Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 8:22-31

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, I was brought forth;
While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,
Or the primal dust of the world.
When He prepared the heavens, I was there,
When He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
When He established the clouds above,
When He strengthened the fountains of the deep,
When He assigned to the sea its limit,
So that the waters would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in His inhabited world,
And my delight was with the sons of men.

Proverbs 8:22-31 (NKJV).

It is easy to believe that Genesis is the only place in the Bible which talks about creation. While certainly the most obvious place, there are passages throughout scripture that speak to one aspect of the creation process or another. These passages, all together, paint a picture that can sometimes be overshadowed by the well-known narrative involving Adam and Eve.

What I mean by this is how intentional God was, and how little an impact sin really had on the design of this reality. So often people will speak of a "fallen world", and not quite specify what they mean. We hear about "suffering and death" or "thorns and thistles", all sorts of "bad" things which were "caused" by sin, yet this is about as "true" as humanity currently being responsible for the entirety of climate change.

It's not humility, but arrogance, to presume that because of the sin of humanity, God struck the remainder of reality from its place of supposed perfection. It makes too much of our influence on anything, and yet when you don't put the collected verses regarding creation together, this message can be entirely missed.

Some Christians assert, for example, that "death and decay" were a result of the fall of Adam and Eve, yet without death and decay, a stable ecologic system cannot ever form. Scripture is clear that the physical and spiritual death among humanity is a result of Adam, but the Bible does not claim that everything we deem "wrong" with the world to be the result of our actions.

This is highlighted in how all the passages extol God's designs, God's intent, God's ordering of everything into independent systems that could, at least materially, persist for very long periods of time, and were almost entirely self-regulating. God set boundaries, defined relationships, and did all of this to glorify God.

Why would that glory be marred by our sin, especially if it was ever genuinely perfect, without flaw?

Why would our disobedience change the rules that our reality operates by?

Why would God scuttle all the work of his hands as a means of exacting punishment on sin?

Read the passage, and contemplate the planning that went into all of creation. If you've ever been involved in setting up anything, be it a party, a doctor's appointment, or an entire manufacturing system, there are a lot of details that need to be coordinated for everything to go smoothly.

Imagining how drinkable water would need to be made available to all the creatures other than humans. Think about the water cycle, and how our ecosystems balance themselves based on the availability of water. Think about how creatures are adapted physically to the resources available in their climate. Think about how the "cycle of life" operates, where plants grow from soil, animals eat the plants, other animals eat the animals that ate the plants, and eventually even those animals die and return to the soil.

Do we really want to assert that the sin of humanity is responsible for that instead of God?

Because that's what end up being the logical conclusion if our sin "broke" the world. No longer do the heavens declare the glory of God, but instead they bear our graffiti, our corruption. No longer is the world as designed but now it has been remade by our sin into something else. No longer are God's invisible attributes capable of being understood from what God has made, because the destruction of our sin has overshadowed God's work.

Do you see how disrespectful it is to God when we make so much of our sin instead of making much of God? Do you grasp how arrogant it is to presume that God's designs can be foiled by our efforts? Do you understand how God's sovereignty is challenged when we explain the dynamics we see in front of us as the result of our own hands instead of God's?

Wisdom is being described as having been there "since the beginning", before God started work on shaping this world we currently inhabit. Much is said about the intent of God, about the establishment of the dynamics we now see, and this is a very common theme in passages about creation.

There's a reason why those who act in accordance with wisdom find material benefit, because this world was designed through wisdom. Wisdom still works among us, and still looks favorably on those who respect her lessons, and rewards them for their work. The role of wisdom in existence has never changed, never been successfully challenged, let alone replaced, even as a consequence for sin.

All that's changed, all that's ever changed, is the connection between us and God, and even there only from our side of the relationship. God has always been reaching out, whether to correct or to reward, but we turn away, we ignore, we reject, thinking that we can do better.

The truth is that we can't, not on our own.

Woe to those who will resist wisdom, resist God, unto death.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 6:16-19

These six things the Lord hates,
Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
A proud look,
A lying tongue,
Hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that are swift in running to evil,
A false witness who speaks lies,
And one who sows discord among brethren.

Proverbs 6:16-19 (NKJV).

Here's a simple question: can God sin?

The logically correct answer is that, no, by definition of what and who God is, God cannot sin. Like counting the corners on a circle, just because we can imagine an irrational concept, does not mean that the inability to manifest a paradox is a mark against the power of God. Do not waste time on the intellectual anarchist who insists that being able to do the illogical is a necessary component of being omnipotent.

It's not.

Given that, there is a word in the first sentence of this passage that should stick out like a sore thumb to most folks in our modern age that seeks to create unity and peace through humanistic means.

So here's another simple question: how is hate not sinful?

Before we even broach what God hates, we really need to grapple with the simple fact that God does in fact hate anything at all. From a young age, in the late 20th century, my generation was brought up under the tenets of "love, not hate". We were the second generation downstream from those who had fought in a terrible war, superficially over hate, and so hate was always cast in an extremely negative light.

Yet God hates.

The natural conclusion then is that hate is not evil, not by itself. What makes hate "evil" then? What is it, if hating itself is not sinful, that would make it so? We've seen, or at least been told, about all the destruction and suffering caused by hate, so where did that come from?

What was hated.

It's not that hate itself is evil, but how that hate is applied, what the target of that hatred is, which determines if it is righteous or not. Look at the specifics of the things that God hates, things which are an abomination.

Pride, deceit, murderer, and wickedness.

These things are all also contextually based as well, schemes which reflect a rejection of God and God's character to instead seek to usurp the throne. Each of them is a polar opposite of God's nature, they are the antithesis of God, so God hating their manifestation, when any seek to live them out, is righteous because God is hating sinfulness. God hates that which denounces God, which makes sense because all that is created owes an eternal debt of gratitude to God for existing at all, so for the created to be ungrateful to the creator, let alone to subvert the designs of the creator, understandably provokes hatred.

What of the hatred of man then? What does this mean for those who are not God?

Simply, that in being aligned with God, we'll hate what God hates, and love what God loves. If you seek to reflect God's nature, you will do so in all aspects, not just the ones which confirm to the proclivities of the particular culture you live in. Hatred of evil is not evil itself, but a reflection of God's hatred of that evil, even when we find it in ourselves.

If we do not hate evil, how are we to justify the process of sanctification? What purpose is there in being more like God, refined by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, such that these sinful desires that God hates are abated? If we are saved by Jesus, what is the point of trying to be more like God?

Because it's our only way of showing God gratitude.

Our obedience to God does not come by our own strength. Our refinement is not by our own efforts. Our alignment to God does not come from our own wisdom, from our own power, but from God. Our existence is not caused by anything we chose. We are invited by God to participate, to be thankful, and in return God asks us to reflect that thanks in how we live our lives.

We don't behave to be saved, we behave because we're saved.

That behavior includes hating that which God hates, and loving that which God loves, in expressing without reservation the true breadth of God's character, not merely trying to pick and choose portions of it based on our own wisdom, not putting our faith in our own filtering of God based on our priorities, but seeking to know and reflect God accurately and letting God do the rest of the work in the hearts of those who are still in rebellion.

That is the best we can do, and all that God is asking of us.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 1:1-7

The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel: 

To know wisdom and instruction,
To perceive the words of understanding, 

To receive the instruction of wisdom,
Justice, judgment, and equity;

To give prudence to the simple,
To the young man knowledge and discretion— 

A wise man will hear and increase learning,
And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel,
To understand a proverb and an enigma,
The words of the wise and their riddles. 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
But fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:1-7 (NKJV)

By definition, God is omniscient, or "all-knowing." If you were God, it would be impossible for you to learn anything new. Solomon corroborates this premise in "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." Since none of us mere mortals is God, Solomon can be quite comfortable presuming that everyone reading this will need to start with the correct perspective on their relationship with God.

In a way, you can look at this as "if you aren't humble, you can't learn", which is something that makes sense even in a secular context. While humility is commonly associated with self-deprecation, I would argue it's more accurately about self-awareness. Yes, being humbled will look like deprecation if you're being taken down a few pegs, being removed from the throne of God, admitting your faults and failures and ignorances and so on, but this is not to just put you down, but to put you in your proper place, to strip away the prideful deceit about what you think you are so you can make peace with what you really are.

There is also a danger in the self-deprecation route in the effort to "make much of God", in that if God is not glorious based on who and what God is, thus requiring humanity to be thoroughly diminished, what does that say about our understanding of God? If God's attributes do not communicate superiority over us in every way, even with our greatest achievements, then we simply do not appreciate who God really is. We don't know our place, and the foolish among us resist being placed where we really belong.

To grow, to learn, we have to start by accepting that there is something we don't understand, that we are not God, and that God is worthy of our fear, our reverence, our awe.