My son, if you become surety for your friend,
If you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger,
You are snared by the words of your mouth;
You are taken by the words of your mouth.
So do this, my son, and deliver yourself;
For you have come into the hand of your friend:
Go and humble yourself;
Plead with your friend.
Give no sleep to your eyes,
Nor slumber to your eyelids.
Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter,
And like a bird from the hand of the fowler.
Proverbs 6:1-5 (NKJV).
Years ago I became familiar with the phrase "piecrust promise". The idea is that this type of promise is "easily made, easily broken." The promises that we make, the circumstances we bind ourselves to, matter. Details matter, friendships matter, your friends and neighbors matter.
Solomon does not tell the son who has made a bad pledge to neglect the promise, nor to disregard the friend, but instead to plead with them on how to satisfy or break free from the agreement. The details on what extent is reasonable for the friend to require are not discussed, not offered as a "balance", because the promise has already been made, and whether in wisdom or foolishness, we should stand by our promises, or at the minimum be honest about our capacity to fulfill them.
The natural consequence of this is that we should carelessly make promises, and will in turn likely make fewer of them. Our word, our honor, is not something we should toss about without care and consideration. What we commit to should be something that we will have no hesitation supporting well into the future, and if we cannot, it is our responsibility to put forth the effort to make things right.
Note also that Solomon does not allow for deception on anyone else's part to discredit the process he suggests, in the need to take seriously the promises we've made. "By the words of your mouth" is not about what others have done, honestly or not, but what you have committed to, and what you will now need to find a way to escape.
The allusion to the hunted, the snared, does not imply anything untoward about your friend, in the same way that hunters and fowlers do not work in animosity, but in necessity, the ultimate fate of their quarry not being what is important, and it is not their fault that you have fallen prey to them, especially in that not being a bird or a doe, you actively contributed to the very circumstance you now find yourself in.
The nature of this advice is to foster a high-trust environment where fewer promises are made, but those promises are taken very seriously, and can be relied on predictably. In a low-trust environment, that any agreement was made would be irrelevant, the individual should just do whatever they please, including making or accepting promises with the intent to manipulate circumstances to maximize their own benefit, even if their "honor" is degraded, because among those without any "honor", what are you really losing with a forked tongue?
Instead we should only make promises that we intend to uphold, and for those which have been made in error, we are to submit ourselves to those we have promised in order to escape or satisfy our commitment. We are to be freed of our word by taking it seriously and submitting ourselves to those we gave it to in honesty.
In doing so, we set an example of behavior that grows our bonds with our friends, even if we cannot satisfy what we have promised, and that enables trust and communicates that, even when we realize we've made a mistake, we are still going to behave in a way which glorifies God. We are still going to show them respect due, whether they deserve it or not.
If that sounds hard to do, don't make bad promises in the first place.
Avoiding failure may be painful up front, but it is considerably less painful in the long run than trying to make amends after you've failed. Always easier to do the right thing first than rebuilding after the destruction of sin in our lives.
Showing posts with label Neighbors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neighbors. Show all posts
28.3.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 3:27-30
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,
When it is in the power of your hand to do so.
Do not say to your neighbor,
“Go, and come back,
And tomorrow I will give it,”
When you have it with you.
Do not devise evil against your neighbor,
For he dwells by you for safety’s sake.
Do not strive with a man without cause,
If he has done you no harm.
Proverbs 3:27-30 (NKJV).
This passage reminded me of Ananias and Sapphira, in that the deceitful games we play with resources that have been entrusted to us never reflect well on our motivations. If you owe someone something, and you have the capacity to give it to them, there is no "good" reason to withhold it from them, though plenty of "bad".
The difference between a high and low-trust society is significant, because behaviors are entirely different in each. In one the well being of others is considered along with personal gain, balancing them, where in the other personal gain is such a priority that even negative impacts on others do not offset the viability of a choice.
God desires a high-trust society for those who follow him, that people would deal openly and honestly with each other, that selfish motivations would be put aside, and that people would care about one another, both in the present and looking towards the future. The problem is that in a high-trust society, only those with good character will be content, happy.
Thus the crux of the problem: humans are born naturally crooked, inherently solipsistic, and naturally form low-trust societies, because without God's work in our lives "good character" never has a chance to reliably form. The patterns don't ever get truly etched in our hearts and minds, but become conditional tools used when it benefits us, and set aside when they don't.
The less the explicit influence of God has existed on a people, the more pronounced this dynamic is, with those whose rebellion against God being most open thus creating and living in the most cutthroat and selfish of neighborhoods. The people who instead align themselves to God build high-trust societies, as their priorities are not stuck in the material, but account properly for the supernatural.
In our modern world, there is much said about how to treat a "neighbor", who one's "neighbor" is, and the advances in technology have certainly skewed that understanding in a manner which is easy to exploit by those who are in rebellion with God, whether openly or in secret, and on a scope which is able to affect lives which, in Jesus' era, lived almost entirely disconnected, unrelated.
Especially with the Enlightenment's attempts at creating a "secular religion", complete with a set of moral guidelines, the emphasis has been on the avoidance of conflict and the self-sacrificial steps one can take to improve the lot of someone else. These are seen as the highest virtues, and while sacrifice is virtuous, charity a good thing, God does not place them in the same priority as to how the Christian faith is to be walked out.
God's primary concern, to put it bluntly, is that people repent and are saved from sin, not that they are comfortable and fed with a roof over their head. Look at the book of Job if you want to better understand the extent to which God "cares" about creature comforts, material possessions, and how their presence or absence should (or shouldn't) affect our ability to praise God.
Humans were created to glorify God, not ourselves, and when you look back in Genesis at the Tower of Babel, the hubris on display with regard to human accomplishment in seeking to obtain material salvation for ourselves, you will get the sense that God doesn't enjoy or entertain humanistic endeavors that run contrary to the glorification of God.
Even simpler still, this passage speaks to common decency, that if you are literally living next to someone, you should treat them well, because you both are part of the same "tribe", the same "nation", and you are living near each other for mutually beneficial reasons, so do not undermine the unity you would otherwise have for selfish reasons.
But this is an ideal, and while even the USA has experienced it before, in the past when neighbors were actually neighbors in this sense, that was before each household was treated as an individual country, each home a nation unto itself, fixated on distinction and individualism, and yet paying lip service to "community" through civic acts which held no real meaning in the grand scheme of things.
All of it brought about by our open rebellion against God.
In the USA, neighbors now plot evil and manifest it through votes, through lawsuits, and through social manipulation, through the twisting of scripture to align with the secular religious priorities, all working together to create and sustain the low-trust society we now exist in, where despite living next to you, your neighbor no longer is concerned about your safety, but will openly plot your demise, expecting that you're doing the same to them, any evidence to the contrary be damned.
In this light, while we should try to create and uphold a high-trust society, it is actually unwise to just apply wisdom blindly, to presume that because a choice or a path is wise under ideal circumstances, it is equally so when dealing with everything else. This does not mean the wisdom is invalid, or that it is not true or a noble and righteous ideal, just that God does not command the suicide of his followers as a means of declaring God's glory.
Treating those who are in rebellion with God as if they really are your neighbors, as if they are united with you in pursuit of glorifying God, you do not spread the Gospel, because implicit in your actions is the belief they are already saved, they just need to "walk in the faith".
In treating those in rebellion as if they are already saved, you only distract them from their need for salvation, and you burden them with living in repentance without the power of God.
People need salvation, neighbors who are united in their identity. Merely pretending you have that is not applying wisdom.
When it is in the power of your hand to do so.
Do not say to your neighbor,
“Go, and come back,
And tomorrow I will give it,”
When you have it with you.
Do not devise evil against your neighbor,
For he dwells by you for safety’s sake.
Do not strive with a man without cause,
If he has done you no harm.
Proverbs 3:27-30 (NKJV).
This passage reminded me of Ananias and Sapphira, in that the deceitful games we play with resources that have been entrusted to us never reflect well on our motivations. If you owe someone something, and you have the capacity to give it to them, there is no "good" reason to withhold it from them, though plenty of "bad".
The difference between a high and low-trust society is significant, because behaviors are entirely different in each. In one the well being of others is considered along with personal gain, balancing them, where in the other personal gain is such a priority that even negative impacts on others do not offset the viability of a choice.
God desires a high-trust society for those who follow him, that people would deal openly and honestly with each other, that selfish motivations would be put aside, and that people would care about one another, both in the present and looking towards the future. The problem is that in a high-trust society, only those with good character will be content, happy.
Thus the crux of the problem: humans are born naturally crooked, inherently solipsistic, and naturally form low-trust societies, because without God's work in our lives "good character" never has a chance to reliably form. The patterns don't ever get truly etched in our hearts and minds, but become conditional tools used when it benefits us, and set aside when they don't.
The less the explicit influence of God has existed on a people, the more pronounced this dynamic is, with those whose rebellion against God being most open thus creating and living in the most cutthroat and selfish of neighborhoods. The people who instead align themselves to God build high-trust societies, as their priorities are not stuck in the material, but account properly for the supernatural.
In our modern world, there is much said about how to treat a "neighbor", who one's "neighbor" is, and the advances in technology have certainly skewed that understanding in a manner which is easy to exploit by those who are in rebellion with God, whether openly or in secret, and on a scope which is able to affect lives which, in Jesus' era, lived almost entirely disconnected, unrelated.
Especially with the Enlightenment's attempts at creating a "secular religion", complete with a set of moral guidelines, the emphasis has been on the avoidance of conflict and the self-sacrificial steps one can take to improve the lot of someone else. These are seen as the highest virtues, and while sacrifice is virtuous, charity a good thing, God does not place them in the same priority as to how the Christian faith is to be walked out.
God's primary concern, to put it bluntly, is that people repent and are saved from sin, not that they are comfortable and fed with a roof over their head. Look at the book of Job if you want to better understand the extent to which God "cares" about creature comforts, material possessions, and how their presence or absence should (or shouldn't) affect our ability to praise God.
Humans were created to glorify God, not ourselves, and when you look back in Genesis at the Tower of Babel, the hubris on display with regard to human accomplishment in seeking to obtain material salvation for ourselves, you will get the sense that God doesn't enjoy or entertain humanistic endeavors that run contrary to the glorification of God.
Even simpler still, this passage speaks to common decency, that if you are literally living next to someone, you should treat them well, because you both are part of the same "tribe", the same "nation", and you are living near each other for mutually beneficial reasons, so do not undermine the unity you would otherwise have for selfish reasons.
But this is an ideal, and while even the USA has experienced it before, in the past when neighbors were actually neighbors in this sense, that was before each household was treated as an individual country, each home a nation unto itself, fixated on distinction and individualism, and yet paying lip service to "community" through civic acts which held no real meaning in the grand scheme of things.
All of it brought about by our open rebellion against God.
In the USA, neighbors now plot evil and manifest it through votes, through lawsuits, and through social manipulation, through the twisting of scripture to align with the secular religious priorities, all working together to create and sustain the low-trust society we now exist in, where despite living next to you, your neighbor no longer is concerned about your safety, but will openly plot your demise, expecting that you're doing the same to them, any evidence to the contrary be damned.
In this light, while we should try to create and uphold a high-trust society, it is actually unwise to just apply wisdom blindly, to presume that because a choice or a path is wise under ideal circumstances, it is equally so when dealing with everything else. This does not mean the wisdom is invalid, or that it is not true or a noble and righteous ideal, just that God does not command the suicide of his followers as a means of declaring God's glory.
Treating those who are in rebellion with God as if they really are your neighbors, as if they are united with you in pursuit of glorifying God, you do not spread the Gospel, because implicit in your actions is the belief they are already saved, they just need to "walk in the faith".
In treating those in rebellion as if they are already saved, you only distract them from their need for salvation, and you burden them with living in repentance without the power of God.
People need salvation, neighbors who are united in their identity. Merely pretending you have that is not applying wisdom.
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