sad is that, barring the reincarnation aspect, this is how we should teach discipline to children. A child is not always going to understand the full measure of consequences, but their behavior still needs to be guided, and we see this when they disobey their parents and cite only the known consequences as being "handled", them then expressing exasperation that there were further consequences they hadn't been told of which may have swayed their opinion in one fashion or another.
God, throughout scripture, prescribes specific behaviors and practices without always really explaining why. From a logical standpoint, we could deduce why there is no logical inconsistency given that God is good, but emotionally we "just don't like it."
It's the emotional need for more information, to feel like we're participating in the process, to by any means necessary take some credit for the outcomes we experience that drives us to declaring the most illogical things about truth.
That's how those who hate wisdom can love death, not because of some logical argument, but out of the emotional commitment to the desire to be responsible for the entirety of one's fate, of one's future, of us wanting to be God and understanding everything. Those who hate wisdom, who hate a "natural order", or order at all, are going to be drawn by chaos, by destruction, by death.
It's easy to see this in the current social climate with regard to abortion. Never mind that "not having sex" is 100% effective at preventing conception from occurring in the first place, we cannot deny the hedonistic pleasure pursuit, so instead of taking responsibility, we've instead made it a moral imperative that a woman have the freedom to kill her offspring before they've been born.
Try to suggest abstinence? Marriage? Personal responsibility? All of these things are wise, they either provide a control to prevent or a circumstance to appropriately manifest that which people desire from hedonistic pursuits, but instead of that we'll just make it "legal" and "socially acceptable" to kill unborn children and pretend that there is no other choice available.
In fact, if you do suggest these things and anybody is really paying attention, you'll be faced with mountains of hate for suggesting personal responsibility as the proper path forward, and it's not just about sexual activities either, but branches out into political and financial topics as well.
People don't like being told that they are responsible for the bad outcomes in their life in addition to the good outcomes. We just want to take credit for the good and blame someone else for the bad, all while trying to convince ourselves and others that we are god and the universe is just playing "hard to get."
Listen to wisdom. Appreciate the coherence in its universality. Enjoy a life in alignment with God's designs instead of defining yourself through antagonism.
For blessed are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
And do not disdain it.
Blessed is the man who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the Lord;
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul;
All those who hate me love death.”
Proverbs 8:32-36 (NKJV).
Blessed are those who find wisdom and heed it, but those who hate wisdom love death.
Without objective truths existing, this type of passage in scripture becomes nonsensical. If objective truth, truth which is not contingent from our perspective, does not exist, then extolling a particular lifestyle or set of behaviors simply doesn't work.
For example, look at adultery. If adultery is always a bad idea, then it's always wise to avoid adultery. If it's only a bad idea because people aren't good at "getting away with it", then it's only wise to avoid adultery if you aren't good at "getting away with it". It changes the connotation of "wisdom" from being universally applicable to only being conditionally applicable.
This is why it's a "cop-out" if someone ever claims that debating proverbs can't be done, because the philosophical foundation of such writings requires objective truth to exist. The ideas presented are done so universally, and so if the tenet put forth is not universal, you've got an argument that the wisdom being shared is not all that wise after all, or perhaps is at best conditionally wise.
The dynamic plays out in both the temporal and eternal frames as well, in that if sin is only physical, only material, then regardless of what you do in this life, your eternal destiny is likely to be unaffected. If sin carries an eternal burden, then even if you don't face consequences in this life, you might in the next, so especially if you're going to be reincarnated based on how you lived this life, you should adjust your behavior even if you can't fully comprehend all the possible consequences.
What's sad is that, barring the reincarnation aspect, this is how we should teach discipline to children. A child is not always going to understand the full measure of consequences, but their behavior still needs to be guided, and we see this when they disobey their parents and cite only the known consequences as being "handled", them then expressing exasperation that there were further consequences they hadn't been told of which may have swayed their opinion in one fashion or another.
God, throughout scripture, prescribes specific behaviors and practices without always really explaining why. From a logical standpoint, we could deduce why there is no logical inconsistency given that God is good, but emotionally we "just don't like it."
It's the emotional need for more information, to feel like we're participating in the process, to by any means necessary take some credit for the outcomes we experience that drives us to declaring the most illogical things about truth.
That's how those who hate wisdom can love death, not because of some logical argument, but out of the emotional commitment to the desire to be responsible for the entirety of one's fate, of one's future, of us wanting to be God and understanding everything. Those who hate wisdom, who hate a "natural order", or order at all, are going to be drawn by chaos, by destruction, by death.
It's easy to see this in the current social climate with regard to abortion. Never mind that "not having sex" is 100% effective at preventing conception from occurring in the first place, we cannot deny the hedonistic pleasure pursuit, so instead of taking responsibility, we've instead made it a moral imperative that a woman have the freedom to kill her offspring before they've been born.
Try to suggest abstinence? Marriage? Personal responsibility? All of these things are wise, they either provide a control to prevent or a circumstance to appropriately manifest that which people desire from hedonistic pursuits, but instead of that we'll just make it "legal" and "socially acceptable" to kill unborn children and pretend that there is no other choice available.
In fact, if you do suggest these things and anybody is really paying attention, you'll be faced with mountains of hate for suggesting personal responsibility as the proper path forward, and it's not just about sexual activities either, but branches out into political and financial topics as well.
People don't like being told that they are responsible for the bad outcomes in their life in addition to the good outcomes. We just want to take credit for the good and blame someone else for the bad, all while trying to convince ourselves and others that we are god and the universe is just playing "hard to get."
Listen to wisdom. Appreciate the coherence in its universality. Enjoy a life in alignment with God's designs instead of defining yourself through antagonism.
26.3.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 3:19-20
The Lord by wisdom founded the earth;
By understanding He established the heavens;
By His knowledge the depths were broken up,
And clouds drop down the dew.
Proverbs 3:19-20 (NKJV).
It can be easy to forget that the Bible wasn't written by a single person in a singular effort, but that it is instead a collection of writings from various authors over a rather long period of time. The reason that I bring this up is that this little passage appears to be a non-sequitur of sorts, and while a bit jarring, squeezed right in between two longer writings on the value of wisdom itself, that's probably just the order that it was recorded.
We can still glean practical information from even a short passage like this.
The most obvious takeaway to me is that the design and operation of this world is not an accident. It was not the product of mere chance, and while the naturalistic probability of any certain event may be calculated, when you start to compute the odds of everything being just the way that it is, given all that it could be, and even on a naturalistic standpoint our existence becomes miraculous.
There is order in the world despite the regular appearance of chaos, and there is a reason that God arranged things in the order what we discover them to be in. Of great importance I think is noting that this was written long after The Fall. It is common to presume that the "curse of sin" extended from humanity to all of creation, but that ignores what scripture actually states.
This world, this reality, was never designed to last forever. God wasn't caught off guard by Adam and Eve's sin, nor does scripture indicate that the consequence for sin required God to create that which did not already exist, but that God would no longer protect humanity from that which God had already created, that humanity would have to struggle instead of being able to enjoy the benefits of being in direct relationship with God.
That pattern would be repeated by Israel, where God would remove protection from them when they disobeyed to motivate them to correct their behavior and return to God.
It is rather difficult to explain in what ways Adam and Eve would have been "perfect" and yet account for their behavior. The more perfect God's creation must be, the less intelligent, wise, or understanding Adam and Eve need to have been to explain why they gave it all up after such a simple deceit, and without any real coercion at all. This paradox is just one of the reasons that the assertion creation was "perfect" in any sense, instead of just "very good", is something I don't support.
When you parse the language back in Genesis, the original word "towb" most closely translates to "beautiful", and when you look across all the times it's used in the Old Testament, the connotation of perfect, of lacking flaws, does make sense when you understand that it is talking about beauty and not a moral or physical perfection.
Creation would also respond to God's interactions exactly as God intended, not just because God was acting, but because the systems were designed to work in a specific fashion and God's use of those systems as intended only speaks to the quality of the design.
That the natural world could exist and operate without constant intervention is not a denigration of God, in that it is always harder to create a system which can operate independently and without constant maintenance. Look at the difficulty in raising a child to become a "healthy" or "well-adjusted" adult.
This also does not exclude God from continuing to interact, to shape, to guide, but it would mean that God wouldn't be necessary to explain every interaction at every level of creation. God may be the root explanation for all the causes that produce an effect. Salt and chlorine can combine because of their electron patterns to make salt, and they can do so because God designed it that way, not because God wanted to combine them in that moment.
Reflect on this passage in that it is giving God credit for both the design and for how that design works, and to use that as part of the necessary humbling of oneself in order to pursue further knowledge.
When we are tempted to believe that we know more than God, we have a nearly infinite number of examples of things that we do not yet really understand, and yet God not only understood, but beautifully designed all of it.
I don't have to denigrate myself to understand how God's intellect so greatly exceeds anything I am capable of, and why understanding that is a necessary prerequisite for genuine humility.
Put differently, it is not that I know so little, as much as God knows so much more than I could ever imagine.
By understanding He established the heavens;
By His knowledge the depths were broken up,
And clouds drop down the dew.
Proverbs 3:19-20 (NKJV).
It can be easy to forget that the Bible wasn't written by a single person in a singular effort, but that it is instead a collection of writings from various authors over a rather long period of time. The reason that I bring this up is that this little passage appears to be a non-sequitur of sorts, and while a bit jarring, squeezed right in between two longer writings on the value of wisdom itself, that's probably just the order that it was recorded.
We can still glean practical information from even a short passage like this.
The most obvious takeaway to me is that the design and operation of this world is not an accident. It was not the product of mere chance, and while the naturalistic probability of any certain event may be calculated, when you start to compute the odds of everything being just the way that it is, given all that it could be, and even on a naturalistic standpoint our existence becomes miraculous.
There is order in the world despite the regular appearance of chaos, and there is a reason that God arranged things in the order what we discover them to be in. Of great importance I think is noting that this was written long after The Fall. It is common to presume that the "curse of sin" extended from humanity to all of creation, but that ignores what scripture actually states.
This world, this reality, was never designed to last forever. God wasn't caught off guard by Adam and Eve's sin, nor does scripture indicate that the consequence for sin required God to create that which did not already exist, but that God would no longer protect humanity from that which God had already created, that humanity would have to struggle instead of being able to enjoy the benefits of being in direct relationship with God.
That pattern would be repeated by Israel, where God would remove protection from them when they disobeyed to motivate them to correct their behavior and return to God.
It is rather difficult to explain in what ways Adam and Eve would have been "perfect" and yet account for their behavior. The more perfect God's creation must be, the less intelligent, wise, or understanding Adam and Eve need to have been to explain why they gave it all up after such a simple deceit, and without any real coercion at all. This paradox is just one of the reasons that the assertion creation was "perfect" in any sense, instead of just "very good", is something I don't support.
When you parse the language back in Genesis, the original word "towb" most closely translates to "beautiful", and when you look across all the times it's used in the Old Testament, the connotation of perfect, of lacking flaws, does make sense when you understand that it is talking about beauty and not a moral or physical perfection.
Creation would also respond to God's interactions exactly as God intended, not just because God was acting, but because the systems were designed to work in a specific fashion and God's use of those systems as intended only speaks to the quality of the design.
That the natural world could exist and operate without constant intervention is not a denigration of God, in that it is always harder to create a system which can operate independently and without constant maintenance. Look at the difficulty in raising a child to become a "healthy" or "well-adjusted" adult.
This also does not exclude God from continuing to interact, to shape, to guide, but it would mean that God wouldn't be necessary to explain every interaction at every level of creation. God may be the root explanation for all the causes that produce an effect. Salt and chlorine can combine because of their electron patterns to make salt, and they can do so because God designed it that way, not because God wanted to combine them in that moment.
Reflect on this passage in that it is giving God credit for both the design and for how that design works, and to use that as part of the necessary humbling of oneself in order to pursue further knowledge.
When we are tempted to believe that we know more than God, we have a nearly infinite number of examples of things that we do not yet really understand, and yet God not only understood, but beautifully designed all of it.
I don't have to denigrate myself to understand how God's intellect so greatly exceeds anything I am capable of, and why understanding that is a necessary prerequisite for genuine humility.
Put differently, it is not that I know so little, as much as God knows so much more than I could ever imagine.
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