Envy, Bitterness, Denial: Part 7

This is the continuation of Part 6, looking at an opinion piece published by the NYT.

White Women, Come Get Your People

In Part 6 we looked at some of the hateful results of what happens when white women behave like colored women do, in self-interest, and how because that does not immediately work in favor of colored women, white women are "gender traitors", because women are supposed to be voting based on what helps all women and not just themselves. White women, in making partner and lifestyle choices that do not benefit colored women, are selfish and playing a role in oppressing colored women. And they should just stop doing that right now.

If the theme sounds familiar and childish it's not an accident, because it's always easier to try and tear someone else down, to devalue their achievements and make excuses, than to try and accomplish something yourself. It's orders of magnitude simpler to be a critic than a creator, and so when even the very fabric of reality is demonstrating that some choices are better than others, and you can't change the past, you will work hard to change the future instead to try and mitigate the cost of bad choices you have made. This is natural, expected, and yet so often entirely self-destructive.

Let's finish up the article.

I’m sure he does “have” them; game girls will defend their privilege to the death.

Envious jab, and little more than that. Females naturally defend what is "theirs", whether we're talking about humans or animals, and so a woman accusing other women of doing so while trying to defend "what ought to be mine" is certainly hypocritical, but pointing that out is impotent at best.

This is why deceit and misdirection is required, because facts and data don't matter, so one must "dig deeper" to create the desired resonance that goes beyond intellect.

And that is why the article went where it did next.

But apparently that doesn’t include Ms. Murkowski anymore. Maybe it’s because she comes from a state with the nation’s highest rate of sexual violence, with a sexual assault rate three times the national average, where prosecutors just let a man evade jail time after he kidnapped a native Alaskan woman and strangled her unconscious, then masturbated over her body. Maybe.

The details don't need to be true for the narrative to appear convincing, and that's the point.

The statistics and data are reported out of context, because at face value this appears to be relevant given the nature of the accusations made against Kavanaugh. The emotional appeal is strong, but if you actually read the article linked:

Some 47 percent of suspects are Alaska Native. About one-third are white. Some 97 percent are male. Suspects and victims tend to be the same race, except for black suspects, whose victims most often are white, the analysis found.

Another data point:

Almost all the victims and suspects knew each other. Just 4 percent of the attackers were strangers, and for the youngest children, only 1 percent were targeted by someone unknown, the analysis found. Most suspects were acquaintances. Some were relatives. A few were boyfriends or girlfriends. In five instances, the suspect was the baby sitter.

Rather different framing. Apparently people are lacking proper sexual outlets and, given that incest and rape are really only a moral issue for Christians, the problem doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with any of the national narratives at all,

Now, the article cites 1,542 "incidents involving felony sex offenses" for Alaska in 2016. California meanwhile had 13,695 rape cases in 2016. They used "national average" to try and make Alaska seem so terrible, because that relies on statistics per capita, and since California is a more highly populated state, even if the "rate" is low, the actual number of reported rapes is much higher.

The same way that, as we saw earlier, even if only 10% of white women pursue abortions, because that's 10% of a bigger population, that still results in more actual abortions for white women than colored women.

So, does Alaska or California have a bigger rape problem? And how are "whites" to blame for any of it when they're not the ones doing the majority of it in the first place?

Facts, details, boring boring boring.

And for the man who "evaded jail time"?

Schneider was charged with four felonies, including kidnapping and assault. He pleaded guilty to a single felony assault charge in the second degree in exchange for a sentence of two years with one suspended, plus three years probation. Schneider received credit for time served while wearing an ankle monitor and living with his wife and two children.

Who cares about the truth when the story "feels right"?

The reason thus particular case was brought up was in an attempt to equate Trump, who is also entirely coincidentally also a white man, with this convicted felon. Trump was upset that a Republican congresswoman would not vote for the Supreme Court Nominee of a Republican President after hearing unfounded allegations brought forth by Democrats only after the nominee was announced. The attempt is to equate Trump's dismissal of the politically motivated and unfounded allegations with the judge "letting the evil white man go". Sneaky, but not very well hidden.

The intent is to make it look like Trump is an uncouth aggressor acting outside "civilized norms", sufficient to justify white women turning against him and to the "side" of colored women in solidarity against this oppressor who seeks to dominate all of them.

That asking for "proof" is the same as "excusing evil".

And yet this is all still falling under the "stop doing that" type of argument, not the "you should be doing something else and here's why", because the author and those who think like them rely on their opponents surrendering, never fighting back. If an opponent were to fight back, that would be "improper", and in this fashion did they so successfully manipulate those tempted by ideologically superiority.

"We'll win without fighting because we desire a higher path and none can denigrate the power of our ideals!"

"We may lose this election, but we'll still have our principles, and they can never take that away from us!"

Now let's see the contrast.

Meanwhile, Senator Collins subjected us to a slow funeral dirge about due process and some other nonsense I couldn’t even hear through my rage headache as she announced on Friday she would vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. Her mostly male colleagues applauded her.

The author couldn't be bothered to listen to how legal processes actually work from a woman who has actually tried to work hard to achieve something in a legal system that was crafted by men. The author was so overcome by emotion that she couldn't even listen to another woman! Such terrible men for causing her to sin against her "sister" in such a fashion, at least, so long as that sister quickly repents of her own sins of being a "gender traitor" first.

Even this, though, is a misdirection from the fact that the author doesn't want to understand how to affect actual change, because the author isn't actually capable of, or interested in, doing anything but trying to convince other people to surrender, to be worn down by nagging stupidity cloaked in intellectualism and activism. To throw a tantrum and push people to just throw their hands up in the air and say "fine, do what you want, just go away!"

It's this same childish stupidity that lets the author pretend that because a woman said it, it must be good, but if a man said it, it must be bad, because the path to truth is obviously in the vagina. Even woman agreeing with a man, that's bad because a woman is apparently supposed to be diametrically opposed to anything a man might agree with, unless that man got what he said from a woman, then he's just a liar and a creep.

It's this kind of simplistic ignorance wrapped in grandiose vernacular that prompts people to promote socialistic ideals, because they're simply too dumb to understand why those lofty ideals won't actually work. It's this kind of intellectual laziness that the readers are supposed to ignore because they're supposed to be drummed up into an emotional fit just like the author.

Is anyone genuinely confused as to why the author is still single?

The author is the stereotypical "bossy girl" on the playground who goes into an absolute fit whenever someone isn't playing in exactly the way she wants. The kind of girl that finds herself lonely and insecure, but with a chip on her shoulder, certain that the problem is everyone else and not her.

She never grew up because her parents didn't care enough to tell her "no", but instead shipped her off to be brought up by a soulless government system which only taught her to repeat, not to think.

The article finishes out with the same pathetic weakness that the author is desperately trying to hide behind the emotional misdirection.

The question for white women in November is: Which one of these two women are you?

I fear we already know the answer.

The author wants what white women have, and if she can't nobody can, and all without putting in the work required for stable relationships and families.

The author is angry at men, because she's been rejected for putting what she believes before what she is, and so men are being mean and must be diminished in value and significance for refusing to "play along".

The author is ignoring truth, preferring instead a fantasy where women are goddesses and worthy of your worship, and perhaps if you've groveled enough they'll deign to show you favor.

But pointing all this is out is simply stating the obvious. It falls flat, nobody is really surprised or convinced by any of it. So what's really the "proper response" to such an article?

Well, beyond the dissection for understanding to help those who aren't quite aware of all that's going on, saying nothing is usually best. Ignoring a tantrum can sometimes work because the individual throwing the tantrum will come to realize that their inputs are not achieving the desired outputs.

If you don't ignore? I am bad rhetoric, but perhaps something along these lines:

Fake women want lives that matter.

And then tell white women to vote for white interests, marry and then have white babies, and make a big deal about women who dress like sluts needing to spend lots of money on batteries.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 9:7-9

“He who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself,
And he who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself.
Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you;
Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.
Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser;
Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.

Proverbs 9:7-9 (NKJV).

We want to be the savior. We want to be the guy or gal that says just the right thing, that is just good enough a friend, that is in the right place at the right time to be the hero.

We want to be recognized as having wisdom for the social credit, but those who waste their efforts in this manner can actually be exposing their lack of wisdom by these types of demonstrations.

Social media is a convenient way to see this dynamic play out. The phrase "don't feed the trolls" exists for a reason, and it's worthwhile to distinguish between those who are simply ignorant and those who are cited in this passage.

A "scoffer" is one who "mocks or treats with derision or scorn". This is not a passive ignorance, but an intentional antagonism, and with the "freedom" of the internet and folks feeling like they can share whatever they want, do whatever they want, all without consequence, has magnified the intensity of this dynamic such that it is blatantly obvious when witnessed.

This is not wisdom being provided to someone who does not know, this is an attempt to use wisdom as the retort to someone who does not even recognize the value of the conversation, the interaction, beyond how they can leverage themselves socially, or perhaps even just for entertainment purposes.

I do not believe that the social dynamics that we experience through social media, especially with anonymous accounts, is something that is new to humanity, but that it is an existing behavioral dynamic that has been refined it down to its most basic attributes because of the medium.

In addition, thanks to the many advances in our civilization as the result of human intellect, we have doubled down on intellectual reliance and upset the balance between fantasy and reality. It was fantastical to think we could travel more than 50 miles per hour at one time, let alone travel to the moon. It was fantastical to think that we could communicate instantaneously over large distances, and yet now the whole globe cannot go a day without all of the local details being broadcast to everyone else in the world who will listen.

We live in a veritable land of fantasy, and yet we got here not simply by dreaming big, but through incremental efforts to discover how our dreams could really manifest in studying the nature of reality. We dreamed big, but knew when to wake up and get to work.

Nowadays though, more and more are refusing to wake up and do the hard work to make their ideals a reality, and so they have become detached in understanding cause and effect. They espouse lofty ideals that are entirely disconnected from reality, which while apparently making one feel good for professing such an ideal, is pointless because it cannot ever be manifest.

The "moral high ground" is a concept that encapsulates this arrogant deceit. People will pretend that, because they took the "moral high ground", that even if they acted foolishly, their actions are still to be lauded based on the ideals, not on the results.

In this manner, people will engage with scoffers, ignore the behavior and the results of the interaction and simply "do their thing", and then wonder why the praise has not heaped up for them as much as it should. Didn't they do what they were supposed to? Didn't they adhere to the loftiest of ideals, the most pure and logical of paths?

In this passage though, you'll note that the result of correcting a scoffer is to invite hatred.

Doesn't that result tell us something about the logic, the rationale, behind our behavior, and why it should change?

Realize that time spent trying to correct scoffers, to share wisdom with fools, is time not spent teaching those who are already receptive and ready to learn. It's a waste and generates animosity, and little else, as the scoffer is not going to have a change of heart because of our efforts on their "behalf", for "their benefit".

If someone doesn't want help, don't give it to them anyway. If someone doesn't want to understand, don't try and explain it to them anyway. If someone doesn't want to learn, don't force them to go through the motions with your lessons anyway.

This will save your time, your soul, and increase both your social and physical safety as well.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 8:1-11

Does not wisdom cry out,
And understanding lift up her voice?
She takes her stand on the top of the high hill,
Beside the way, where the paths meet.
She cries out by the gates, at the entry of the city,
At the entrance of the doors:
“To you, O men, I call,
And my voice is to the sons of men.
O you simple ones, understand prudence,
And you fools, be of an understanding heart.
Listen, for I will speak of excellent things,
And from the opening of my lips will come right things;
For my mouth will speak truth;
Wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
All the words of my mouth are with righteousness;
Nothing crooked or perverse is in them.
They are all plain to him who understands,
And right to those who find knowledge.
Receive my instruction, and not silver,
And knowledge rather than choice gold;
For wisdom is better than rubies,
And all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her.

Proverbs 8:1-11 (NKJV).

Let's first take note of the difference in where and when we come across wisdom versus the immoral woman. The immoral woman was out at night, in a specific location, and making empty promises about how the illicit behavior she was offering would be without consequence. Wisdom, on the other hand, is on top of a hill, at every door, at every crossroads, apparently everywhere.

Yet like how "common sense" is not actually common at all, it's this availability that causes the arrogant, the prideful, to take wisdom for granted in pursuit of the work of their own hands, even if that work leads only to destruction. If wisdom is so available, so common, then why would one need to invest in a relationship with "her"?

The fool believes that their efforts have drawn the attention of the immoral woman, that her scarcity and exclusivity (roll your eyes here) speaks to a value that the more commonly available "wisdom" cannot claim. The immoral woman may even include such flattery in her seduction, all the while wisdom is trying to compete, but people are only annoyed by the persistence.

When a child, there was a neighbor kid who wanted to play on a regular basis, every day. This got annoying, because the commonality of the availability ruined the "feeling" of our time spent together being rare or valuable. Scarcity so often determines value, with dirt being nearly worthless, but fine jewels and refined precious metals, being both more rare and more attractive, are granted higher value, are cherished more, and thus why Solomon tries so hard on a regular basis to challenge this default valuation of wisdom.

The book of Proverbs is constantly trying to challenge the default means by which people derive value, to overturn a valuation based on relative temporal scarcity, and to instead try to teach people to value something which is essentially not scarce at all, but is yet of considerable benefit to them. To learn that what we value does not reflect what God values, and that gets to the heart of the issue.

Valuing what God values requires humility, and you're not going to be humble if you are convinced in your own ability, of your own understanding, of your own strength. It's the same foolishness that has the "youth" denying wisdom in pursuit of "guilt-free" pleasure, drinking deep from the lies of the immoral woman, and believing that whatever comes of it, it's "worth the risk". Even if you are not placing yourself on God's throne, you're still trying to "make it" by your own hand, even when an infinite wellspring of assistance is being offered that you could gain access to at any time.

This is the folly of humanity, our solipsism, that we want to think that we know best, that we understand more than enough, that we don't need to grow, to learn.

Yet like the air that we breathe, that we take for granted, it's not when we have it that we appreciate it, but when we don't anymore that we start to realize the value on our own. It's when we're trying to escape from a fire and cannot but breathe smoke and ash that we are forced to understand the value of clean air. It's not till we're parched and dry that we are forced to pay attention to the value in good water.

Time and again humanity takes something for granted, and we do not choose to value it until it's been taken away from us and we then have no choice but to do so. We're forced because we didn't choose well and the consequence of poor choices results in bad circumstances.

If you're allergic to a food and you eat it, is the problem the allergy or your having eaten the food anyway?

If you need to sustain fidelity in your marriage, do you really want to have it broken apart before you can appreciate what you already have?

The arrogance implicit behind the mentality of "I am going to do what I think is right, no matter what" wreaks all sorts of havoc on both your life and the lives of those around you, and yet the most controversial aspect of all of this, the most contentious claim that could be made, is that it's all unnecessary.

You see, it's not that we can't learn at all, but it's the subtle insistence that we can't learn unless we've made the mistakes ourselves, that unless we've got the scars and felt the pain, that we're entirely incapable of behaving any other way. Paradoxically this is a thought process often tethered to the idea that, realizing this, one has achieved some state of enlightenment, as opposed to the reality of just resigning one's agency to succumb to the instincts and emotions that toss us to and fro.

Realize that, in denying that we can ever learn without failure, we are not really being honest about our own shortcomings, we're simply declaring that we are the center of the universe until proven otherwise.

This is why Solomon tries so hard, so often, to break that mindset, to provide a new framework for value, because the costs for failure are often greater than we can imagine. Material gain and sexual satisfaction are themes familiar with everyone, everyone can understand them, so they are referred back to frequently because of this, not because they're the only circumstances where this type of dynamic plays out, but because the consequences of failure in pursuit of these things is so readily apparent to even the bystander.

Wisdom is available to all, but many will reject it, and they will suffer for it. In some ways, wisdom as Solomon describes it is a foreshadowing of the salvation that Christ would afford for all of us now. It is a gift, given not because of who we are, and so because people did not work for it themselves, because they did not earn it through their own efforts, they'll foolishly reject it, thinking they can do better on their own.

Do not be that person. Surrender your pride, your trust in only what you can secure with your own hands, and instead accept the embrace, the words, of wisdom and thus walk an upright path, never envying the damage that others have wrought upon themselves to learn the very same lessons.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 7:6-9

For at the window of my house
I looked through my lattice,
And saw among the simple,
I perceived among the youths,
A young man devoid of understanding,
Passing along the street near her corner;
And he took the path to her house
In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night.

Proverbs 7:6-9 (NKJV).

The phrase "if you play with fire, you're going to get burned" is meant to carry both literal and figurative meaning. A similar one is "a double-edged sword". Fires are a necessary component to advanced civilization, and swords are among the most efficient weapons for human combat.

In both phrases, what is trying to be communicated is that power comes at a price, that you cannot wield it without care, without discipline, without intention.

And the power to make choices and manifest actions is an even simpler power that humans have and often take entirely for granted.

In other writings across the internet, I've discussed the "decision making inputs" in the conceptual model I use for how people make a decision. Simply, that when humans make a choice, there are multiple inputs, not a singular cohesive stream of consciousness, and the one with the most persuasive power "wins out" and is then followed by the individual.

In animals, this almost always looks like:

Instinct = Decision

Even domesticated animals are merely "tamed" in the sense that we have found a way to short-circuit their instincts in a way that benefits us, and maybe even in turn them. A dog is still trying to be just like a wild wolf, but due to the genetic predisposition from selective breeding, in addition to the efforts of humans to "train" them through the use of conditioning, the instincts of the dog are re-written such that, while still lacking sentience, the dog's personality and behavior aligns to that of "their alpha" as part of a long-refined survival and reproductive strategy.

Some animals are nearly impossible to domesticate, and while it's entertaining to try and postulate that there is some spiritually significant reason why, the most simple answer is that unless a creature was created by God with the intent that they could be tamed, they can't be, because that "programming" exists in their genetics, and they don't have any other "inputs" to their decision making process.

If it wasn't genetic, then even the selective breeding done the "old fashioned way" would not have produced results, whether we're talking livestock or crops. Regardless of your opinion on GMOs, by definition if what is being done through that process does produce a result with tangible consequences, you must start every argument for or against that process with the full understanding of the power of genetics over the "default settings" of an organism.

For humans, our equation starts out like this:

Instinct + Intellect = Decision

Humans have an additional input to this process, and that's where the moral significance of our choices comes from, while not negating that we have instincts and "defaults" in our behavior patterns which come from our genetics, because without that input to decision making, we'd be puppets just acting out our biological "programming". Even so, the equation doesn't stop there for us.

Instinct + (Intellect + Wisdom) = Decision

Wisdom is often external, not something that we find in us as much as discover to be true. Much of Proverbs is geared towards this type of input, and while Solomon exhorts us to make that wisdom a part of us, to make it ingrained into our "hearts" or "minds", the source of that wisdom was outside of us.

Now, if you've placed your faith in Jesus Christ? It changes yet again.

Instinct + (Intellect + Wisdom) + Holy Spirit = Decision

Our instincts and our intellect are all "of the flesh", but when we've been saved by Jesus Christ, we are imparted with a manifestation of God in the Holy Spirit that is a helper to us, and acts like another input into our decision making process to make our alignment with God's desires for us possible in the first place.

So why am I talking about all this?

The young man that Solomon is talking about, lacking understanding, is just running on instincts, not really thinking about or understanding what he's doing, and walking right into danger, possibly on purpose. In the daylight, it's harder to hide inappropriate interactions because everyone can see what's going on, everyone can see who is talking to who, the facial expressions, and so on, yet this young man is walking down the street near the corner of the harlot.

While responsibility is always superior to prohibition, some temptations are not worth exposing yourself to. While it'd be possible to visit, say, a beach in a sunny land and avoid lusting after women dressed in manners which accentuate their physical beauty, you'd still be playing with fire.

Likewise Solomon is trying to do is set the story up so that we know that this temptation likely could have been avoided altogether. That the choices of the young man are directly leading him towards temptation, and while having trust in God can help us escape temptation, we should not behave in a way which invites temptation into our lives through our own foolishness or ignorance. For as much as Solomon will speak poorly as to the intent of the harlot, blame is laid at the foot of those who go into her for not exercising control and discipline in all that lead up to their meeting with her.

Darkness, providing a type of isolation, can then sometimes be what gives us opportunity to sin. where we think the consequences of our choices will not be found out, that maybe we'll "get away with it."

The truth, as Solomon will detail as as he continues, is that nobody escapes the consequences of sin, and we only deceive ourselves when we think otherwise. So act with understanding, of all that you do and why, and learn just how your own behavior may be inviting destruction into your life.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 6:30-35

People do not despise a thief
If he steals to satisfy himself when he is starving.
Yet when he is found, he must restore sevenfold;
He may have to give up all the substance of his house.
Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding;
He who does so destroys his own soul.
Wounds and dishonor he will get,
And his reproach will not be wiped away.
For jealousy is a husband’s fury;
Therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.
He will accept no recompense,
Nor will he be appeased though you give many gifts.

Proverbs 6:30-35 (NKJV).

Solomon here is building upon the previously discussed folly of the adulterer by contrasting it to the petty thief. In essence, what he is saying that when people steal because they have a genuine need, people don't hate them for that. People don't hate someone for being hungry and doing whatever they can to fill their stomachs, though at the same time that does not mean being a thief is without any consequences.

The difference though is that the adulterous man is not hungry, and where the thief has a tangible quantity that can be restored to whom they stole from, the man who commits adultery with another man's wife cannot ever give back what has been stolen, cannot return "sevenfold" back to whom they stole from by bedding someone else's wife.

Solomon notes that there is nothing that can be done to repay the husband whose wife you have committed adultery with. There is no amount of gifts that will assuage the debt that is now owed because of what has been done. The adulterer has then marked themselves for life, presuming that even lasts very long, all for the sake of temporary pleasure.

Sex is a pleasurable activity, but it has a distinct beginning and ending, and life continues after sex has finished. Solomon is using the framing of adultery a lot, because of how entirely destructive it is, but the underlying logic behind why it is destructive applies to all sinful temptations.

Look at the iconic "seven deadly sins", and notice how each is associated with a short-term gain that is undermined, offset, negated or entirely dwarfed by the long-term consequences: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.

Each of them represents an imbalance, a perversion of a desire or a pleasure or even a possible act of righteousness into a gross exaggeration, an unrefined and all-consuming emotional dictate on the behaviors of the individual.

This is why Solomon talks about it destroying not just materially, but spiritually as well, because to succumb to these all denigrates who we truly are as humans. At the most obvious level, by taking away from our glorification of God and drowning us in material matters, but at the more subtle level, in that by succumbing to these singular drives, we have to conquer all that God has created us to be, in both material and spiritual, and throwing all of it aside to be reduced to such a state.

When we make sinful choices, we aren't tapping into some wellspring of "evil", as if it had a tangible existence or power that sought to fight God. Instead, like the concept of "cold" being a relative lack of "heat", "evil" is a relative lack of "God".

Thus adultery specifically, and sin in general, are a denial of God's designs, God's desires, and that's why Solomon indicates that those who partake of it do not understand. They don't understand the consequences, the impact, the effects of what they are doing, whether judgment comes in the temporal or the eternal. If we understood the damage, the judgment that would come down on us, if we understood the debt we pile up for ourselves, we would not be inclined to make these choices, their allure would be lost and we'd be able to make a more rational judgment.

Even back to the beginning, with Adam and Eve, Satan preyed upon their ignorance as to the long-term consequences of their choice to disobey God, deceiving Eve into believing that what she would gain would be worth the cost, and Adam was simply too much of a coward to obey God instead of Eve.

How many times have you talked to an older person about their life experiences, and heard some variation of the phrase "if I only knew then what I knew now, things would have been different?" Solomon exhorts us to pursue wisdom so that we don't find ourselves trapped in that very place of ignorance, making sinful decisions, and only learning the error of our ways afterwards.

God's desire for us is that, through pursuing wisdom, pursuing understanding the heart of God, we would be prepared to face these temptations, knowing what they really are, not being deluded by the deceit and empty words, and choose to align ourselves with God in rejecting sin.

The world wants you to believe that your choices don't matter, that there's always a way to make amends, that forgiveness and love always win out in the end. The truth is that justice will be had, sin will be punished, and our choices matter, leading us down different paths that all lead into eternity.

How we spend eternity, let alone our temporal lives, always depends on what we choose in the present. Learn about how and why to make better choices, from the God who is good, and you will not spend an eternity suffering for the temporary gains you sought to fill your life with now.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 6:12-15

A worthless person, a wicked man,
Walks with a perverse mouth;
He winks with his eyes,
He shuffles his feet,
He points with his fingers;
Perversity is in his heart,
He devises evil continually,
He sows discord.
Therefore his calamity shall come suddenly;
Suddenly he shall be broken without remedy.

Proverbs 6:12-15 (NKJV).

What are worthless and wicked people like?
    They are constant liars,
signaling their deceit with a wink of the eye,
    a nudge of the foot, or the wiggle of fingers.
Their perverted hearts plot evil,
    and they constantly stir up trouble.
But they will be destroyed suddenly,
    broken in an instant beyond all hope of healing.

Proverbs 6:12-15 (NLT).

A worthless person, a wicked man,
    goes about with crooked speech,
winks with his eyes, scrapes with his feet,
    points with his finger,
with perverted heart devises evil,
    continually sowing discord;
therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly;
    in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.

Proverbs 6:12-15 (RSV).

I've talked about the wicked and their destruction before, but this passage provides opportunity to discuss something important: translations and exegesis.

The Bible wasn't inspired in English. This is a controversial statement in that most people have an understanding of the Bible being inerrant which is not logically coherent. If you have ever asserted that a specific translation, let alone only that translation, is inerrant, you were wrong.

To start, the modern understanding of an "error" is considerably more exacting than the ancient, and many folks want to treat the Bible as if it were a textbook, a reference manual that someone sat down and wrote with the specific intent of communicating very specific messages in every passage. While this is true for some passages, like this one, it's not always clear exactly what the utility is in a section of scripture.

I enjoy the NKJV because it was translated in a word-for-word manner while attempting to reconcile the grandeur of the language in the KJV with the multitude of manuscripts that have been collected since the KJV was written. In a "word-for-word" type of translation, when an illustration, allegory, idiom, metaphor, or a cultural reference was used in the original text, instead of trying to account for those understandings in the process of translating, they're reproduced "as-is".

If you look at verse 13 in the original language, it most literally states "He winks with his eyes, he speaks with his feet, he teaches with his fingers." Look again at how each of the three translations I provided are communicating that same information, just in slightly different fashion. Even better, choose from some of the other translations you're familiar with (or not) and see how the entire passage is rendered differently in each while still trying to communicate the same truths.

The reason this is important to see and understand is because much ado is made of specific words and phrases in various English translations, and yet folks to not do due diligence and reference the entirety of the scriptures we have, placing their faith on the translators having done an accurate job and not having left out any important details.

If you've ever heard someone talk about a "bad" translation, exactly how would you imagine that is possible if the Bible is inerrant in every single manifestation of it? To help drive this point home, if you tear a page out of any Bible, does it magically return to that Bible to keep it intact? Could a Bible ever be printed with a typo in its pages? Is it possible to misquote the Bible?

In each circumstance, if we are to assert that, to be inerrant, every copy or manifestation of the Bible is perfect, the answer you are required to provide to those above questions is rather different than the one you're logically inclined to provide.

We can see that damaged Bibles can be missing pages, or are perhaps defaced, but God does not somehow correct them. We have some translations that are "better" than others, and some which are downright deceptive in the efforts of the translators to re-write scripture through the translation process to suit modern proclivities.

It's this illogical assertion regarding what it inerrant that has given people like Bart Ehrman any sort of platform at all, in that they push this concept to the logical extreme, and declare that Christianity cannot be true on the grounds that there have been typos or errors in the process of transcribing or translating scripture, even if those errors do not affect any actual truth being transmitted by the scripture. The rigidity of the understanding creates a barrier to belief which was not constructed by God, but by Satan, who regularly uses false dichotomies to disarm and disable those who truly seek God's will in their life.

Think about it. If Satan can tell you both that every manifestation of scripture needs to be perfect, right down to the last jot or tittle, and then in the next breath provide examples where any manifestation of scripture has an "error", can you see what the "logical" conclusion would then be?

Satan, by emphasizing an exaggerated understanding of what scripture is supposed to be, will create the very circumstances on which he can then discredit the truth of scripture without actually arguing about any of it in specific. If anything, Satan wants the belief in the idea of scripture being inerrant to be as strict as possible by human standards, so that just as we have all fallen short, so will any scripture, so why read and study it if it will not truly lead us to understanding truth?

This is why it is extremely ignorant to presume that Satan wants to undermine the authority of scripture merely by taking potshots, by discrediting specific doctrines or theologies within a framework of debate. Satan wants the whole Bible to both be casually dismissed as well as debated to a degree of pedantry that distracts from the necessary ecumenism within the Church.

Most recently, I was struck with the naive hypocrisy in a book I've been reading recently from a Father in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, that at the surface appeared like a logical claim, but upon further inspection was a demonstration of great stupidity.

The basic nature of the claim was that, if there wasn't a specific sect in the "Church" which was "The Church", that the different sects were relative to each other, then no similar argument could be made to distinguish between the other religions of the world that would then be relative to Christianity in exactly the same fashion.

This is the logical equivalent to saying that your physical body is no more distinct from anyone else's because your hand and your foot are different. That because your hand is not your entire body, that because your tongue is not your body, and so on and so forth, that because there is no one distilled element of the body which represents The Body, there is no "body" at all, is moronic.

Look at this passage about the wicked man, and how some translations are attempting to reproduce what he's literally doing as part of his wickedness, and some are trying to communicate what the meaning or significance of what he's literally doing, really is. Each is correct, though each is different, and if any were held up as the "perfect standard", the others would be considered "wrong" or "in error".

The "high standard" which you may be tempted to think comes from God may not at all, and Satan has no qualm feeding you all the lies and rationalizations you would desire to first foster an impossibly high ideal that Satan can then turn against you to undermine your witness and your faith.

Having a standard is not the problem. Scrutinizing translations is not the problem. The problem is when we add to what God really says, when, like Eve, we add to what God has really commanded, as if to demonstrate our own superiority. The problem is that we aren't ever nearly as clever as the master of lies, who has been learning and refining how he can trick and deceive humans for thousands and thousands of years, and yet we somehow think that we're the ones with the upper hand?

If pursuing God, in earnest and in humility, we would have the upper hand, but that also comes with genuine humility, not a blind arrogance being passed off as humility. When we start erecting edifices, physical or psychological, in the name of glorfying God, but instead only make much of ourselves, it is our actions, not just our words, our declared intent, that God will judge us by.

Read various translations. Go back to the original languages. Learn about what God truly thinks constitutes as "error", and refine the Gospel that you preach to adhere only to truth, empty of all vain puffery.

Avoid being as the wicked man, where the disparity between your actions and your words betray your true master, the one whom you truly worship and obey.

Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 4:10-19

Hear, my son, and receive my sayings,
And the years of your life will be many.
I have taught you in the way of wisdom;
I have led you in right paths.
When you walk, your steps will not be hindered,
And when you run, you will not stumble.
Take firm hold of instruction, do not let go;
Keep her, for she is your life.

Do not enter the path of the wicked,
And do not walk in the way of evil.
Avoid it, do not travel on it;
Turn away from it and pass on.
For they do not sleep unless they have done evil;
And their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fall.
For they eat the bread of wickedness,
And drink the wine of violence.

But the path of the just is like the shining sun,
That shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.
The way of the wicked is like darkness;
They do not know what makes them stumble.

Proverbs 4:10-19 (NKJV).

Wisdom, to some extent, doesn't really change your future as much as it changes the probability of specific futures coming to pass. Being wise won't change many of the choices you'll face, but it will change how the outcome of those decisions plays out.

Humans don't live in a vacuum either, where the decisions we make affect only us, and we are the only ones privy to the details going into the choice that needs to be made. Our choices do have an impact on those around us, and those same people can often be witness to what prompted a choice, as well as the choice we've made through our actions.

Solomon tells us that the wicked both promote their own evil, as well as not understanding what it is that causes them to fail. Anecdotally we've all known people like this, who keep making the same mistakes, who keep nosing into other people's lives, and who complain endlessly about how unfair their life circumstances are. These people do not see the connection between their actions and the consequences, as if the two are not connected.

This is a big part of wisdom, that action and consequence be connected and visibly so. When one makes a choice, we need immediate feedback to help refine the decision making process for the next time a decision of that nature comes up. When we don't have that feedback, it becomes very difficult to say whether the choice was "good" or "bad" at all, and whether what followed was a result of the decision that was made or some other unseen decision made by someone else whose consequences we just happened to fall into.

This is why Solomon discusses the "path of the just" being a light, because if you can see the connections, if you are examining and inspecting, then there is a feedback loop wherein continuous good decisions reinforces the boldness and confidence in making further decisions, and this becomes apparent not just to you, but to those around you.

For better and for worse.

If one is accustomed to walking in darkness, what is the natural response when a light shows up, especially unexpectedly? We wince, we cover our eyes, we try to protect ourselves from the light. If this new light causes a convicting shadow to fall on your life, if the good decisions of others made by wisdom start to expose how poorly your own decisions are, the immediate response is almost never a positive one.

This is why the wicked cannot rest, and why they try to find comfort in not knowing why anything happens, nor having any of the connections between what they do and the result made known, because they wish to persist in their ignorance, to take the easy path which avoids growth and humility, to instead be consumed by anger and envy at the source of light, exposing their own darkness.

"Misery loves company" and "honesty is the best policy" are two phrases that help capture some of the feeling in this passage. Wise choices bring positive outcomes to those who adhere to them, and wicked choices bring negative outcomes to those who adhere to them, but again notice that the wicked to not make this connection, they do not understand that their wickedness is what besets them, and so they continue in it, believing that their redemption is just around the corner.

Things will be different "this time".

While the wise cannot insulate themselves from the wicked, they can make the best choices in how to deal with the circumstances they face, and that includes when their paths cross with the wicked. There will be a disparity, both in the choices made and the understanding of the downstream impact of those choices, but those are not a "bad thing", they're the natural consequence of wickedness or wisdom.

Pursue wisdom and understanding, reject the ignorance of wickedness.