With her enticing speech she caused him to yield,
With her flattering lips she seduced him.
Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter,
Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks,
Till an arrow struck his liver.
As a bird hastens to the snare,
He did not know it would cost his life.
Now therefore, listen to me, my children;
Pay attention to the words of my mouth:
Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways,
Do not stray into her paths;
For she has cast down many wounded,
And all who were slain by her were strong men.
Her house is the way to hell,
Descending to the chambers of death.
Proverbs 7:21-27 (NKJV).
Depending on how we achieved it, the stronger, or smarter, we believe ourselves to be in this life, the easier it is to come to rely on our own capacity, our own strength, our own understanding. When the source of our competence has come entirely from within, this dynamic is exacerbated through what is called the "Dunning-Kruger effect."
In short, the phenomenon is described as "...a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is."
Remember back to the beginning of Proverbs, and to the beginning of wisdom, with the reasons on why genuine humility is required to pursue wisdom? Genuine humility requires an accurate view of oneself in the grand scheme of everything. The "youth" in this passage believes the empty words of the immoral woman, believes that he understands enough to make a good choice, and then commits to his decision without hesitation, not genuinely understanding what he had chosen till it was already "too late".
Another more subtle point that Solomon is making is that this process was entirely voluntary, the result of choices and not just random chance. The "youth" was not forced against his will, he didn't just accidentally happen upon this woman and continue on his way, she didn't coerce him through circumstances or blackmail, she used words and her appearance and he believed it and made a bad choice.
The reason this is important is because it can be easy to try and "guard" against sin through prohibition, through saying that nobody can walk down that street, that the woman can't dress in a certain manner, and so on. Moralists can step in and point out all sorts of ways that, whether political or social, rules could be established to prevent any "youths" from being tempted against their better interests, whether the "youth" is even aware of or appreciates such measures being taken on their behalf.
The reality is that this dilutes the necessity for understanding, for wisdom, and thus only exacerbates the issue even further because the process of learning "the hard way" then only occurs when the stakes, the consequences, are even more serious than before. Really think about that. If a man is lusting after a woman, is it better that identifying a need to correct behavior is found through how he looks at women, or after he's already entered their bed?
I'll use an automotive illustration.
Cars were originally equipped with "manual" transmissions, as the mechanical design of such a transmission is simpler than an "automatic" transmission. Over time, the automatic transmission has overtaken the manual in the United States as the preference of consumers. Due to the lower skill requirements to drive a car with an automatic, more people can drive cars that otherwise would not be able to if required to use a manual. Because more people are driving, the opportunities to make mistakes then occur while the vehicle is already moving, as opposed to being stuck and not going anywhere.
Think about it. What are the material consequences of an "accident" from someone who is still struggling to drive a manual at all versus someone with an automatic that has never had to pay very much attention to the basics of driving at all? Would the current pandemic of "distracted driving", or even the frequency of DUI deaths, still exist if cars were sufficiently difficult to drive that only those with appropriate skill and situational awareness could drive them?
Morally, people cite pornography addictions as being terrible, and the lust it inspires is sinful and depraved, but would you rather find your son with a lewd magazine or a girl in his bed? Oh sure, ideally you'd find neither, but if people were dealing with moral failings honestly, they'd realize that catching an area of weakness while the scope of the consequences is still contained offers opportunity to correct and guide behavior in a way which will avoid even greater failures in the future.
It's the same way with children and learning about why they should not do things, like touching hot surfaces. No parent wants their child to be injured, but that one time you take them out of their hermetically sealed protective bubbles to maybe experience life, they go straight for a pan on the stove, or a hair iron, or some other exposure to "hot" that you cannot intervene in time to protect them from and they experience a burn. Contrast that to, if the first time your child is around "hot" it's a giant bonfire and still doesn't understand why they should avoid "hot things".
Or perhaps it's falling. No parent wants their child to be injured, but falling off a bed onto a carpeted floor is going to produce a much smaller set of permanent injuries than, say, falling down a flight of concrete stairs. Or off a building.
Are you grasping the subtlety beihnd the trend that a moralist with their legalisms simply could not comprehend?
We try so hard to eliminate the small problems, because it's easier, they're small, and in keeping people from small failures, they don't learn about or practice the universal fundamentals that apply to both small and big failures. You shouldn't masturbate to pornography for the same reason you should not commit adultery with someone else's spouse, but if you are that stubborn and rebellious, or instead that ignorant and uninformed, that you would reject God's wisdom to pursue your own pleasures based on your own understanding, which is going to have a larger penalty to pay, both now and in eternity?
Sinful acts are sinful acts, but there's a reason that Solomon, and later Paul, would not simply say, for example, "stop having sexual desire." They do not prohibit the urges we have, to try and eliminate the root cause entirely, but instead seek to teach responsibility with how we satisfy those desires, because those desires were designed by God with a purpose and a reason and to deny God's design does not align us with God's desires.
Scripture does not denigrate beauty, or why a man might a woman attractive, but instead lists the reasons why his being intimate with her would be illicit, irresponsible, sinful, and how instead he should find his pleasure in the "wife of his youth".
Wisdom is not just a collection of "do not", but a series of contrasts between what you should "do" and "do not", with the context of consequences to help explain why through understandable circumstances, stories, parables, fables, etc.
The immoral woman is preying upon the gullibility of the "youth", his ignorance, his lustful naivety, and the consequences for him and her will be terrible. Would it not have been better to learn the neex for discipline, control, upon being caught lustfully gazing at the scantily clad woman on the cover of a magazine at the checkout counter of a store?
He commits sin in both cases, but one is against God, and another is against both God and man. From a pragmatic standpoint, if you do desire to reduce or eliminate sin effectively, you must preach and teach responsibility, not prohibition, otherwise none will learn, none will be required to understand, to grow, and when their shortcomings are finally exposed, the consequences will be dire for all those involved.
We should teach people how to avoid failure when the failures are small, not seek to protect them from small failures so that only the bigger failures remain to provide actual opportunities for them to learn.
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
15.3.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 1:8-9
My son, hear the instruction of your father,
And do not forsake the law of your mother;
For they will be a graceful ornament on your head,
And chains about your neck.
Proverbs 1:8-9 (NKJV)
There are at least three controversial concepts in just this very short passage that show up regularly in the Bible, some in obvious ways, some more overtly. They are:
1) A father and mother do different things.
2) Your father and mother both do important things.
3) Constraints make you better, not worse.
The reason these are controversial is that the postmodern philosophies embraced by popular culture in at least the United States rejects all three of these things, and for a litany of reasons, all of which boil down to rebellion against God's order. Let's take them one by one.
1) A father and mother do different things.
In this passage, the father instructs. The word used in the original language is "musar", which is associated with "discipline, chastening, correction". For those who don't know, while the English language has a very large vocabulary, ancient languages often did not, and so the same word would have multiple meanings along a theme. You can see how those three concepts are reflected in "instruction", and yet there is a little something missing. To help explain, let's look at what the mother does.
For the mother, the word in the original language is "torah", which is associated with "direction, instruction, law". Can you see how these two different words are very close, but hold a different connotation? The father's role is active, where the mother's role is passive.
The one who prescribes the law does not necessarily enforce it, or provide the corrective action when it has been broken. When you look at the results of sexual dimorphism in physiology, or even in the stereotypes of the past found behind phrases like "just you wait till your father gets home", you can see how the dynamic of similar but distinct roles comes into play.
2) Your father and mother both do important things.
That leads us into the next part, where scripture is very clear that both dad and mom have different roles to play in a healthy family. Both are necessary. You can't have a healthy family without one or the other, and we've plenty of both anecdotal and verified data to show what happens when you try to raise children without one or the other.
This is where the idea of "equality" comes into play, in that people have a hard time understanding that disparate roles can have equal value. We often view the outcome as the criteria for determining "equality", or the difficulty in achieving a task, and so if the inputs or outputs are subtle or hard to see, it "feels" like there is an inequality in value because there is an inequality in those inputs and outputs.
Having worked in manufacturing environments for over a decade, I can explain in great detail that when your responsibility is to avert possible problems in the future, it becomes very tough to explain how the specific steps you've taken prevented an issue from manifesting. In the same manner, if a mother provides instruction to her children and they listen and obey, it can be deflating and anti-climactic, but this should not diminish the importance of her role in shaping that outcome.
This is why, much later on in the New Testament, Paul would emphasize that husbands bestow honor on their wives in understanding. While a father may get a lot of visibility in his more active role, and it will be more physically challenging, that does not make the role of the wife less important, and so husbands are to recognize this and adjust their behavior towards their wife to reflect this.
3) Constraints make you better, not worse.
This is one of the common and presumably paradoxical claims made throughout the Bible, and yet it speaks to a truth we can understand and see in everyday circumstances. A garden which is not tended to will become overgrown and filled with weeds. A building which is not mended will crumble and fall. A company with an unlimited budget will still somehow bankrupt itself and collapse.
If you do not guide a process intentionally, the results are based entirely on chance. So often we hear people discuss "freedom", as if it is an inherently desirable concept, that lacking constraints people would make better decisions and not be "held back" by restrictions on their behavior.
Yet the reality is that those restrictions produce refinement. The garden which is tended to will produce good fruits and aesthetic beauty. A building which is tended to will stand for generations. A company that learns to live with little resources will become efficient instead of wasteful.
A child whose behavior is directed will mature, and the restrictions which chafed them as a child will instead become the very mechanism by which their true value can manifest. When you meet someone who displays discipline, you don't see the restrictions, what you see is the resulting refinement that discipline brought about in that person.
This is why Solomon describes the teaching and correction of your father and mother in such favorable terms, because the result of that understanding and obedience will bring results that will be plainly obvious to those that are around you, in the same manner that there is an obvious difference between one who is finely ornamented and one who is not.
Embrace the constraints on your behavior that your father and mother put in place and held you to and do not be tempted to presume that they did so out of cruelty, but out of genuine love in order to help refine you into something better.
And do not forsake the law of your mother;
For they will be a graceful ornament on your head,
And chains about your neck.
Proverbs 1:8-9 (NKJV)
There are at least three controversial concepts in just this very short passage that show up regularly in the Bible, some in obvious ways, some more overtly. They are:
1) A father and mother do different things.
2) Your father and mother both do important things.
3) Constraints make you better, not worse.
The reason these are controversial is that the postmodern philosophies embraced by popular culture in at least the United States rejects all three of these things, and for a litany of reasons, all of which boil down to rebellion against God's order. Let's take them one by one.
1) A father and mother do different things.
In this passage, the father instructs. The word used in the original language is "musar", which is associated with "discipline, chastening, correction". For those who don't know, while the English language has a very large vocabulary, ancient languages often did not, and so the same word would have multiple meanings along a theme. You can see how those three concepts are reflected in "instruction", and yet there is a little something missing. To help explain, let's look at what the mother does.
For the mother, the word in the original language is "torah", which is associated with "direction, instruction, law". Can you see how these two different words are very close, but hold a different connotation? The father's role is active, where the mother's role is passive.
The one who prescribes the law does not necessarily enforce it, or provide the corrective action when it has been broken. When you look at the results of sexual dimorphism in physiology, or even in the stereotypes of the past found behind phrases like "just you wait till your father gets home", you can see how the dynamic of similar but distinct roles comes into play.
2) Your father and mother both do important things.
That leads us into the next part, where scripture is very clear that both dad and mom have different roles to play in a healthy family. Both are necessary. You can't have a healthy family without one or the other, and we've plenty of both anecdotal and verified data to show what happens when you try to raise children without one or the other.
This is where the idea of "equality" comes into play, in that people have a hard time understanding that disparate roles can have equal value. We often view the outcome as the criteria for determining "equality", or the difficulty in achieving a task, and so if the inputs or outputs are subtle or hard to see, it "feels" like there is an inequality in value because there is an inequality in those inputs and outputs.
Having worked in manufacturing environments for over a decade, I can explain in great detail that when your responsibility is to avert possible problems in the future, it becomes very tough to explain how the specific steps you've taken prevented an issue from manifesting. In the same manner, if a mother provides instruction to her children and they listen and obey, it can be deflating and anti-climactic, but this should not diminish the importance of her role in shaping that outcome.
This is why, much later on in the New Testament, Paul would emphasize that husbands bestow honor on their wives in understanding. While a father may get a lot of visibility in his more active role, and it will be more physically challenging, that does not make the role of the wife less important, and so husbands are to recognize this and adjust their behavior towards their wife to reflect this.
3) Constraints make you better, not worse.
This is one of the common and presumably paradoxical claims made throughout the Bible, and yet it speaks to a truth we can understand and see in everyday circumstances. A garden which is not tended to will become overgrown and filled with weeds. A building which is not mended will crumble and fall. A company with an unlimited budget will still somehow bankrupt itself and collapse.
If you do not guide a process intentionally, the results are based entirely on chance. So often we hear people discuss "freedom", as if it is an inherently desirable concept, that lacking constraints people would make better decisions and not be "held back" by restrictions on their behavior.
Yet the reality is that those restrictions produce refinement. The garden which is tended to will produce good fruits and aesthetic beauty. A building which is tended to will stand for generations. A company that learns to live with little resources will become efficient instead of wasteful.
A child whose behavior is directed will mature, and the restrictions which chafed them as a child will instead become the very mechanism by which their true value can manifest. When you meet someone who displays discipline, you don't see the restrictions, what you see is the resulting refinement that discipline brought about in that person.
This is why Solomon describes the teaching and correction of your father and mother in such favorable terms, because the result of that understanding and obedience will bring results that will be plainly obvious to those that are around you, in the same manner that there is an obvious difference between one who is finely ornamented and one who is not.
Embrace the constraints on your behavior that your father and mother put in place and held you to and do not be tempted to presume that they did so out of cruelty, but out of genuine love in order to help refine you into something better.
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