The integrity of the upright will guide them,
But the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them.
Riches do not profit in the day of wrath,
But righteousness delivers from death.
The righteousness of the blameless will direct his way aright,
But the wicked will fall by his own wickedness.
The righteousness of the upright will deliver them,
But the unfaithful will be caught by their lust.
Proverbs 11:3-6 (NKJV).
There's a phrase that's been cited, in the context of relationships, where "you're either growing apart or growing together", though the specific phrasing varies from one citation to another, and also exists in various contexts as well.
That said, the basic idea is that there is no "middle ground". There is no "neutral", no "cruise control", that you're either actively investing in a relationship or you're letting it stagnate and die out. We dance around this idea with other idioms like "familiarity breeds contempt".
We hate being forced to choose. We hate when we find ourselves in a circumstance where a choice must be made and we don't like any of the options we're offered. We want to think there's a "third way" that is somehow being hidden, that if somehow we twist words and try to come at the issue a different way that we'll find another option, another path to take which better suits what we want.
When it comes to righteousness, however, there's only two paths, despite moderns efforts to try and claim otherwise.
"Sin", you see, is not an objective existence, it's subjective, in that like the concept of "cold", it exists in a relationship to another concept. Temperature is a measure of heat, and one temperature may be described as "cold" compared to another, "cold" itself is just a relative term.
Likewise, "sin" is relative to God's perfect character attributes. The greater you lack alignment, the more sinful you are, and while all have fallen short, some do fall further than others and that is reflected in the consequences they face here in this life.
To deny God's attributes as "good" undermines "sin", and so modern philosophies have sought to undermine the definition of God, or to change it such that they can sit on the throne. The problem is that this attempt at regicide only leads to more sin. There is no righteousness to be found at the end of a path which included denying God's desires for our own behavior.
We can't "get there" by any other path, and since God is the standard, the one perfect example, everything else is simply a variation of failure. There are a nearly infinite number of ways to miss the mark, to still not be perfect, and so we cannot on our own overcome sin completely.
Righteousness is not of us alone, it's in our response to God and in how we reflect God's characteristics in our behavior. It's not us blazing a new path, it's us taking the one God has pleaded with us to take from the beginning.
In seeking God's desire for us in our choices, we will constantly be doubting our own inclinations, and learn about how we each fail on a consistent basis. This self-doubt is necessary to combat the sense of solipsism, the belief that we're all that exists and everything else is just the products of our own imagination.
We see this dynamic play out all the time where people will suggest that reality is not as is objectively seen, but that it is open to revision, subjective, and that their thoughts or their mind is the source of both the current states and any future states. In short, that they are viewing the objective reality, and that everyone else needs to recognize this truth.
It's never about really denying the existence of God, but changing who God is, or who gets to wear the name badge. It's never about destroying the throne, but changing who should sit on it.
It's always about trying to change the standard for comparison, never abolishing the need for a standard in the first place.
And it's in this that, because the standards we would set are always much lower than what God really is, we find ourselves consumed with wickedness because of our foolishness. We even double-down after the first wave of consequences may arrive, hoping that perhaps the consequences were just a fluke, a rarity that would not manifest again. Until it does.
This is why God, in respecting the choices that humans make, will gladly break you if it would lead to your salvation. To take away your health, your wealth, your family, whatever it is that distracts you from the most critical truth: you are not God.
This passage highlights that we can either set God as our standard, pursue righteousness, and find satisfaction on into eternity as all that is sinful is destroyed or judged, or we can be caught up in that judgment and experience eternal punishment for our infinitely ungrateful foolishness.
We are either set free from the consequences of sin by obeying God, or we are condemned by how we deny and rebel.
There is no third choice.
Showing posts with label Righteousness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Righteousness. Show all posts
2.5.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 10:11
The mouth of the righteous is a well of life,
But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
Proverbs 10:11 (NKJV).
How many people have ever died for an ideal? Sacrificed their own lives in pursuit of some goal, some state of being?
Now, how many people have died for someone else's ideal? Sacrificed their own lives in pursuit of someone else's goal, someone else's state of being?
The contrast here is highlighted by Jesus Christ, who died for the sake of humanity, for the ideal of God to reconcile us in a way which we could never possibly do on our own.
The rest of us?
We only aspire to such sacrifices, or at least, we do so publicly. We want the social credit of being so loving, but without actually making the sacrifices that make such a response justified.
The wicked sell all sorts of paths to salvation. Get rich quick, get revenge on someone who wronged you, enjoy yourself and then skip out on the bills. Deny God and live in sin and resist the calling of the Holy Spirit in your heart, the true and only unforgivable sin.
In each case the sinner is taking action, and the actions are destructive. Adultery, fornication, murder, theft, all of them acts of aggression, justified in various ways, but all different types of violence.
In the original language, here are the various ways that the word "covers" is translated throughout the Bible in the NASB:
closed (2), clothed (1), conceal (1), conceals (8), cover (50), covered (51), covering (4), covers (20), engulfed (3), forgive (1), hidden (1), hide (2), keep (1), made a covering (1), overwhelm (2), overwhelmed (2), take refuge (1).
Notice the connotation, and apply it back to the passage. "Actions speak louder than words".
Where the wise speak and their words bring life, the wicked are silenced by their own actions.
Who cares about the "equality" in economic and social status if it requires the death of millions to sustain it?
Who cares about the "freedom" from parental burdens if it requires the murder of the unborn to attain it?
The wicked are quick with the tongue, but their feet and hands are quicker, and they sow only destruction in their path, hating all that is "good", all that is "wise", not being content to leave well enough alone and pursue their own ends, they must also seek validation from others to compensate for the nagging realization that they are terribly wrong and terribly damned and nothing they do can change that.
The immoral woman, referenced earlier in Proverbs, lured ignorant men in with empty flattery and wordplay like "honey". Desirable, lofty, something that one would want.
But to achieve such ends requires violence. It requires hostile, action be taken, and in due time no amount of empty rhetoric can distract from the natural consequences of those actions.
Be wary of the wicked, and in keeping company with them, for you cannot protect yourself from them with the same empty words that they use, but through the capacity for and strength to resist the violence they would seek to bring upon you to suit their ends.
While we can dream of being so strong, in the end only God is infinite in this regard, which is why it took an act of God to provide a path of reconciliation, and it's only by acts of God that our hard hearts are softened to understand truth.
Do not resist the work of God, and do not look away from the violence caused by the wicked. Understand where it comes from and why, and flee from those who do evil in the name of doing good.
But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
Proverbs 10:11 (NKJV).
How many people have ever died for an ideal? Sacrificed their own lives in pursuit of some goal, some state of being?
Now, how many people have died for someone else's ideal? Sacrificed their own lives in pursuit of someone else's goal, someone else's state of being?
The contrast here is highlighted by Jesus Christ, who died for the sake of humanity, for the ideal of God to reconcile us in a way which we could never possibly do on our own.
The rest of us?
We only aspire to such sacrifices, or at least, we do so publicly. We want the social credit of being so loving, but without actually making the sacrifices that make such a response justified.
The wicked sell all sorts of paths to salvation. Get rich quick, get revenge on someone who wronged you, enjoy yourself and then skip out on the bills. Deny God and live in sin and resist the calling of the Holy Spirit in your heart, the true and only unforgivable sin.
In each case the sinner is taking action, and the actions are destructive. Adultery, fornication, murder, theft, all of them acts of aggression, justified in various ways, but all different types of violence.
In the original language, here are the various ways that the word "covers" is translated throughout the Bible in the NASB:
closed (2), clothed (1), conceal (1), conceals (8), cover (50), covered (51), covering (4), covers (20), engulfed (3), forgive (1), hidden (1), hide (2), keep (1), made a covering (1), overwhelm (2), overwhelmed (2), take refuge (1).
Notice the connotation, and apply it back to the passage. "Actions speak louder than words".
Where the wise speak and their words bring life, the wicked are silenced by their own actions.
Who cares about the "equality" in economic and social status if it requires the death of millions to sustain it?
Who cares about the "freedom" from parental burdens if it requires the murder of the unborn to attain it?
The wicked are quick with the tongue, but their feet and hands are quicker, and they sow only destruction in their path, hating all that is "good", all that is "wise", not being content to leave well enough alone and pursue their own ends, they must also seek validation from others to compensate for the nagging realization that they are terribly wrong and terribly damned and nothing they do can change that.
The immoral woman, referenced earlier in Proverbs, lured ignorant men in with empty flattery and wordplay like "honey". Desirable, lofty, something that one would want.
But to achieve such ends requires violence. It requires hostile, action be taken, and in due time no amount of empty rhetoric can distract from the natural consequences of those actions.
Be wary of the wicked, and in keeping company with them, for you cannot protect yourself from them with the same empty words that they use, but through the capacity for and strength to resist the violence they would seek to bring upon you to suit their ends.
While we can dream of being so strong, in the end only God is infinite in this regard, which is why it took an act of God to provide a path of reconciliation, and it's only by acts of God that our hard hearts are softened to understand truth.
Do not resist the work of God, and do not look away from the violence caused by the wicked. Understand where it comes from and why, and flee from those who do evil in the name of doing good.
29.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 10:6-7
Blessings are on the head of the righteous,
But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
The memory of the righteous is blessed,
But the name of the wicked will rot.
Proverbs 10:6-7 (NKJV).
Life is not without struggles, whether you are in allegiance with God or still living in an unrepentant rebellion. The difference is in what significance those struggles play in your life, and thus how you will be remembered by those who hear tails of your exploits.
For the righteous, struggles are part of the path towards incremental refinement. Temptation is the warning that there is an area of weakness, a warning sign for an avenue for sin to manifest. This weakness is never going to go away completely because we are imperfect beings, and despite our efforts to convince ourselves otherwise, we can't conquer the desires of the flesh without help.
That's where the biggest contrast between the righteous and the wicked comes from, where we place faith. The righteous place their faith in God, in Jesus Christ, as their savior. The wicked place it in themselves, or some other temporal being of significantly more finite power. These beliefs then affect behavior, in the same way that placing a colored lens over a light will make it produce that color of light.
For the righteous, struggles are a stop along the way to a different destination, but for the wicked, the struggles end up defining them, being the end of their journey, because they put their faith in power which denies reality instead of aligns with it. The wicked see the struggle as something to avoid, and in so doing, they will not generate the strength, the inertia, to break through to the "other side".
As an example, if you have small children, they try your patience on a regular basis. They are difficult little solipsists who do not understand reality and will demand that you bend every rule in existence to keep them happy.
The wicked would rather just kill the child, or prevent its conception, and avoid the difficulty altogether because raising a child would distract them from more important achievements in this life. They're not wrong in that children do cost time and money which could otherwise be spent on whatever your heart desired, but it's a short-sighted and myopic view of existence.
Hedonism, by any other name, would still be just as selfish.
This also explains why the wicked are so often surrounded by death. Recently a child was left to die by medical professionals who refused to give the child back to the parents who had secured a means to try and treat their child. They weren't even allowed to try and fight to keep their child alive, they were told that they needed to just let him die and then move on.
Pray tell, how can anything else that comes from the mouth of someone who says that ever be heard? If someone has just told you that you have to accept death, that you cannot struggle, that you cannot expend resources as you see fit, but that you must submit to their higher authority and rule? These folks speak of "freedom" and "empowerment", and yet they must control and micromanage the lives of others to accomplish their goals.
Does it then make sense why the "mouth of the wicked" would be "covered by violence" if what they do and what they say to not match? Their words don't matter in contrast with their actions.
You see, the wicked want to be God. They mimic the relationship dynamics through laws and social manipulation in believing that if they can wrest control over someone else's life, then perhaps they can even one day overturn God's sovereignty over their own existence.
It's that very power they wield which ends up destroying them, because they keep gathering until it overcomes them. There is no point at which "ok I am close enough" ever crosses their mind, it's an all-or-nothing pursuit to become infinite.
This is why struggle refines the righteous and defines the wicked, both now and on into the future, because the "test of time" only makes the disparity all the more clear in hindsight.
But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
The memory of the righteous is blessed,
But the name of the wicked will rot.
Proverbs 10:6-7 (NKJV).
Life is not without struggles, whether you are in allegiance with God or still living in an unrepentant rebellion. The difference is in what significance those struggles play in your life, and thus how you will be remembered by those who hear tails of your exploits.
For the righteous, struggles are part of the path towards incremental refinement. Temptation is the warning that there is an area of weakness, a warning sign for an avenue for sin to manifest. This weakness is never going to go away completely because we are imperfect beings, and despite our efforts to convince ourselves otherwise, we can't conquer the desires of the flesh without help.
That's where the biggest contrast between the righteous and the wicked comes from, where we place faith. The righteous place their faith in God, in Jesus Christ, as their savior. The wicked place it in themselves, or some other temporal being of significantly more finite power. These beliefs then affect behavior, in the same way that placing a colored lens over a light will make it produce that color of light.
For the righteous, struggles are a stop along the way to a different destination, but for the wicked, the struggles end up defining them, being the end of their journey, because they put their faith in power which denies reality instead of aligns with it. The wicked see the struggle as something to avoid, and in so doing, they will not generate the strength, the inertia, to break through to the "other side".
As an example, if you have small children, they try your patience on a regular basis. They are difficult little solipsists who do not understand reality and will demand that you bend every rule in existence to keep them happy.
The wicked would rather just kill the child, or prevent its conception, and avoid the difficulty altogether because raising a child would distract them from more important achievements in this life. They're not wrong in that children do cost time and money which could otherwise be spent on whatever your heart desired, but it's a short-sighted and myopic view of existence.
Hedonism, by any other name, would still be just as selfish.
This also explains why the wicked are so often surrounded by death. Recently a child was left to die by medical professionals who refused to give the child back to the parents who had secured a means to try and treat their child. They weren't even allowed to try and fight to keep their child alive, they were told that they needed to just let him die and then move on.
Pray tell, how can anything else that comes from the mouth of someone who says that ever be heard? If someone has just told you that you have to accept death, that you cannot struggle, that you cannot expend resources as you see fit, but that you must submit to their higher authority and rule? These folks speak of "freedom" and "empowerment", and yet they must control and micromanage the lives of others to accomplish their goals.
Does it then make sense why the "mouth of the wicked" would be "covered by violence" if what they do and what they say to not match? Their words don't matter in contrast with their actions.
You see, the wicked want to be God. They mimic the relationship dynamics through laws and social manipulation in believing that if they can wrest control over someone else's life, then perhaps they can even one day overturn God's sovereignty over their own existence.
It's that very power they wield which ends up destroying them, because they keep gathering until it overcomes them. There is no point at which "ok I am close enough" ever crosses their mind, it's an all-or-nothing pursuit to become infinite.
This is why struggle refines the righteous and defines the wicked, both now and on into the future, because the "test of time" only makes the disparity all the more clear in hindsight.
26.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 10:2-3
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing,
But righteousness delivers from death.
The Lord will not allow the righteous soul to famish,
But He casts away the desire of the wicked.
Proverbs 10:2-3 (NKJV).
Biblical interpretation is not an easy thing, in part because it wasn't written in a single "go", and often without a lot of commentary from the era of origin, so while we can find considerable amounts of commentary and veritable textbooks written about the Bible now, we can't make the text say something that it doesn't and claim that we're being honest about our scriptural interpretation.
Taken most literally, all by itself without any context of the rest of scripture, it is easy to see how this bit of wisdom is simply wrong. Wickedness does profit, in this life at least. There are many righteous souls that have died from starvation.
While there are hints as to a bigger context, "profit" being contrasted with death, if taken literally again this wouldn't make sense in that the righteous die just as frequently as the unrighteous.
Context and meaning then don't come from just this little passage by itself "versus the world", and helps to highlight how there are themes and patterns of wisdom given throughout scripture, and you have to actually have read all of scripture in order to start picking them up yourself.
You have to read and re-read and then learn something completely unrelated and come back and read it again from a different perspective. The scriptures aren't changing at any point, they're trying to say the same thing the whole time, but our capacity to perceive the truth that is presented is contingent, and it changes over time, so it's not that "new truths" were inserted for our benefit, but that they were there the whole time and we just didn't see them.
The "treasures of wickedness profit nothing" because in the end, everyone dies physically, though Solomon is likely referring not to physical death, but spiritual. This theme of death not being physical started way back in Genesis with the serpent asking Eve "Did God really say you would die?"
Immediately after eating the fruit, neither Adam or Eve physically died, so the death was not a physical one, but spiritual. In the same manner, while those familiar with this theme from scripture will automatically begin connecting the dots to the larger connotation, to the memetic quality of the passage, if you just took this by itself it would seem entirely easy to disprove and show to be complete foolishness.
The second portion of the passage even moreso, if you do not know that the "life" being discussed, the nourishment, is not the physical but the spiritual. For those who are righteous, even though the body may suffer and die, their spirit is alive and well, being tended to by God on regular basis.
I hammer on this because, on the surface, God seems to make many promises to those who follow and obey that translate to material gain or satisfaction. The "problem" is that the writers of scripture are accounting for "dimensions" of understanding beyond just what's literally written on the page. They're relying on folks at least grasping that there is complexity, subtlety, nuance.
Without diving into downright gnosticism, re-read the passage and think of it entirely in spiritual terms, in the terms of how you will spend eternity after judgement by God. Separate the physical and the spiritual and understand that the analogy, the similarity, is not meant to be taken literally, but to be taken figuratively in trying to demonstrate a deeper truth through a dynamic that we'd already be familiar with and could then pattern the dynamics of understanding after.
A secular example of this is drawing parallels between plumbing and electrical systems. If you are familiar with how water flows through pipes, the properties of water and whatnot, there are a great many details about electricity which are also understood, despite the fact that we cannot literally see or observe electricity doing these things in the same way that we could with plumbing.
It's the use of an observable dynamic to help understand a hidden one that works of a similar pattern.
In eternity, it won't matter if you were a king or a pauper, what God judges is not your material success but your spiritual success, how well you lived your life according to the perfect standards God has set. Obviously, we all fail to meet this high standard, so it's not in what we did that determines our inevitable fate, but what we did with the works of Jesus Christ.
Do we place our faith in their ability to save us, or do we place our faith in our own works, hoping that they'll be worth anything at all? Do we trust in the fruits of wickedness, of our denying the order that God has set in place, to attempt to pay our fare across the river into the afterlife ourselves, or do we instead give up all claims of glory to make much of Jesus Christ instead?
Our actions betray our allegiances, our priorities.
But righteousness delivers from death.
The Lord will not allow the righteous soul to famish,
But He casts away the desire of the wicked.
Proverbs 10:2-3 (NKJV).
Biblical interpretation is not an easy thing, in part because it wasn't written in a single "go", and often without a lot of commentary from the era of origin, so while we can find considerable amounts of commentary and veritable textbooks written about the Bible now, we can't make the text say something that it doesn't and claim that we're being honest about our scriptural interpretation.
Taken most literally, all by itself without any context of the rest of scripture, it is easy to see how this bit of wisdom is simply wrong. Wickedness does profit, in this life at least. There are many righteous souls that have died from starvation.
While there are hints as to a bigger context, "profit" being contrasted with death, if taken literally again this wouldn't make sense in that the righteous die just as frequently as the unrighteous.
Context and meaning then don't come from just this little passage by itself "versus the world", and helps to highlight how there are themes and patterns of wisdom given throughout scripture, and you have to actually have read all of scripture in order to start picking them up yourself.
You have to read and re-read and then learn something completely unrelated and come back and read it again from a different perspective. The scriptures aren't changing at any point, they're trying to say the same thing the whole time, but our capacity to perceive the truth that is presented is contingent, and it changes over time, so it's not that "new truths" were inserted for our benefit, but that they were there the whole time and we just didn't see them.
The "treasures of wickedness profit nothing" because in the end, everyone dies physically, though Solomon is likely referring not to physical death, but spiritual. This theme of death not being physical started way back in Genesis with the serpent asking Eve "Did God really say you would die?"
Immediately after eating the fruit, neither Adam or Eve physically died, so the death was not a physical one, but spiritual. In the same manner, while those familiar with this theme from scripture will automatically begin connecting the dots to the larger connotation, to the memetic quality of the passage, if you just took this by itself it would seem entirely easy to disprove and show to be complete foolishness.
The second portion of the passage even moreso, if you do not know that the "life" being discussed, the nourishment, is not the physical but the spiritual. For those who are righteous, even though the body may suffer and die, their spirit is alive and well, being tended to by God on regular basis.
I hammer on this because, on the surface, God seems to make many promises to those who follow and obey that translate to material gain or satisfaction. The "problem" is that the writers of scripture are accounting for "dimensions" of understanding beyond just what's literally written on the page. They're relying on folks at least grasping that there is complexity, subtlety, nuance.
Without diving into downright gnosticism, re-read the passage and think of it entirely in spiritual terms, in the terms of how you will spend eternity after judgement by God. Separate the physical and the spiritual and understand that the analogy, the similarity, is not meant to be taken literally, but to be taken figuratively in trying to demonstrate a deeper truth through a dynamic that we'd already be familiar with and could then pattern the dynamics of understanding after.
A secular example of this is drawing parallels between plumbing and electrical systems. If you are familiar with how water flows through pipes, the properties of water and whatnot, there are a great many details about electricity which are also understood, despite the fact that we cannot literally see or observe electricity doing these things in the same way that we could with plumbing.
It's the use of an observable dynamic to help understand a hidden one that works of a similar pattern.
In eternity, it won't matter if you were a king or a pauper, what God judges is not your material success but your spiritual success, how well you lived your life according to the perfect standards God has set. Obviously, we all fail to meet this high standard, so it's not in what we did that determines our inevitable fate, but what we did with the works of Jesus Christ.
Do we place our faith in their ability to save us, or do we place our faith in our own works, hoping that they'll be worth anything at all? Do we trust in the fruits of wickedness, of our denying the order that God has set in place, to attempt to pay our fare across the river into the afterlife ourselves, or do we instead give up all claims of glory to make much of Jesus Christ instead?
Our actions betray our allegiances, our priorities.
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