Wisdom is found on the lips of him who has understanding,
But a rod is for the back of him who is devoid of understanding.
Proverbs 10:13 (NKJV).
Perhaps it's just the timing, but of late it's been on my mind that our lives have an inertia to them when we are intentional about how we live. When we take the time to think about what we do, why we do it, even down to what we say, not leaving anything entirely to chance. We experience no fewer struggles or setbacks, but because we've practiced intent, when circumstances really do demand our attention and our focused application of skill, even when things are going terribly for us we can keep moving forward.
In this passage, it's easy to desire understanding, if for no other reason than to avoid the contrast with the rod to our backs. Images of old childhood disciplinary methods bubble up, and that's not accidental given that wisdom and discipline are connected.
This seems rather obvious, right? Who would want to lack understanding if that meant "the rod"?
Thus the nature of the first deceit in Genesis, and the root of the most frequent pattern that has continued to this day. The deceit is that the rod doesn't exist, that consequences don't matter. You can choose whatever you want, do whatever you want, there is no "wrong".
And in turn, there is then no value in the sacrifices, the discipline, that is associated with wisdom.
Even in modern manufacturing we see this philosophy make an appearance, designing gadgets and widgets which can be assembled and subsequently operated with less and less skill required. The superficial claim is that this means that production is more efficient, less time wasted on steps for "quality", which are by nature not "value-added" activities. The end-users also don't have to waste time learning or validating anything, but can instead spend time just "doing".
Yet in practice the results are that because the people assembling and operating the gadgets and widgets don't need to be as skilled, they'll simply adapt and yesterday's "easy" becomes today's "normal", and folks start complaining all over again about the difficulties being faced. Instead of using that extra time more effectively, we fill it with wasteful activities, because whenever we've got a surplus of a resource, we never naturally try to make the most of it.
It's abundant, so why should we pinch pennies if we're "rich"?
We instinctively relegate our learning to only to that which are absolutely mandatory, what we're forced to learn, in the name of "efficiency". While we do then spend more time "doing", when anything goes wrong we have to stop, call on the services of someone who knows what to do next, and after the problem has been resolved we can then continue. Hopefully we also learn from the event so that we can avoid requiring assistance in the future, but if assistance is readily available, there's no pressure to take that understanding upon yourself.
We become like children, entirely incapable of acting beyond our current understanding, and constantly in need of "adults" to look after us, to direct us from moment-to-moment, to issue correction so that we can understand, and yet never really needing to grow up or go beyond what we know at the same time.
None of us knows everything, we all need help and assistance from time to time, we all have a lot that we could learn and have to select only so much to try and take on at a time, but that process is not prevented by anything but our own lack of motivation. There's nothing stopping us, we just don't want to do it.
And so we invite the rod to motivate us instead.
Wisdom without the welts would be so much better, no?
Showing posts with label Wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisdom. Show all posts
23.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 9:10-12
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
For by me your days will be multiplied,
And years of life will be added to you.
If you are wise, you are wise for yourself,
And if you scoff, you will bear it alone.”
Proverbs 9:10-12 (NKJV).
Simply put, to understand reality will mean that you are best prepared to deal with the circumstances that reality will bring your way. To know that you are not God, to know who God is, and to make choices in how you live your life to reflect such facts will always work in your favor, not in that you will never have difficulty or strife, but in that regardless of what difficulties you face, you'll be ready.
Survival for the finite is selfish, and you really need to come to terms with that fact in order to understand the latter portion of this passage. What I mean by this is that, unlike God, we are contingent beings, we rely on circumstances working out in our favor in order for us to continue existing on this material plane. God does not have such a relationship with existence, in that while even the reality itself that we exist in is contingent on God, God does not have any external contingencies.
If I eat a portion of food, nobody else can eat that same portion of food. Now, the total quantity of food that can or could exist is not based on my having ate that one portion, so it's not a "zero-sum", but that particular finite resource is now "gone", it's a "sunk investment" into my continued existence and it cannot (easily) be recollected and used to support anyone else's existence.
This does not prevent us from growing more food, or exchanging currency for food that others have already grown, but even if I repeat the ingredients list, it's not the exact same food, and even if I provide the same meal to someone else, it's not the same exact food, it's just like the food I already ate.
Our choices work out in similar fashion. When I make a choice and commit to act, there is no way to "undo" what has then been done. Even if others may face similar choices, or find themselves needing to make choices in reaction to the decision I have made, reality is still going to operate on the decision I have made and the consequences will flow from that.
This is why wisdom is ultimately "for yourself", in that while others will experience the byproducts of living wise in physical or relational proximity to you, the wisdom is of benefit to you.
God does not benefit from you being wise, nor does wisdom gain anything from more or less people listening to her, it's specifically in the lives of those who heed wisdom that the benefits are seen. Your life changes for the better, and from the possible surplus your having applied wisdom in your own life can benefit others.
There is a catch to this though, seen in the "messianic complex", where we try to believe that we are able to completely extricate ourselves from the equation and that all of our choices will benefit only other people. The ideal is that we could sacrifice to only someone else's benefit and doing so would reflect well on us.
The problem is that even Jesus "got something" out of his sacrifice on the cross, in the glorification and honor bestowed upon him by God the Father. Jesus does not denounce this title, the place at the right hand of God, but accepts the honor due unto him. Think about that. If even the greatest demonstration of "love", of sacrifice, still brought reward to the one who made the sacrifice, why does anyone here who is not living a sinless life think that they can make choices which will only benefit others and not themselves?
Are they going to be a better savior than Jesus Christ? Thus the "messianic complex" label.
Do not believe that there is anything you can do which is entirely self-sacrificial, on your part or anyone else. You cannot help anyone else from a position of weakness, of foolishness, of death.
Rejecting wisdom hurts you and you alone for all the same reasons that it benefits.
So, make peace with the fact that the wisest choice for you in any circumstance will indeed help you first and foremost, and that from that place of strength and provision you will then have the opportunity to help others as well.
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
For by me your days will be multiplied,
And years of life will be added to you.
If you are wise, you are wise for yourself,
And if you scoff, you will bear it alone.”
Proverbs 9:10-12 (NKJV).
Simply put, to understand reality will mean that you are best prepared to deal with the circumstances that reality will bring your way. To know that you are not God, to know who God is, and to make choices in how you live your life to reflect such facts will always work in your favor, not in that you will never have difficulty or strife, but in that regardless of what difficulties you face, you'll be ready.
Survival for the finite is selfish, and you really need to come to terms with that fact in order to understand the latter portion of this passage. What I mean by this is that, unlike God, we are contingent beings, we rely on circumstances working out in our favor in order for us to continue existing on this material plane. God does not have such a relationship with existence, in that while even the reality itself that we exist in is contingent on God, God does not have any external contingencies.
If I eat a portion of food, nobody else can eat that same portion of food. Now, the total quantity of food that can or could exist is not based on my having ate that one portion, so it's not a "zero-sum", but that particular finite resource is now "gone", it's a "sunk investment" into my continued existence and it cannot (easily) be recollected and used to support anyone else's existence.
This does not prevent us from growing more food, or exchanging currency for food that others have already grown, but even if I repeat the ingredients list, it's not the exact same food, and even if I provide the same meal to someone else, it's not the same exact food, it's just like the food I already ate.
Our choices work out in similar fashion. When I make a choice and commit to act, there is no way to "undo" what has then been done. Even if others may face similar choices, or find themselves needing to make choices in reaction to the decision I have made, reality is still going to operate on the decision I have made and the consequences will flow from that.
This is why wisdom is ultimately "for yourself", in that while others will experience the byproducts of living wise in physical or relational proximity to you, the wisdom is of benefit to you.
God does not benefit from you being wise, nor does wisdom gain anything from more or less people listening to her, it's specifically in the lives of those who heed wisdom that the benefits are seen. Your life changes for the better, and from the possible surplus your having applied wisdom in your own life can benefit others.
There is a catch to this though, seen in the "messianic complex", where we try to believe that we are able to completely extricate ourselves from the equation and that all of our choices will benefit only other people. The ideal is that we could sacrifice to only someone else's benefit and doing so would reflect well on us.
The problem is that even Jesus "got something" out of his sacrifice on the cross, in the glorification and honor bestowed upon him by God the Father. Jesus does not denounce this title, the place at the right hand of God, but accepts the honor due unto him. Think about that. If even the greatest demonstration of "love", of sacrifice, still brought reward to the one who made the sacrifice, why does anyone here who is not living a sinless life think that they can make choices which will only benefit others and not themselves?
Are they going to be a better savior than Jesus Christ? Thus the "messianic complex" label.
Do not believe that there is anything you can do which is entirely self-sacrificial, on your part or anyone else. You cannot help anyone else from a position of weakness, of foolishness, of death.
Rejecting wisdom hurts you and you alone for all the same reasons that it benefits.
So, make peace with the fact that the wisest choice for you in any circumstance will indeed help you first and foremost, and that from that place of strength and provision you will then have the opportunity to help others as well.
21.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 9:1-6
Wisdom has built her house,
She has hewn out her seven pillars;
She has slaughtered her meat,
She has mixed her wine,
She has also furnished her table.
She has sent out her maidens,
She cries out from the highest places of the city,
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
As for him who lacks understanding, she says to him,
“Come, eat of my bread
And drink of the wine I have mixed.
Forsake foolishness and live,
And go in the way of understanding.
Proverbs 9:1-6 (NKJV).
One of the more sad realities of those that reject wisdom is that all they desire to achieve, to obtain for themselves, or to experience, is available through wisdom as well. There aren't two different "destinations", but the same destination of "understanding", and two paths to get there.
Wisdom is described as offering nourishment and entertainment in a similar fashion to the immoral woman, though instead of offering a single night in her bed, wisdom offers to help the "simple" prepare for life itself, after the experience.
On appearance, the path rejecting wisdom is obviously more desirable, being a shortcut to an experience or circumstance. Why not just skip to the rewards and enjoy them first, and not worry about the consequences or what lays further down that same path? Who doesn't want to have enjoyable intimacy with another? Who doesn't want to be healthy, wealthy, and powerful in this material world?
The biggest problem here however is that the path does not end at an experience. Life goes on, and whether we want to admit it or not, everything is fleeting, temporary, transient, from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, the only constant is change. You may indeed have had a pleasurable night with the immoral woman, but then morning comes and a new day begins.
In popular culture, whether music or movies, and even in our own anecdotal experiences, we can resonate with the desire to "stop time" in a particular moment, during a particular experience, and just live there "forever". Taking pictures or recording video is a byproduct of this desire, when we capture some part of the present, soon to become the past, and can then "come back" to it in the future to "live in that moment" yet again.
But pictures fade, videos be lost, and despite our best efforts to capture an experience, we fight a losing battle against entropy.
So the next alternative we'd have is to just continuously top the experience. To never "come down from the high" in the first place, to always be pursuing experiences which overshadow all that came before, such that even if you cannot capture the past, it doesn't matter, the present and the future hold more for you anyway, so your history simply doesn't really play any role in your life, except for explaining how you got to where you currently stand in the present.
This might work, except that our biology works against us. Dopamine receptors, as part of the chemical side of "feeling good", adapt to the exposure in order to maintain a balance. When exposed to a consistent abundance, your body will adapt by reducing the sensitivity of the receptors. This is necessary as part of survival because the triggering of dopamine has a cascade of other affects in the brain, so if you were stuck in it permanently, you'd end up dead.
Due to our biology then, to sustain the same perceived "good" feeling, we must then pursue ever more extreme stimulus just to get the same sensation, or we have to spread it out so that we never adapt, right?
But then that's exactly what wisdom suggests, to not just pursue pleasure endlessly.
Does it start to make sense as to why wisdom leads to life and denying wisdom, let alone hating it, does not?
Wisdom is, simply put, "the best choice based on reality". Wisdom accounts for all consequences, for all possibilities, for the reality of what you will experience both in the moment and in all the moments that come after. This is why wisdom is aligned with life, and why she calls out to all to come and learn, and why she can claim so boldly that those who heed her lessons will find blessing or success in life.
You can reject wisdom and come to learn the same lesson the "hard" way, or arrive at understanding without the baggage and scars from having tried to take a shortcut. With wisdom, we are prepared and able to pursue new paths, but by rejecting wisdom, all we are left with is understanding of the true consequences for our actions on the paths we've already traveled.
Make the better choice at the start.
She has hewn out her seven pillars;
She has slaughtered her meat,
She has mixed her wine,
She has also furnished her table.
She has sent out her maidens,
She cries out from the highest places of the city,
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
As for him who lacks understanding, she says to him,
“Come, eat of my bread
And drink of the wine I have mixed.
Forsake foolishness and live,
And go in the way of understanding.
Proverbs 9:1-6 (NKJV).
One of the more sad realities of those that reject wisdom is that all they desire to achieve, to obtain for themselves, or to experience, is available through wisdom as well. There aren't two different "destinations", but the same destination of "understanding", and two paths to get there.
Wisdom is described as offering nourishment and entertainment in a similar fashion to the immoral woman, though instead of offering a single night in her bed, wisdom offers to help the "simple" prepare for life itself, after the experience.
On appearance, the path rejecting wisdom is obviously more desirable, being a shortcut to an experience or circumstance. Why not just skip to the rewards and enjoy them first, and not worry about the consequences or what lays further down that same path? Who doesn't want to have enjoyable intimacy with another? Who doesn't want to be healthy, wealthy, and powerful in this material world?
The biggest problem here however is that the path does not end at an experience. Life goes on, and whether we want to admit it or not, everything is fleeting, temporary, transient, from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, the only constant is change. You may indeed have had a pleasurable night with the immoral woman, but then morning comes and a new day begins.
In popular culture, whether music or movies, and even in our own anecdotal experiences, we can resonate with the desire to "stop time" in a particular moment, during a particular experience, and just live there "forever". Taking pictures or recording video is a byproduct of this desire, when we capture some part of the present, soon to become the past, and can then "come back" to it in the future to "live in that moment" yet again.
But pictures fade, videos be lost, and despite our best efforts to capture an experience, we fight a losing battle against entropy.
So the next alternative we'd have is to just continuously top the experience. To never "come down from the high" in the first place, to always be pursuing experiences which overshadow all that came before, such that even if you cannot capture the past, it doesn't matter, the present and the future hold more for you anyway, so your history simply doesn't really play any role in your life, except for explaining how you got to where you currently stand in the present.
This might work, except that our biology works against us. Dopamine receptors, as part of the chemical side of "feeling good", adapt to the exposure in order to maintain a balance. When exposed to a consistent abundance, your body will adapt by reducing the sensitivity of the receptors. This is necessary as part of survival because the triggering of dopamine has a cascade of other affects in the brain, so if you were stuck in it permanently, you'd end up dead.
Due to our biology then, to sustain the same perceived "good" feeling, we must then pursue ever more extreme stimulus just to get the same sensation, or we have to spread it out so that we never adapt, right?
But then that's exactly what wisdom suggests, to not just pursue pleasure endlessly.
Does it start to make sense as to why wisdom leads to life and denying wisdom, let alone hating it, does not?
Wisdom is, simply put, "the best choice based on reality". Wisdom accounts for all consequences, for all possibilities, for the reality of what you will experience both in the moment and in all the moments that come after. This is why wisdom is aligned with life, and why she calls out to all to come and learn, and why she can claim so boldly that those who heed her lessons will find blessing or success in life.
You can reject wisdom and come to learn the same lesson the "hard" way, or arrive at understanding without the baggage and scars from having tried to take a shortcut. With wisdom, we are prepared and able to pursue new paths, but by rejecting wisdom, all we are left with is understanding of the true consequences for our actions on the paths we've already traveled.
Make the better choice at the start.
20.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 8:32-36
“Now therefore, listen to me, my children,
For blessed are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
And do not disdain it.
Blessed is the man who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the Lord;
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul;
All those who hate me love death.”
Proverbs 8:32-36 (NKJV).
Blessed are those who find wisdom and heed it, but those who hate wisdom love death.
Without objective truths existing, this type of passage in scripture becomes nonsensical. If objective truth, truth which is not contingent from our perspective, does not exist, then extolling a particular lifestyle or set of behaviors simply doesn't work.
For example, look at adultery. If adultery is always a bad idea, then it's always wise to avoid adultery. If it's only a bad idea because people aren't good at "getting away with it", then it's only wise to avoid adultery if you aren't good at "getting away with it". It changes the connotation of "wisdom" from being universally applicable to only being conditionally applicable.
This is why it's a "cop-out" if someone ever claims that debating proverbs can't be done, because the philosophical foundation of such writings requires objective truth to exist. The ideas presented are done so universally, and so if the tenet put forth is not universal, you've got an argument that the wisdom being shared is not all that wise after all, or perhaps is at best conditionally wise.
The dynamic plays out in both the temporal and eternal frames as well, in that if sin is only physical, only material, then regardless of what you do in this life, your eternal destiny is likely to be unaffected. If sin carries an eternal burden, then even if you don't face consequences in this life, you might in the next, so especially if you're going to be reincarnated based on how you lived this life, you should adjust your behavior even if you can't fully comprehend all the possible consequences.
What's sad is that, barring the reincarnation aspect, this is how we should teach discipline to children. A child is not always going to understand the full measure of consequences, but their behavior still needs to be guided, and we see this when they disobey their parents and cite only the known consequences as being "handled", them then expressing exasperation that there were further consequences they hadn't been told of which may have swayed their opinion in one fashion or another.
God, throughout scripture, prescribes specific behaviors and practices without always really explaining why. From a logical standpoint, we could deduce why there is no logical inconsistency given that God is good, but emotionally we "just don't like it."
It's the emotional need for more information, to feel like we're participating in the process, to by any means necessary take some credit for the outcomes we experience that drives us to declaring the most illogical things about truth.
That's how those who hate wisdom can love death, not because of some logical argument, but out of the emotional commitment to the desire to be responsible for the entirety of one's fate, of one's future, of us wanting to be God and understanding everything. Those who hate wisdom, who hate a "natural order", or order at all, are going to be drawn by chaos, by destruction, by death.
It's easy to see this in the current social climate with regard to abortion. Never mind that "not having sex" is 100% effective at preventing conception from occurring in the first place, we cannot deny the hedonistic pleasure pursuit, so instead of taking responsibility, we've instead made it a moral imperative that a woman have the freedom to kill her offspring before they've been born.
Try to suggest abstinence? Marriage? Personal responsibility? All of these things are wise, they either provide a control to prevent or a circumstance to appropriately manifest that which people desire from hedonistic pursuits, but instead of that we'll just make it "legal" and "socially acceptable" to kill unborn children and pretend that there is no other choice available.
In fact, if you do suggest these things and anybody is really paying attention, you'll be faced with mountains of hate for suggesting personal responsibility as the proper path forward, and it's not just about sexual activities either, but branches out into political and financial topics as well.
People don't like being told that they are responsible for the bad outcomes in their life in addition to the good outcomes. We just want to take credit for the good and blame someone else for the bad, all while trying to convince ourselves and others that we are god and the universe is just playing "hard to get."
Listen to wisdom. Appreciate the coherence in its universality. Enjoy a life in alignment with God's designs instead of defining yourself through antagonism.
For blessed are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
And do not disdain it.
Blessed is the man who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the Lord;
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul;
All those who hate me love death.”
Proverbs 8:32-36 (NKJV).
Blessed are those who find wisdom and heed it, but those who hate wisdom love death.
Without objective truths existing, this type of passage in scripture becomes nonsensical. If objective truth, truth which is not contingent from our perspective, does not exist, then extolling a particular lifestyle or set of behaviors simply doesn't work.
For example, look at adultery. If adultery is always a bad idea, then it's always wise to avoid adultery. If it's only a bad idea because people aren't good at "getting away with it", then it's only wise to avoid adultery if you aren't good at "getting away with it". It changes the connotation of "wisdom" from being universally applicable to only being conditionally applicable.
This is why it's a "cop-out" if someone ever claims that debating proverbs can't be done, because the philosophical foundation of such writings requires objective truth to exist. The ideas presented are done so universally, and so if the tenet put forth is not universal, you've got an argument that the wisdom being shared is not all that wise after all, or perhaps is at best conditionally wise.
The dynamic plays out in both the temporal and eternal frames as well, in that if sin is only physical, only material, then regardless of what you do in this life, your eternal destiny is likely to be unaffected. If sin carries an eternal burden, then even if you don't face consequences in this life, you might in the next, so especially if you're going to be reincarnated based on how you lived this life, you should adjust your behavior even if you can't fully comprehend all the possible consequences.
What's sad is that, barring the reincarnation aspect, this is how we should teach discipline to children. A child is not always going to understand the full measure of consequences, but their behavior still needs to be guided, and we see this when they disobey their parents and cite only the known consequences as being "handled", them then expressing exasperation that there were further consequences they hadn't been told of which may have swayed their opinion in one fashion or another.
God, throughout scripture, prescribes specific behaviors and practices without always really explaining why. From a logical standpoint, we could deduce why there is no logical inconsistency given that God is good, but emotionally we "just don't like it."
It's the emotional need for more information, to feel like we're participating in the process, to by any means necessary take some credit for the outcomes we experience that drives us to declaring the most illogical things about truth.
That's how those who hate wisdom can love death, not because of some logical argument, but out of the emotional commitment to the desire to be responsible for the entirety of one's fate, of one's future, of us wanting to be God and understanding everything. Those who hate wisdom, who hate a "natural order", or order at all, are going to be drawn by chaos, by destruction, by death.
It's easy to see this in the current social climate with regard to abortion. Never mind that "not having sex" is 100% effective at preventing conception from occurring in the first place, we cannot deny the hedonistic pleasure pursuit, so instead of taking responsibility, we've instead made it a moral imperative that a woman have the freedom to kill her offspring before they've been born.
Try to suggest abstinence? Marriage? Personal responsibility? All of these things are wise, they either provide a control to prevent or a circumstance to appropriately manifest that which people desire from hedonistic pursuits, but instead of that we'll just make it "legal" and "socially acceptable" to kill unborn children and pretend that there is no other choice available.
In fact, if you do suggest these things and anybody is really paying attention, you'll be faced with mountains of hate for suggesting personal responsibility as the proper path forward, and it's not just about sexual activities either, but branches out into political and financial topics as well.
People don't like being told that they are responsible for the bad outcomes in their life in addition to the good outcomes. We just want to take credit for the good and blame someone else for the bad, all while trying to convince ourselves and others that we are god and the universe is just playing "hard to get."
Listen to wisdom. Appreciate the coherence in its universality. Enjoy a life in alignment with God's designs instead of defining yourself through antagonism.
19.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 8:22-31
“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, I was brought forth;
While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,
Or the primal dust of the world.
When He prepared the heavens, I was there,
When He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
When He established the clouds above,
When He strengthened the fountains of the deep,
When He assigned to the sea its limit,
So that the waters would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in His inhabited world,
And my delight was with the sons of men.
Proverbs 8:22-31 (NKJV).
It is easy to believe that Genesis is the only place in the Bible which talks about creation. While certainly the most obvious place, there are passages throughout scripture that speak to one aspect of the creation process or another. These passages, all together, paint a picture that can sometimes be overshadowed by the well-known narrative involving Adam and Eve.
What I mean by this is how intentional God was, and how little an impact sin really had on the design of this reality. So often people will speak of a "fallen world", and not quite specify what they mean. We hear about "suffering and death" or "thorns and thistles", all sorts of "bad" things which were "caused" by sin, yet this is about as "true" as humanity currently being responsible for the entirety of climate change.
It's not humility, but arrogance, to presume that because of the sin of humanity, God struck the remainder of reality from its place of supposed perfection. It makes too much of our influence on anything, and yet when you don't put the collected verses regarding creation together, this message can be entirely missed.
Some Christians assert, for example, that "death and decay" were a result of the fall of Adam and Eve, yet without death and decay, a stable ecologic system cannot ever form. Scripture is clear that the physical and spiritual death among humanity is a result of Adam, but the Bible does not claim that everything we deem "wrong" with the world to be the result of our actions.
This is highlighted in how all the passages extol God's designs, God's intent, God's ordering of everything into independent systems that could, at least materially, persist for very long periods of time, and were almost entirely self-regulating. God set boundaries, defined relationships, and did all of this to glorify God.
Why would that glory be marred by our sin, especially if it was ever genuinely perfect, without flaw?
Why would our disobedience change the rules that our reality operates by?
Why would God scuttle all the work of his hands as a means of exacting punishment on sin?
Read the passage, and contemplate the planning that went into all of creation. If you've ever been involved in setting up anything, be it a party, a doctor's appointment, or an entire manufacturing system, there are a lot of details that need to be coordinated for everything to go smoothly.
Imagining how drinkable water would need to be made available to all the creatures other than humans. Think about the water cycle, and how our ecosystems balance themselves based on the availability of water. Think about how creatures are adapted physically to the resources available in their climate. Think about how the "cycle of life" operates, where plants grow from soil, animals eat the plants, other animals eat the animals that ate the plants, and eventually even those animals die and return to the soil.
Do we really want to assert that the sin of humanity is responsible for that instead of God?
Because that's what end up being the logical conclusion if our sin "broke" the world. No longer do the heavens declare the glory of God, but instead they bear our graffiti, our corruption. No longer is the world as designed but now it has been remade by our sin into something else. No longer are God's invisible attributes capable of being understood from what God has made, because the destruction of our sin has overshadowed God's work.
Do you see how disrespectful it is to God when we make so much of our sin instead of making much of God? Do you grasp how arrogant it is to presume that God's designs can be foiled by our efforts? Do you understand how God's sovereignty is challenged when we explain the dynamics we see in front of us as the result of our own hands instead of God's?
Wisdom is being described as having been there "since the beginning", before God started work on shaping this world we currently inhabit. Much is said about the intent of God, about the establishment of the dynamics we now see, and this is a very common theme in passages about creation.
There's a reason why those who act in accordance with wisdom find material benefit, because this world was designed through wisdom. Wisdom still works among us, and still looks favorably on those who respect her lessons, and rewards them for their work. The role of wisdom in existence has never changed, never been successfully challenged, let alone replaced, even as a consequence for sin.
All that's changed, all that's ever changed, is the connection between us and God, and even there only from our side of the relationship. God has always been reaching out, whether to correct or to reward, but we turn away, we ignore, we reject, thinking that we can do better.
The truth is that we can't, not on our own.
Woe to those who will resist wisdom, resist God, unto death.
Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, I was brought forth;
While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,
Or the primal dust of the world.
When He prepared the heavens, I was there,
When He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
When He established the clouds above,
When He strengthened the fountains of the deep,
When He assigned to the sea its limit,
So that the waters would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in His inhabited world,
And my delight was with the sons of men.
Proverbs 8:22-31 (NKJV).
It is easy to believe that Genesis is the only place in the Bible which talks about creation. While certainly the most obvious place, there are passages throughout scripture that speak to one aspect of the creation process or another. These passages, all together, paint a picture that can sometimes be overshadowed by the well-known narrative involving Adam and Eve.
What I mean by this is how intentional God was, and how little an impact sin really had on the design of this reality. So often people will speak of a "fallen world", and not quite specify what they mean. We hear about "suffering and death" or "thorns and thistles", all sorts of "bad" things which were "caused" by sin, yet this is about as "true" as humanity currently being responsible for the entirety of climate change.
It's not humility, but arrogance, to presume that because of the sin of humanity, God struck the remainder of reality from its place of supposed perfection. It makes too much of our influence on anything, and yet when you don't put the collected verses regarding creation together, this message can be entirely missed.
Some Christians assert, for example, that "death and decay" were a result of the fall of Adam and Eve, yet without death and decay, a stable ecologic system cannot ever form. Scripture is clear that the physical and spiritual death among humanity is a result of Adam, but the Bible does not claim that everything we deem "wrong" with the world to be the result of our actions.
This is highlighted in how all the passages extol God's designs, God's intent, God's ordering of everything into independent systems that could, at least materially, persist for very long periods of time, and were almost entirely self-regulating. God set boundaries, defined relationships, and did all of this to glorify God.
Why would that glory be marred by our sin, especially if it was ever genuinely perfect, without flaw?
Why would our disobedience change the rules that our reality operates by?
Why would God scuttle all the work of his hands as a means of exacting punishment on sin?
Read the passage, and contemplate the planning that went into all of creation. If you've ever been involved in setting up anything, be it a party, a doctor's appointment, or an entire manufacturing system, there are a lot of details that need to be coordinated for everything to go smoothly.
Imagining how drinkable water would need to be made available to all the creatures other than humans. Think about the water cycle, and how our ecosystems balance themselves based on the availability of water. Think about how creatures are adapted physically to the resources available in their climate. Think about how the "cycle of life" operates, where plants grow from soil, animals eat the plants, other animals eat the animals that ate the plants, and eventually even those animals die and return to the soil.
Do we really want to assert that the sin of humanity is responsible for that instead of God?
Because that's what end up being the logical conclusion if our sin "broke" the world. No longer do the heavens declare the glory of God, but instead they bear our graffiti, our corruption. No longer is the world as designed but now it has been remade by our sin into something else. No longer are God's invisible attributes capable of being understood from what God has made, because the destruction of our sin has overshadowed God's work.
Do you see how disrespectful it is to God when we make so much of our sin instead of making much of God? Do you grasp how arrogant it is to presume that God's designs can be foiled by our efforts? Do you understand how God's sovereignty is challenged when we explain the dynamics we see in front of us as the result of our own hands instead of God's?
Wisdom is being described as having been there "since the beginning", before God started work on shaping this world we currently inhabit. Much is said about the intent of God, about the establishment of the dynamics we now see, and this is a very common theme in passages about creation.
There's a reason why those who act in accordance with wisdom find material benefit, because this world was designed through wisdom. Wisdom still works among us, and still looks favorably on those who respect her lessons, and rewards them for their work. The role of wisdom in existence has never changed, never been successfully challenged, let alone replaced, even as a consequence for sin.
All that's changed, all that's ever changed, is the connection between us and God, and even there only from our side of the relationship. God has always been reaching out, whether to correct or to reward, but we turn away, we ignore, we reject, thinking that we can do better.
The truth is that we can't, not on our own.
Woe to those who will resist wisdom, resist God, unto death.
18.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 8:12-21
“I, wisdom, dwell with prudence,
And find out knowledge and discretion.
The fear of the Lord is to hate evil;
Pride and arrogance and the evil way
And the perverse mouth I hate.
Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom;
I am understanding, I have strength.
By me kings reign,
And rulers decree justice.
By me princes rule, and nobles,
All the judges of the earth.
I love those who love me,
And those who seek me diligently will find me.
Riches and honor are with me,
Enduring riches and righteousness.
My fruit is better than gold, yes, than fine gold,
And my revenue than choice silver.
I traverse the way of righteousness,
In the midst of the paths of justice,
That I may cause those who love me to inherit wealth,
That I may fill their treasuries.
Proverbs 8:12-21 (NKJV).
Hate showed back up again, and it's useful to be reminded of the full measure of God's capacity to feel. Much emphasis has been placed on trying to make God attractive to the unrepentant by exemplifying the attribute of "love", but in so doing, and in the dilution of mixing with other world religions, Christians have forgotten that God does things like hate, or feel jealous, and that salvation is not just "nice", but is a necessary step to get off the path that will experience the wrath of God against sin.
Humans aren't intrinsically evil, but manifest it in their rebellion against God, and as such, there is a tangible difference between the ignorant sinner and the outright wicked, those who understand that they are doing wrong and may go so far as to take delight in it.
Now, note that wisdom is trying to explain how the riches she affords are longer-lasting and more satisfying than what evil brings. This is not denying that evil behavior can net one a reward at all, but instead that the cost for that evil behavior needs to be fully accounted for when making decisions.
How many times have you yourself thought or heard someone say that they'd "have done things differently" if they understood some aspect of the decision process that they previously undertook?
Time and again people want to believe that, in the budget they imagine they'll have from their ill-gotten gains, they'll be more than enough to repair any damage they've caused, or that they'll find some way to resolve problems that will, overall, still have left them with a greater surplus of resources to then expend than if they'd having done things the correct way, through application of wisdom and understanding.
The fixation on "doing it my way" is a self-destructive one, yet it comes naturally to us. We want to be the ones that define terms, that can be held responsible, to have ourselves exalted and held high for what we have accomplished.
Paradoxically, when Jesus sought only to glorify God through his life, his sacrifices earned him the highest exaltation possible. Yet even without Christ as an example, the dynamic was readily apparent.
Make much of wisdom, and you will find greatness, because you are aligned with the nature and rules of this reality and the creator who oversees it.
Make little of wisdom, and you will find destruction, because you are aligned against the nature and rules of this reality and the creator who oversees it.
Some will only ever bend a knee because they've been forced, their arrogance and hubris so completely consumes them. At no point can they comprehend that they'd have all they desired, and even more, if they submitted their thoughts to the guidance of wisdom and understanding instead of relying on their own unrefined instincts.
This is why God hating those who do evil carries no condemning connotation, because it is not simple ignorance that God hates, but evil, wickedness, the intentional rejection of wisdom, of understanding, the entirely wasted life of a person in seeking only to exist as contrarian to God.
God hates that because even existence itself is a gift. None of us deserved it, earned it, can repay God even that, let alone cover the debts we incur through our sin. You can read the latter portions of Job to see how God reacts when Job starts declaring that Job should never have been born in the first place.
Wisdom benefits in perpetuity where evil does not. Make decisions and consider more than your immediate sensational response.
And find out knowledge and discretion.
The fear of the Lord is to hate evil;
Pride and arrogance and the evil way
And the perverse mouth I hate.
Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom;
I am understanding, I have strength.
By me kings reign,
And rulers decree justice.
By me princes rule, and nobles,
All the judges of the earth.
I love those who love me,
And those who seek me diligently will find me.
Riches and honor are with me,
Enduring riches and righteousness.
My fruit is better than gold, yes, than fine gold,
And my revenue than choice silver.
I traverse the way of righteousness,
In the midst of the paths of justice,
That I may cause those who love me to inherit wealth,
That I may fill their treasuries.
Proverbs 8:12-21 (NKJV).
Hate showed back up again, and it's useful to be reminded of the full measure of God's capacity to feel. Much emphasis has been placed on trying to make God attractive to the unrepentant by exemplifying the attribute of "love", but in so doing, and in the dilution of mixing with other world religions, Christians have forgotten that God does things like hate, or feel jealous, and that salvation is not just "nice", but is a necessary step to get off the path that will experience the wrath of God against sin.
Humans aren't intrinsically evil, but manifest it in their rebellion against God, and as such, there is a tangible difference between the ignorant sinner and the outright wicked, those who understand that they are doing wrong and may go so far as to take delight in it.
Now, note that wisdom is trying to explain how the riches she affords are longer-lasting and more satisfying than what evil brings. This is not denying that evil behavior can net one a reward at all, but instead that the cost for that evil behavior needs to be fully accounted for when making decisions.
How many times have you yourself thought or heard someone say that they'd "have done things differently" if they understood some aspect of the decision process that they previously undertook?
Time and again people want to believe that, in the budget they imagine they'll have from their ill-gotten gains, they'll be more than enough to repair any damage they've caused, or that they'll find some way to resolve problems that will, overall, still have left them with a greater surplus of resources to then expend than if they'd having done things the correct way, through application of wisdom and understanding.
The fixation on "doing it my way" is a self-destructive one, yet it comes naturally to us. We want to be the ones that define terms, that can be held responsible, to have ourselves exalted and held high for what we have accomplished.
Paradoxically, when Jesus sought only to glorify God through his life, his sacrifices earned him the highest exaltation possible. Yet even without Christ as an example, the dynamic was readily apparent.
Make much of wisdom, and you will find greatness, because you are aligned with the nature and rules of this reality and the creator who oversees it.
Make little of wisdom, and you will find destruction, because you are aligned against the nature and rules of this reality and the creator who oversees it.
Some will only ever bend a knee because they've been forced, their arrogance and hubris so completely consumes them. At no point can they comprehend that they'd have all they desired, and even more, if they submitted their thoughts to the guidance of wisdom and understanding instead of relying on their own unrefined instincts.
This is why God hating those who do evil carries no condemning connotation, because it is not simple ignorance that God hates, but evil, wickedness, the intentional rejection of wisdom, of understanding, the entirely wasted life of a person in seeking only to exist as contrarian to God.
God hates that because even existence itself is a gift. None of us deserved it, earned it, can repay God even that, let alone cover the debts we incur through our sin. You can read the latter portions of Job to see how God reacts when Job starts declaring that Job should never have been born in the first place.
Wisdom benefits in perpetuity where evil does not. Make decisions and consider more than your immediate sensational response.
17.4.18
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.
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.
15.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 7:10-20
And there a woman met him,
With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart.
She was loud and rebellious,
Her feet would not stay at home.
At times she was outside, at times in the open square,
Lurking at every corner.
So she caught him and kissed him;
With an impudent face she said to him:
“I have peace offerings with me;
Today I have paid my vows.
So I came out to meet you,
Diligently to seek your face,
And I have found you.
I have spread my bed with tapestry,
Colored coverings of Egyptian linen.
I have perfumed my bed
With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;
Let us delight ourselves with love.
For my husband is not at home;
He has gone on a long journey;
He has taken a bag of money with him,
And will come home on the appointed day.”
Proverbs 7:10-20 (NKJV).
Appearances matter. While not the only thing that matters, they are not irrelevant in combination with behavior when it comes to the "beauty" of a woman. Notice the attributes that Solomon lists about the immoral woman, the things which would identify her.
Being "loud and rebellious" is something that should not surprise given the nature of Feminist movements in Western Civilization over the past century or so. Whether intentional or accidental, the theme of "not being heard" has shown up time and again in their propaganda, the implicit premise being that "men" aren't "listening", so women have to be louder, to make themselves heard, to affect the changes they feel are necessary. At no point does it seem to occur to them that men heard them all along, but just did not choose to act in the way requested of them during the chanting, marching, and screaming.
Now, this isn't because being louder isn't ever a signal of anything, the ability to "make yourself heard" is a dominance move, a showing of authority to have your words heard and obeyed. That is why the immoral woman is "loud and rebellious", because she is seeking to overturn the existing mechanisms or authority, of the order which provided her the safety and opportunity to be rebellious in the first place, all to satisfy her own desires, caring little of the future ramifications for the path she walks.
This is further highlighted by the amusing "her feet would not stay at home." Another facet of the efforts of Feminism has been to get young women out of the house as soon as possible and learning to be independent, all the while demanding that everyone else in society make the necessary accommodations so that these women can be protected from mistakes that they will make during this learning process.
While, traditionally, these were all lessons learned under the care and protection of the father and mother in the household, thanks to the shifts towards r-selection with an environment of abundance in our modern world, daughters and sons are pushed out of the home as soon as possible so that mom and dad can go back to having fun, and the kids "will be fine" without being actually being taught the basics of life.
Two different examples of this exact same dynamic are public breastfeeding and "rape culture" on college campuses. In both cases the arguments already start off "wrong", with most people skipping past the premises of the "problems" and pushing right on towards the main claims, never questioning whether even the circumstances that led to an issue existing were legitimate and necessary, let alone whether the accommodations that the rest of society makes are reasonable or not.
In the first, public breastfeeding is an entirely modern phenomenon because, again traditionally, mothers would not be going out in public on a frequent basis with such young children in the first place. There would be no impetus for the young mother to leave her home, go to a public place, and then put herself in a position of weakness. This is at some level because homes were not isolated from the rest of the community. Everyone knew everyone and if you needed supplies from the market, you had people you could trust that would get things for you while tending to the needs of your baby.
There was no question or debate on whether public breastfeeding was immodest or not because it simply wasn't happening. Women who'd just given birth would be cared for by those around them, the expectation was not that she had to do it all herself, and that leads us right into the next example.
College debt is said to be higher than it's ever been before, and yet that at the same time, more women are going to college than men, and yet women are still not getting the "high paying jobs" that are supposedly unlocked after attaining certain tiers of higher education. On top of that, it's very easy to find terrifying statistics that these young girls sent off on their own to school or work, all by themselves, are being sexually assaulted. Surely the response is that we should be doing a better job protecting and employing women, right? The whole arrangement would work out just fine except for all those terrible men taking advantage of women, right? We have to protect women from consequences they aren't prepared to handle on their own, right? Oh, no, women are "equals" and can "do anything a man could do better"? Hmm.
Young women traditionally didn't leave the house unless they were then entering the care and protection of another man, specifically their husband. That was the natural way to afford a woman complete protection from men who only had their sexual appetites in mind, but we had to destroy that framework because it limited her "freedoms", and now everyone is expected to come up with solutions which are never as effective or efficient, but that sustain the impression of rebellion.
Why is all this important to understand?
The immoral woman entices this effective stranger to enter her bed under the pretense of there being no consequences, no fear of being caught, and thanks to the "peace offering", she's prepared everything for a pleasurable experience without any apparent "risk" at all. The promise to the man from the immoral woman is that he will entertain great pleasure at no cost, and do not doubt that her offer is partly true, though she does not have the power to avert all the consequences of such illicit entanglements.
This is the deception that Solomon speaks about with "empty words". The immoral woman believes that her husband will not return early, but she does not control his schedule. The immoral woman believes that there won't be consequences, but they wouldn't fall most harshly on her in the first place either.
It is not hard to imagine a similar conversation between Adam and Eve after she had been deceived. Adam knew what was wise, but heeded the voice of his wife to disobey God. This pattern of behavior has been repeating over and over since the dawn of humanity.
It's all appearances, it's the appearance of desirability, it's the appearance of power, it's the appearance of authority, it's the appearance that all the problems can and will be ameliorated, it's the appearance that there is everything to gain and nothing to lose, but that's all it ever is, appearance.
This is why appearances matter, but can't be everything, because you have to see past appearances in order to see the trap being set for your soul. Solomon's cautions are to be aware of what appearances are, what they mean, what they are used for. We are not to ignore them, but understand them, and that is what the "youth" he is describing does not understand, does not have the wisdom to perceive.
Do not be like the ignorant youth.
With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart.
She was loud and rebellious,
Her feet would not stay at home.
At times she was outside, at times in the open square,
Lurking at every corner.
So she caught him and kissed him;
With an impudent face she said to him:
“I have peace offerings with me;
Today I have paid my vows.
So I came out to meet you,
Diligently to seek your face,
And I have found you.
I have spread my bed with tapestry,
Colored coverings of Egyptian linen.
I have perfumed my bed
With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;
Let us delight ourselves with love.
For my husband is not at home;
He has gone on a long journey;
He has taken a bag of money with him,
And will come home on the appointed day.”
Proverbs 7:10-20 (NKJV).
Appearances matter. While not the only thing that matters, they are not irrelevant in combination with behavior when it comes to the "beauty" of a woman. Notice the attributes that Solomon lists about the immoral woman, the things which would identify her.
Being "loud and rebellious" is something that should not surprise given the nature of Feminist movements in Western Civilization over the past century or so. Whether intentional or accidental, the theme of "not being heard" has shown up time and again in their propaganda, the implicit premise being that "men" aren't "listening", so women have to be louder, to make themselves heard, to affect the changes they feel are necessary. At no point does it seem to occur to them that men heard them all along, but just did not choose to act in the way requested of them during the chanting, marching, and screaming.
Now, this isn't because being louder isn't ever a signal of anything, the ability to "make yourself heard" is a dominance move, a showing of authority to have your words heard and obeyed. That is why the immoral woman is "loud and rebellious", because she is seeking to overturn the existing mechanisms or authority, of the order which provided her the safety and opportunity to be rebellious in the first place, all to satisfy her own desires, caring little of the future ramifications for the path she walks.
This is further highlighted by the amusing "her feet would not stay at home." Another facet of the efforts of Feminism has been to get young women out of the house as soon as possible and learning to be independent, all the while demanding that everyone else in society make the necessary accommodations so that these women can be protected from mistakes that they will make during this learning process.
While, traditionally, these were all lessons learned under the care and protection of the father and mother in the household, thanks to the shifts towards r-selection with an environment of abundance in our modern world, daughters and sons are pushed out of the home as soon as possible so that mom and dad can go back to having fun, and the kids "will be fine" without being actually being taught the basics of life.
Two different examples of this exact same dynamic are public breastfeeding and "rape culture" on college campuses. In both cases the arguments already start off "wrong", with most people skipping past the premises of the "problems" and pushing right on towards the main claims, never questioning whether even the circumstances that led to an issue existing were legitimate and necessary, let alone whether the accommodations that the rest of society makes are reasonable or not.
In the first, public breastfeeding is an entirely modern phenomenon because, again traditionally, mothers would not be going out in public on a frequent basis with such young children in the first place. There would be no impetus for the young mother to leave her home, go to a public place, and then put herself in a position of weakness. This is at some level because homes were not isolated from the rest of the community. Everyone knew everyone and if you needed supplies from the market, you had people you could trust that would get things for you while tending to the needs of your baby.
There was no question or debate on whether public breastfeeding was immodest or not because it simply wasn't happening. Women who'd just given birth would be cared for by those around them, the expectation was not that she had to do it all herself, and that leads us right into the next example.
College debt is said to be higher than it's ever been before, and yet that at the same time, more women are going to college than men, and yet women are still not getting the "high paying jobs" that are supposedly unlocked after attaining certain tiers of higher education. On top of that, it's very easy to find terrifying statistics that these young girls sent off on their own to school or work, all by themselves, are being sexually assaulted. Surely the response is that we should be doing a better job protecting and employing women, right? The whole arrangement would work out just fine except for all those terrible men taking advantage of women, right? We have to protect women from consequences they aren't prepared to handle on their own, right? Oh, no, women are "equals" and can "do anything a man could do better"? Hmm.
Young women traditionally didn't leave the house unless they were then entering the care and protection of another man, specifically their husband. That was the natural way to afford a woman complete protection from men who only had their sexual appetites in mind, but we had to destroy that framework because it limited her "freedoms", and now everyone is expected to come up with solutions which are never as effective or efficient, but that sustain the impression of rebellion.
Why is all this important to understand?
The immoral woman entices this effective stranger to enter her bed under the pretense of there being no consequences, no fear of being caught, and thanks to the "peace offering", she's prepared everything for a pleasurable experience without any apparent "risk" at all. The promise to the man from the immoral woman is that he will entertain great pleasure at no cost, and do not doubt that her offer is partly true, though she does not have the power to avert all the consequences of such illicit entanglements.
This is the deception that Solomon speaks about with "empty words". The immoral woman believes that her husband will not return early, but she does not control his schedule. The immoral woman believes that there won't be consequences, but they wouldn't fall most harshly on her in the first place either.
It is not hard to imagine a similar conversation between Adam and Eve after she had been deceived. Adam knew what was wise, but heeded the voice of his wife to disobey God. This pattern of behavior has been repeating over and over since the dawn of humanity.
It's all appearances, it's the appearance of desirability, it's the appearance of power, it's the appearance of authority, it's the appearance that all the problems can and will be ameliorated, it's the appearance that there is everything to gain and nothing to lose, but that's all it ever is, appearance.
This is why appearances matter, but can't be everything, because you have to see past appearances in order to see the trap being set for your soul. Solomon's cautions are to be aware of what appearances are, what they mean, what they are used for. We are not to ignore them, but understand them, and that is what the "youth" he is describing does not understand, does not have the wisdom to perceive.
Do not be like the ignorant youth.
13.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 7:1-5
My son, keep my words,
And treasure my commands within you.
Keep my commands and live,
And my law as the apple of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers;
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
And call understanding your nearest kin,
That they may keep you from the immoral woman,
From the seductress who flatters with her words.
Proverbs 7:1-5 (NKJV).
While Solomon does try to anthropomorphize "wisdom", and commonly so as a woman, this is not because wisdom is female, but because of the connotation of the relationship that Solomon is describing to his son. In this sense, wisdom has no gender, but the way that a man will interact with wisdom will reflect relationships he has with the women around him.
This time around, wisdom is like a sister. As one who has a sister, the idea that I am to treat wisdom like someone close resonates, I can understand it. I didn't have a brother, so I can't contrast that with any degree of personal experience, but I can understand treating wisdom and understanding like family.
In our current social paradigm, we're trying to destroy family, in both structure and meaning. We're trying to create families out of strangers, and the better we pull this charade off, the more social kudos we earn from those around us, including those we are now treating like family. The problem is that family is connected in ways that are not a choice, and that bond then becomes something unique.
The uniqueness of that connection means that you'll do things for your family that you wouldn't do for anyone else. You will sacrifice for your family in a way you wouldn't for anyone else, and they will do the same. At least "good" family will. This mutual "benefit of the doubt" also means that you'll listen to them, and they to you, in a way which a complete stranger won't. They'll be concerned for your future in ways a complete stranger won't.
Your family is a connection that is different between siblings and parents than between husband and wife, intimate and yet platonic, with a closeness and an honesty that can be hard to come by. While your wife or husband is still part of your family, and your children family, they are not the same family that you grew up with, they belong to a new family, a new dynamic.
Family cares about each other because, in some ways, they're the only people who will stick by you through thick and thin. There's a reason why close friends are "like family", because the connotation of family is a powerful one.
And that power traces back to God, which is why the family is under assault, because we live in a world in its death throes of rebellion, ruled by a prince who has already lost, but is so depraved that he'll try to drag as many souls to eternal condemnation as is possible. The family must either be destroyed or diluted, it either must not exist, or if it does, it must be perverted and misshapen.
The immoral woman that Solomon references is not family. She is not your sibling, your parent, one who is worthy of your sacrifices, of lending your ear, let alone your bed. Siblings help us filter people out, to give us wisdom and a different perspective, whether we asked for it or not, and whether we agree with them or not.
In this passage, Solomon is indicating that when you treat wisdom and understanding like family, when you let them have influence over you, when you care about what they have to say, that they will help steer you away from the immoral woman who may appear like a "good time", but who only leads man down a path of destruction. In the same way that a brother or sister may comment on someone you are seeing and feel confident in providing an unvarnished opinion on the matter, treating wisdom and understanding as playing the same role can guide us even when we don't have our family with us at all.
Solomon is not just trying to impart wisdom, you see, he's also trying to build awareness to the fact that people who are in a role to provide such wisdom will not always be around. The drive has to be internal, you have to already know how to pursue wisdom, how to seek her out and how to listen, before you're in over your head, on your own, in a distant land, or just isolated on the street as you travel home.
You aren't always going to have someone there, a real person that you can trust, and so you must instill the teachings of wisdom, to pursue understanding before it's necessary, so that you are not caught off-guard, unprepared, unable to escape a trap that you could have otherwise easily avoided.
For men, as an example, it's about really internalizing that no amount of effort on anyone else's part is going to stop you from adultery. Nothing that anyone else does can, ultimately, overcome your own sinful desires if you succumb to them. Sure, you may hold out for a time, but when you seek to satisfy the desires of the flesh, eventually all the best laid plans are ruined in the sheer force of hunger. You, as a man, must command control over your own desires, and learn how to keep yourself from the immoral woman before you have seen her, before she whispers her sweet temptations, before you smell the perfume, barely covering over the stench of death that follows her around.
Treat wisdom like someone who deserves your ear, your sacrifices, your attention, and you will be prepared for, and understand, how you are to escape from temptation when it presents itself. Unlike Solomon, we now even have the advantage of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, serving to add another voice to the decision making process, another source of wisdom that we can tap into at any time, that we can lean on and draw strength from in facing sin.
Simply put, we are without any excuse for our sin, and that is why God is just in punishing it so harshly, and why our lives are so blessed when we are obedient to the wisdom that God shares freely with us.
And treasure my commands within you.
Keep my commands and live,
And my law as the apple of your eye.
Bind them on your fingers;
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
And call understanding your nearest kin,
That they may keep you from the immoral woman,
From the seductress who flatters with her words.
Proverbs 7:1-5 (NKJV).
While Solomon does try to anthropomorphize "wisdom", and commonly so as a woman, this is not because wisdom is female, but because of the connotation of the relationship that Solomon is describing to his son. In this sense, wisdom has no gender, but the way that a man will interact with wisdom will reflect relationships he has with the women around him.
This time around, wisdom is like a sister. As one who has a sister, the idea that I am to treat wisdom like someone close resonates, I can understand it. I didn't have a brother, so I can't contrast that with any degree of personal experience, but I can understand treating wisdom and understanding like family.
In our current social paradigm, we're trying to destroy family, in both structure and meaning. We're trying to create families out of strangers, and the better we pull this charade off, the more social kudos we earn from those around us, including those we are now treating like family. The problem is that family is connected in ways that are not a choice, and that bond then becomes something unique.
The uniqueness of that connection means that you'll do things for your family that you wouldn't do for anyone else. You will sacrifice for your family in a way you wouldn't for anyone else, and they will do the same. At least "good" family will. This mutual "benefit of the doubt" also means that you'll listen to them, and they to you, in a way which a complete stranger won't. They'll be concerned for your future in ways a complete stranger won't.
Your family is a connection that is different between siblings and parents than between husband and wife, intimate and yet platonic, with a closeness and an honesty that can be hard to come by. While your wife or husband is still part of your family, and your children family, they are not the same family that you grew up with, they belong to a new family, a new dynamic.
Family cares about each other because, in some ways, they're the only people who will stick by you through thick and thin. There's a reason why close friends are "like family", because the connotation of family is a powerful one.
And that power traces back to God, which is why the family is under assault, because we live in a world in its death throes of rebellion, ruled by a prince who has already lost, but is so depraved that he'll try to drag as many souls to eternal condemnation as is possible. The family must either be destroyed or diluted, it either must not exist, or if it does, it must be perverted and misshapen.
The immoral woman that Solomon references is not family. She is not your sibling, your parent, one who is worthy of your sacrifices, of lending your ear, let alone your bed. Siblings help us filter people out, to give us wisdom and a different perspective, whether we asked for it or not, and whether we agree with them or not.
In this passage, Solomon is indicating that when you treat wisdom and understanding like family, when you let them have influence over you, when you care about what they have to say, that they will help steer you away from the immoral woman who may appear like a "good time", but who only leads man down a path of destruction. In the same way that a brother or sister may comment on someone you are seeing and feel confident in providing an unvarnished opinion on the matter, treating wisdom and understanding as playing the same role can guide us even when we don't have our family with us at all.
Solomon is not just trying to impart wisdom, you see, he's also trying to build awareness to the fact that people who are in a role to provide such wisdom will not always be around. The drive has to be internal, you have to already know how to pursue wisdom, how to seek her out and how to listen, before you're in over your head, on your own, in a distant land, or just isolated on the street as you travel home.
You aren't always going to have someone there, a real person that you can trust, and so you must instill the teachings of wisdom, to pursue understanding before it's necessary, so that you are not caught off-guard, unprepared, unable to escape a trap that you could have otherwise easily avoided.
For men, as an example, it's about really internalizing that no amount of effort on anyone else's part is going to stop you from adultery. Nothing that anyone else does can, ultimately, overcome your own sinful desires if you succumb to them. Sure, you may hold out for a time, but when you seek to satisfy the desires of the flesh, eventually all the best laid plans are ruined in the sheer force of hunger. You, as a man, must command control over your own desires, and learn how to keep yourself from the immoral woman before you have seen her, before she whispers her sweet temptations, before you smell the perfume, barely covering over the stench of death that follows her around.
Treat wisdom like someone who deserves your ear, your sacrifices, your attention, and you will be prepared for, and understand, how you are to escape from temptation when it presents itself. Unlike Solomon, we now even have the advantage of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, serving to add another voice to the decision making process, another source of wisdom that we can tap into at any time, that we can lean on and draw strength from in facing sin.
Simply put, we are without any excuse for our sin, and that is why God is just in punishing it so harshly, and why our lives are so blessed when we are obedient to the wisdom that God shares freely with us.
12.4.18
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.
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.
6.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 5:21-23
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord,
And He ponders all his paths.
His own iniquities entrap the wicked man,
And he is caught in the cords of his sin.
He shall die for lack of instruction,
And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
Proverbs 5:21-23 (NKJV).
It feels obvious saying this, but God is not "tricked" or "fooled" by anything we do, especially not in the way that the people around us can be, because their perceptions are limited. There is no hiding anything from God, or surprising God, or anything like that.
In the nature of creation we see that God designed the systems of our existence knowing full well that Adam and Eve would fall. While God desired that humanity remain in relationship, God knew that wouldn't last. Why I say it in that manner is reflected in the stance I take on the balance between God's sovereignty and human agency, or free will.
The label is "Molinist", and essentially it sits between the much better known "Calvinism" and "Arminianism". Despite Luis being a contemporary of John and Jacobus, the doctrines that he put forth to explain the balance of sovereignty and free will were dismissed despite providing the most coherent interpretation of scripture be actually balancing sovereignty and free will instead of enslaving the one to the other as the two more prominent stances often do.
For those who are entirely unfamiliar with the terms, Calvinists emphasize the sovereignty of God at the cost of free will, and Arminians emphasize the free will of humans at the cost of the sovereignty of God, and while there are more details that are worth understanding, this is the most important one to understand right now. The next most important thing to understand is that each is supported by scripture, and as you might now guess, passages that support one undermine the other, and vice versa.
Yet instead of seeking to find a way to harmonize interpretation coherently, scholars from both schools of thought tend to create "new rules" to interpret scripture such that when the Bible says something, you now have to reference a "decoder ring" of sorts to understand what scripture is really trying to say, even if the new interpretation appears to contradict the explicit words used in scripture.
You might be wondering what this has to to with Proverbs, so I'll digress for a moment. If what a man (or woman) chooses to do is not really their choice, then they do not own the moral significance of the choice, nor the consequences that come from the result of a choice they did not make. Is a puppet capable of defying the puppeteer? This passage in Proverbs is discussing the consequences of wickedness, so understanding who is really responsible, given that God knows what will be done and "ponders all his paths", helps explain the how in this piece of wisdom given to us by Solomon. Now, back to the task at hand.
Some examples of scripture that must be twisted one direction are Revlation 22:17, 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 5:15, and 2 Peter 3:9.
Verses that must be twisted the opposite direction are like Ephesians 1:4 and 1:5, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, and 2 Timothy 1:9
In each set, who is responsible when it comes to salvation is painted differently, who responds and why isn't quite the same, and you can see how, emphasizing either God's sovereignty or human free will, you end up with an inconsistent interpretation of scripture. Instead the two must be balanced, and that's where Molinism comes back into play, and thus how it ties directly to this passage in Proverbs.
Molinism posits that in addition to the two types of knowledge most theologians recognize, that there is a third "in the middle" of those two. The first recognized set of knowledge is of all that could be, all the possibilities that God could manifest. The second recognized set of knowledge is all that will be, given that what will occur is a subset of the creation of God, so God being outside creation there is no reason God won't know this. The third, the posited set of knowledge, is that God knows what would happen under different circumstances.
"Middle knowledge" is that God knows accurately what choices you would freely make with your own judgment under a given set of circumstances, even if those circumstances are entirely hypothetical and never actually manifest.
Anecdotally, we express this type of knowledge when we are familiar with someone and accurately predict how they will react in a circumstance. Finishing each other's sentences, or even phrases like "I knew you'd say that" are evidences of this in our lives, but is there ever a scriptural support for this phenomenon?
Yes, and out of Jesus' own mouth as well. Is there ever an explicit reference to the knowledge that Jesus is tapping into when making such a claim? No, but the word "trinity" does not appear in scripture either, and yet few have issues with the use of the term to describe a philosophical concept that is relevant to doctrine.
So, why the huge detour down this path in order to support this verse?
If God knows what you would do, then God could put you in the appropriate place and time in history such that your choices, whether in obedience or rebellion, would still be yours, but the outcome of your choices could still be known and accounted for in God's overall plan for out material existence.
In essence, what it means is that before the creation of our reality, God could compare all the possibilities, determine which of them brought God the most glory, and then seek to manifest exactly that specific series of events, all without needing to coerce people to make any decisions, because God, knowing us better than we even know ourselves, knew what choices we would make and how the flow of the narrative of our existence would continue on because of those.
In this fashion, God could also design the mechanisms of existence to always have an appropriate response, such that both materially and eternally, the choices we made would have been ours, and so God's punishment of sin and justice is no longer a mockery, a game of puppets, actors, being punished for just playing the part God gave them.
This is how the wicked can be caught up in their sin, not because God is constantly scrambling to find some way to give evildoers their comeuppance, but because God already knew of the choices that would be made, and so can orchestrate the natural flow of humanity to achieve God's ends even if through means which God could not, at any level, be responsible for (sin).
Sin does not have a tangible existence, but is like a shadow, a relative concept like "cold" which exists to explain the absence of something else. A shadow cannot exist without light, and "cold" does not make sense unless there is "warm" to compare it to, "cold" just being a smaller quantity of "heat".
Likewise, creation was ordered by God to function in such a way that reflect God's nature, but gave the capacity for existence of "less holy", "less perfect", "less God". Sin is Godlessness, running contrary to both God's nature, and the nature of the creation of God. While Satan does rule, and seeks to promote evil, a lack of holiness, a lack of moral perfection, this is but an attempt to pervert and corrupt an existing creation, not a new creation, an opposing force to God.
In the same fashion that, while appearing to have material success, Satan's defeat has already been declared, been understood, and likewise the sins of man may grant a temporary appearance of success, of "winning the battle" against God, but it always comes at a cost which entirely destroys all that was gained through wickedness.
For one example and then I'll wrap this up, the greedy are never satisfied, their lust growing ever stronger, there is no "enough" for them, despite everything that they gain, they cannot see it, and their lives do not really change, they continue to behave as if they'd really gained nothing at all. Eventually even the power they have gathered unto themselves runs out and all they had gained is lost, and to the dust they were made from do they return. Their avarice, their attempts to gain freedom from God is successful, but only in damning them to an eternal bondage without hope of reconciliation.
Solomon is telling us that there is no sin for which there are no consequences, and that for the measure of our investment in foolishness, so will we find ourselves distanced from God, whether now or in eternity.
Pursue God, pursue wisdom, retreat from temptation, and you will not die alone, lost in darkness, isolated from God. It's our choice to make, and God will respect it, judge us for it, whether we chose obedience or rebellion.
And He ponders all his paths.
His own iniquities entrap the wicked man,
And he is caught in the cords of his sin.
He shall die for lack of instruction,
And in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.
Proverbs 5:21-23 (NKJV).
It feels obvious saying this, but God is not "tricked" or "fooled" by anything we do, especially not in the way that the people around us can be, because their perceptions are limited. There is no hiding anything from God, or surprising God, or anything like that.
In the nature of creation we see that God designed the systems of our existence knowing full well that Adam and Eve would fall. While God desired that humanity remain in relationship, God knew that wouldn't last. Why I say it in that manner is reflected in the stance I take on the balance between God's sovereignty and human agency, or free will.
The label is "Molinist", and essentially it sits between the much better known "Calvinism" and "Arminianism". Despite Luis being a contemporary of John and Jacobus, the doctrines that he put forth to explain the balance of sovereignty and free will were dismissed despite providing the most coherent interpretation of scripture be actually balancing sovereignty and free will instead of enslaving the one to the other as the two more prominent stances often do.
For those who are entirely unfamiliar with the terms, Calvinists emphasize the sovereignty of God at the cost of free will, and Arminians emphasize the free will of humans at the cost of the sovereignty of God, and while there are more details that are worth understanding, this is the most important one to understand right now. The next most important thing to understand is that each is supported by scripture, and as you might now guess, passages that support one undermine the other, and vice versa.
Yet instead of seeking to find a way to harmonize interpretation coherently, scholars from both schools of thought tend to create "new rules" to interpret scripture such that when the Bible says something, you now have to reference a "decoder ring" of sorts to understand what scripture is really trying to say, even if the new interpretation appears to contradict the explicit words used in scripture.
You might be wondering what this has to to with Proverbs, so I'll digress for a moment. If what a man (or woman) chooses to do is not really their choice, then they do not own the moral significance of the choice, nor the consequences that come from the result of a choice they did not make. Is a puppet capable of defying the puppeteer? This passage in Proverbs is discussing the consequences of wickedness, so understanding who is really responsible, given that God knows what will be done and "ponders all his paths", helps explain the how in this piece of wisdom given to us by Solomon. Now, back to the task at hand.
Some examples of scripture that must be twisted one direction are Revlation 22:17, 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 5:15, and 2 Peter 3:9.
Verses that must be twisted the opposite direction are like Ephesians 1:4 and 1:5, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, and 2 Timothy 1:9
In each set, who is responsible when it comes to salvation is painted differently, who responds and why isn't quite the same, and you can see how, emphasizing either God's sovereignty or human free will, you end up with an inconsistent interpretation of scripture. Instead the two must be balanced, and that's where Molinism comes back into play, and thus how it ties directly to this passage in Proverbs.
Molinism posits that in addition to the two types of knowledge most theologians recognize, that there is a third "in the middle" of those two. The first recognized set of knowledge is of all that could be, all the possibilities that God could manifest. The second recognized set of knowledge is all that will be, given that what will occur is a subset of the creation of God, so God being outside creation there is no reason God won't know this. The third, the posited set of knowledge, is that God knows what would happen under different circumstances.
"Middle knowledge" is that God knows accurately what choices you would freely make with your own judgment under a given set of circumstances, even if those circumstances are entirely hypothetical and never actually manifest.
Anecdotally, we express this type of knowledge when we are familiar with someone and accurately predict how they will react in a circumstance. Finishing each other's sentences, or even phrases like "I knew you'd say that" are evidences of this in our lives, but is there ever a scriptural support for this phenomenon?
Yes, and out of Jesus' own mouth as well. Is there ever an explicit reference to the knowledge that Jesus is tapping into when making such a claim? No, but the word "trinity" does not appear in scripture either, and yet few have issues with the use of the term to describe a philosophical concept that is relevant to doctrine.
So, why the huge detour down this path in order to support this verse?
If God knows what you would do, then God could put you in the appropriate place and time in history such that your choices, whether in obedience or rebellion, would still be yours, but the outcome of your choices could still be known and accounted for in God's overall plan for out material existence.
In essence, what it means is that before the creation of our reality, God could compare all the possibilities, determine which of them brought God the most glory, and then seek to manifest exactly that specific series of events, all without needing to coerce people to make any decisions, because God, knowing us better than we even know ourselves, knew what choices we would make and how the flow of the narrative of our existence would continue on because of those.
In this fashion, God could also design the mechanisms of existence to always have an appropriate response, such that both materially and eternally, the choices we made would have been ours, and so God's punishment of sin and justice is no longer a mockery, a game of puppets, actors, being punished for just playing the part God gave them.
This is how the wicked can be caught up in their sin, not because God is constantly scrambling to find some way to give evildoers their comeuppance, but because God already knew of the choices that would be made, and so can orchestrate the natural flow of humanity to achieve God's ends even if through means which God could not, at any level, be responsible for (sin).
Sin does not have a tangible existence, but is like a shadow, a relative concept like "cold" which exists to explain the absence of something else. A shadow cannot exist without light, and "cold" does not make sense unless there is "warm" to compare it to, "cold" just being a smaller quantity of "heat".
Likewise, creation was ordered by God to function in such a way that reflect God's nature, but gave the capacity for existence of "less holy", "less perfect", "less God". Sin is Godlessness, running contrary to both God's nature, and the nature of the creation of God. While Satan does rule, and seeks to promote evil, a lack of holiness, a lack of moral perfection, this is but an attempt to pervert and corrupt an existing creation, not a new creation, an opposing force to God.
In the same fashion that, while appearing to have material success, Satan's defeat has already been declared, been understood, and likewise the sins of man may grant a temporary appearance of success, of "winning the battle" against God, but it always comes at a cost which entirely destroys all that was gained through wickedness.
For one example and then I'll wrap this up, the greedy are never satisfied, their lust growing ever stronger, there is no "enough" for them, despite everything that they gain, they cannot see it, and their lives do not really change, they continue to behave as if they'd really gained nothing at all. Eventually even the power they have gathered unto themselves runs out and all they had gained is lost, and to the dust they were made from do they return. Their avarice, their attempts to gain freedom from God is successful, but only in damning them to an eternal bondage without hope of reconciliation.
Solomon is telling us that there is no sin for which there are no consequences, and that for the measure of our investment in foolishness, so will we find ourselves distanced from God, whether now or in eternity.
Pursue God, pursue wisdom, retreat from temptation, and you will not die alone, lost in darkness, isolated from God. It's our choice to make, and God will respect it, judge us for it, whether we chose obedience or rebellion.
3.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 5:1-6
My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
Lend your ear to my understanding,
That you may preserve discretion,
And your lips may keep knowledge.
For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil;
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death,
Her steps lay hold of hell.
Lest you ponder her path of life—
Her ways are unstable;
You do not know them.
Proverbs 5:1-6 (NKJV).
Temptation is desirable. This might be obvious, but really ponder on how you cannot be tempted by that which you do not desire. Why, then, do we so often hear it taught that what we desire is, somehow, inherently always good for us? Why does "pursuing your heart" lead to "good" outcomes ever?
Put differently, if you're only ever tempted by what you want, how do you know that the opportunity to get what you want is temptation or not?
Notice how Solomon reinforces this short-term allure in the description of the immoral woman. Honey is tasty. A "smooth mouth" is referring to flattery. In short, that Solomon is describing her as desirable, both in what she offers physically and verbally to entice a man.
And then the "but". In the end, despite this superficial attractiveness, actually deciding to partake of her company leads to destruction. The short-term attraction leads to long-term pain and suffering, both for you and her, and thus you've got the basic dynamics of every temptation laid out before you.
Temptation is always about a shortcut, you getting what you want, but on terms which disagree with God's wisdom and desire for your life. This isn't about God not wanting you to experience "good" things, but that so often in the pursuit of "good" we make ourselves or other finite beings into "gods", driving our behavior in a way that only God deserves.
This is why men succumb to adultery. It's not because sexual desire is "bad", but because they turn the "good" of pleasure through sex into a god which grants them permission to violate their promises before God. Men genuinely feel pleasure, but it's the long-term consequences, not the short-term ones, that make something like adultery so abhorrent to God. Instead of finding their pleasure in their wife, they find it in a "strange woman", and anecdotally speaking, has that ever turned out well?
Among r-strategists, promiscuity is common, so with our modern society so heavily tilted towards r-selection due to resource abundance, socially we've become numb to the consequences of hedonistic pursuits. We've become so exposed to stimuli of various types that we have to keep pushing the envelope, upping the stakes, adding more and more arbitrary requirements to pretend that the skill and talent required represent something about us, as opposed to the reality of us just getting bored with our dopamine receptors burned out.
Men are then pushed to not consider the long-term consequences of their actions, and neither are women, but until the past century or so, women did not wield social, political, or economic power in the same manner that men did, so when you sought to correct the direction of a people, you instructed the men, and the information would then flow down into their "tribe", to their families, and so on.
In that light, while Solomon does reference a gender here, specifically women, as the immoral one to be avoided, snake oil salesmen offer just as sweet a temptation to women as the immoral woman would be to a man, though obviously the dynamics are different as to what men or women desire.
Look at the deceit that Satan used in the garden to cause Eve to desire the forbidden fruit, to pursue the short-term benefits while disregarding the long-term consequences. It wasn't about a pursuit of pleasure, it was about a pursuit of power. This is how each gender is most easily led astray (look at Adam and Eve for the prime examples):
Men by pleasure, women by power.
So as to the earlier question on how to tell whether an opportunity is a temptation or not, first ask yourself whether it's about pleasure, if you're a man, or about power, if you're a woman. Search the scriptures to determine if what you desire has an appropriate manifestation or not. If not, then you can safely dismiss the opportunity as sinful. If there is an appropriate manifestation, then keep digging, keep searching, to find out all the pertinent details and understand whether your circumstances match.
On a time crunch and can't "afford" to do the research? Then simply say no.
There are no important decisions that you need to make in life which cannot wait for you to make a better decision, and time and again when pressured to complete a decision without careful thought, it's because those trying to sell know that spending more time weighing options will not end in their favor.
Solomon warns of the dangers of pursuing what we desire, and in wisdom we should understand that it's not because what we desire is inherently bad, but because the conditions, the timing of things, makes it so. For the same reason we distinguish between self-defense and murder, between adultery and marital sex, between worship of God and of idols, it's not in the actions themselves that sin exists, but in who is glorified or denounced by when and why a particular action has been taken.
Understand this, and you are embracing wisdom.
Lend your ear to my understanding,
That you may preserve discretion,
And your lips may keep knowledge.
For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil;
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death,
Her steps lay hold of hell.
Lest you ponder her path of life—
Her ways are unstable;
You do not know them.
Proverbs 5:1-6 (NKJV).
Temptation is desirable. This might be obvious, but really ponder on how you cannot be tempted by that which you do not desire. Why, then, do we so often hear it taught that what we desire is, somehow, inherently always good for us? Why does "pursuing your heart" lead to "good" outcomes ever?
Put differently, if you're only ever tempted by what you want, how do you know that the opportunity to get what you want is temptation or not?
Notice how Solomon reinforces this short-term allure in the description of the immoral woman. Honey is tasty. A "smooth mouth" is referring to flattery. In short, that Solomon is describing her as desirable, both in what she offers physically and verbally to entice a man.
And then the "but". In the end, despite this superficial attractiveness, actually deciding to partake of her company leads to destruction. The short-term attraction leads to long-term pain and suffering, both for you and her, and thus you've got the basic dynamics of every temptation laid out before you.
Temptation is always about a shortcut, you getting what you want, but on terms which disagree with God's wisdom and desire for your life. This isn't about God not wanting you to experience "good" things, but that so often in the pursuit of "good" we make ourselves or other finite beings into "gods", driving our behavior in a way that only God deserves.
This is why men succumb to adultery. It's not because sexual desire is "bad", but because they turn the "good" of pleasure through sex into a god which grants them permission to violate their promises before God. Men genuinely feel pleasure, but it's the long-term consequences, not the short-term ones, that make something like adultery so abhorrent to God. Instead of finding their pleasure in their wife, they find it in a "strange woman", and anecdotally speaking, has that ever turned out well?
Among r-strategists, promiscuity is common, so with our modern society so heavily tilted towards r-selection due to resource abundance, socially we've become numb to the consequences of hedonistic pursuits. We've become so exposed to stimuli of various types that we have to keep pushing the envelope, upping the stakes, adding more and more arbitrary requirements to pretend that the skill and talent required represent something about us, as opposed to the reality of us just getting bored with our dopamine receptors burned out.
Men are then pushed to not consider the long-term consequences of their actions, and neither are women, but until the past century or so, women did not wield social, political, or economic power in the same manner that men did, so when you sought to correct the direction of a people, you instructed the men, and the information would then flow down into their "tribe", to their families, and so on.
In that light, while Solomon does reference a gender here, specifically women, as the immoral one to be avoided, snake oil salesmen offer just as sweet a temptation to women as the immoral woman would be to a man, though obviously the dynamics are different as to what men or women desire.
Look at the deceit that Satan used in the garden to cause Eve to desire the forbidden fruit, to pursue the short-term benefits while disregarding the long-term consequences. It wasn't about a pursuit of pleasure, it was about a pursuit of power. This is how each gender is most easily led astray (look at Adam and Eve for the prime examples):
Men by pleasure, women by power.
So as to the earlier question on how to tell whether an opportunity is a temptation or not, first ask yourself whether it's about pleasure, if you're a man, or about power, if you're a woman. Search the scriptures to determine if what you desire has an appropriate manifestation or not. If not, then you can safely dismiss the opportunity as sinful. If there is an appropriate manifestation, then keep digging, keep searching, to find out all the pertinent details and understand whether your circumstances match.
On a time crunch and can't "afford" to do the research? Then simply say no.
There are no important decisions that you need to make in life which cannot wait for you to make a better decision, and time and again when pressured to complete a decision without careful thought, it's because those trying to sell know that spending more time weighing options will not end in their favor.
Solomon warns of the dangers of pursuing what we desire, and in wisdom we should understand that it's not because what we desire is inherently bad, but because the conditions, the timing of things, makes it so. For the same reason we distinguish between self-defense and murder, between adultery and marital sex, between worship of God and of idols, it's not in the actions themselves that sin exists, but in who is glorified or denounced by when and why a particular action has been taken.
Understand this, and you are embracing wisdom.
2.4.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 4:20-27
My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes;
Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them,
And health to all their flesh.
Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life.
Put away from you a deceitful mouth,
And put perverse lips far from you.
Let your eyes look straight ahead,
And your eyelids look right before you.
Ponder the path of your feet,
And let all your ways be established.
Do not turn to the right or the left;
Remove your foot from evil.
Proverbs 4:20-27 (NKJV).
Being intentional about the choices you make does not come naturally. By default, we expect that we can just do whatever we want and, compounding this, we also do a terrible job of considering all the actual possible outcomes from making a decision. It is so easy to come up with rationalizations as to why we should be able to do everything that we want, and this is why our solipsism bubble can be so hard to burst.
The "terrible twos" are not about children intending to be evil, but in teaching them that they are not God, that there are limits to their capacity, and that despite their parents having spent the prior years meeting their every need, that system of reliance won't continue on forever.
A big part of "growing up" is just learning how to be independent of your parents, how to provision for yourself, how to make sacrifices in your time preferences to enjoy a greater reward later instead of pursuing a smaller reward now.
The thing is, if you were God, or at least a god, of any sort, then your "power" would be greater than the laws of this reality, and you'd be able to overcome the limitations that humanity constantly runs up against. While you would not be free to do the illogical, like counting the corners on a circle, the reason why we can't just do whatever we want and "be fine" is because we are limited, finite, and we can very quickly place ourselves in circumstances beyond our ability to control.
We need to eat particular foods and in a particular quantity in order to best suit the predisposition of our digestive tract. No two people have the exact same digestive system, with all its bends and turns in the gut, and without all the same microorganisms or history of biological diversity, so while a particular diet may work for one person, it may not even work for a sibling of theirs.
We can't just eat whatever we want and not worry about the consequences because we don't have the power to override our bodily functions, the natural consequences of digestion, through conscious efforts. We are not masters over our own flesh, yet we are inclined to declare ourselves masters over anything else?
Solomon emphasizes time and again the same basic premise, and what that may be tiresome, it's important to realize that he, and in turn God, found the process of making decisions important. That there is significance and meaning behind what you do and why you do it, and to understand that significance and adjust your behavior before mortal consequences come into play.
This is a theme all throughout parenting. You want your child to avoid getting hurt, but there will be a time when their desire to touch the pan on the stove while you've turned your head will overcome them, they still don't understand "hot", and so they'll touch it and burn themselves.
Or perhaps it's about falling from some height. They're a good climber and despite their success, you constantly warn them about being careful. But there will be a time when their desire to climb higher, while they still don't understand "fall = ouchie", will overcome them and they'll get a bit too confident, go past their capacity, and fall.
Parents try to avoid these lessons, to instill the importance, the lesson, without having their child need to experience "the hard way". Commands, barked from across a room, to the effect of "don't touch that" or "stop please" as the parent tries to guide the learning of their child in a way which prevents injury or harm.
But the solipsism bubble can't be burst every time in this manner. The arrogance and hubris of the small child is in full bloom, and there's nothing you can do to change it, and they're convinced they are right and you are wrong. That the reasons you're considering in doing something, or not doing something, are ignorant to the child's perceptions, and so your advice need not be heeded.
Solomon thus keeps trying, keeps emphasizing, keeps explaining the dynamics of wisdom as a way of avoiding his child from having to learn the "hard way", of a way which does not include a path towards destruction, from scars that will never fully heal.
Think of this passage less as the vapid spouting of a wiseguy and instead from the perspective of a parent whose child is visibly tempted by unwise decisions. Pick up on the subtle pleading tones, the heart of Solomon that desires only the best, and the need to try and explain the same dynamic as many different ways as possible, hoping that perhaps the latest permutation of the phrasing will be what triggers understanding.
Pursuing wisdom with vigor and zeal will not disappointed, will not let one down, and will prevent the accumulation of excess baggage that comes with poor decisions, baggage that must then be carried throughout the remainder of temporal life. Free yourself by making the right choice in the first place, and never taking on the burdens you were never meant to carry.
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes;
Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them,
And health to all their flesh.
Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life.
Put away from you a deceitful mouth,
And put perverse lips far from you.
Let your eyes look straight ahead,
And your eyelids look right before you.
Ponder the path of your feet,
And let all your ways be established.
Do not turn to the right or the left;
Remove your foot from evil.
Proverbs 4:20-27 (NKJV).
Being intentional about the choices you make does not come naturally. By default, we expect that we can just do whatever we want and, compounding this, we also do a terrible job of considering all the actual possible outcomes from making a decision. It is so easy to come up with rationalizations as to why we should be able to do everything that we want, and this is why our solipsism bubble can be so hard to burst.
The "terrible twos" are not about children intending to be evil, but in teaching them that they are not God, that there are limits to their capacity, and that despite their parents having spent the prior years meeting their every need, that system of reliance won't continue on forever.
A big part of "growing up" is just learning how to be independent of your parents, how to provision for yourself, how to make sacrifices in your time preferences to enjoy a greater reward later instead of pursuing a smaller reward now.
The thing is, if you were God, or at least a god, of any sort, then your "power" would be greater than the laws of this reality, and you'd be able to overcome the limitations that humanity constantly runs up against. While you would not be free to do the illogical, like counting the corners on a circle, the reason why we can't just do whatever we want and "be fine" is because we are limited, finite, and we can very quickly place ourselves in circumstances beyond our ability to control.
We need to eat particular foods and in a particular quantity in order to best suit the predisposition of our digestive tract. No two people have the exact same digestive system, with all its bends and turns in the gut, and without all the same microorganisms or history of biological diversity, so while a particular diet may work for one person, it may not even work for a sibling of theirs.
We can't just eat whatever we want and not worry about the consequences because we don't have the power to override our bodily functions, the natural consequences of digestion, through conscious efforts. We are not masters over our own flesh, yet we are inclined to declare ourselves masters over anything else?
Solomon emphasizes time and again the same basic premise, and what that may be tiresome, it's important to realize that he, and in turn God, found the process of making decisions important. That there is significance and meaning behind what you do and why you do it, and to understand that significance and adjust your behavior before mortal consequences come into play.
This is a theme all throughout parenting. You want your child to avoid getting hurt, but there will be a time when their desire to touch the pan on the stove while you've turned your head will overcome them, they still don't understand "hot", and so they'll touch it and burn themselves.
Or perhaps it's about falling from some height. They're a good climber and despite their success, you constantly warn them about being careful. But there will be a time when their desire to climb higher, while they still don't understand "fall = ouchie", will overcome them and they'll get a bit too confident, go past their capacity, and fall.
Parents try to avoid these lessons, to instill the importance, the lesson, without having their child need to experience "the hard way". Commands, barked from across a room, to the effect of "don't touch that" or "stop please" as the parent tries to guide the learning of their child in a way which prevents injury or harm.
But the solipsism bubble can't be burst every time in this manner. The arrogance and hubris of the small child is in full bloom, and there's nothing you can do to change it, and they're convinced they are right and you are wrong. That the reasons you're considering in doing something, or not doing something, are ignorant to the child's perceptions, and so your advice need not be heeded.
Solomon thus keeps trying, keeps emphasizing, keeps explaining the dynamics of wisdom as a way of avoiding his child from having to learn the "hard way", of a way which does not include a path towards destruction, from scars that will never fully heal.
Think of this passage less as the vapid spouting of a wiseguy and instead from the perspective of a parent whose child is visibly tempted by unwise decisions. Pick up on the subtle pleading tones, the heart of Solomon that desires only the best, and the need to try and explain the same dynamic as many different ways as possible, hoping that perhaps the latest permutation of the phrasing will be what triggers understanding.
Pursuing wisdom with vigor and zeal will not disappointed, will not let one down, and will prevent the accumulation of excess baggage that comes with poor decisions, baggage that must then be carried throughout the remainder of temporal life. Free yourself by making the right choice in the first place, and never taking on the burdens you were never meant to carry.
1.4.18
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.
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.
31.3.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 4:5-9
Get wisdom! Get understanding!
Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth.
Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you;
Love her, and she will keep you.
Wisdom is the principal thing;
Therefore get wisdom.
And in all your getting, get understanding.
Exalt her, and she will promote you;
She will bring you honor, when you embrace her.
She will place on your head an ornament of grace;
A crown of glory she will deliver to you.”
Proverbs 4:5-9 (NKJV).
The wisdom of God does not come naturally to humans. It comes across as counter-intuitive, as foolishness, as unwise. I would argue this is why Solomon tries so hard, will say so often, the very same simple advice, because in the cacophony of "worldly" wisdom few are humble, few are seeking to glorify God.
In our modern world there is no shortage of answers offered, some free and some with a terrible price, all claiming to get you to the same end results. The variations, the paths offered, the choices, all of them are thrown at you endlessly and it's easy to drown in "self-help". Even Christian dogma, the basics, are so well known now as to have become a cliché, dismissed for lack of novelty.
Yet in pursuing wisdom, other positive circumstances that people desire for themselves will also be found. Pursuing those circumstances directly will not. This is the counter-intuitive nature of God's wisdom, that to get what you "really want", you must pursue something else, and what you "really want" is found as a byproduct.
In the most extreme example, if we "really want" salvation, we do not pursue it, but instead we choose faith in Jesus Christ. Solomon, in the smaller context of wisdom, refers to peace, to prosperity, to dignity, to grace, to attributes that one will see manifest and are desirable, but if one were to pursue directly then the others may be forfeited entirely.
For peace, to pursue it directly, you need only enslave your will to the strongest among you, to submit, to surrender, to forever refuse to resist any who disagree with you, and the cost for this peace? Everything you hold dear, from material possessions to your own dignity. You become a tool for someone else, you surrender your agency, your ability to glorify God, because so often those who have gathered strength unto themselves in this life do so in spite of God's desire for their lives.
For grace? Look at the modern phenomenon of "social justice", though merited by the "victim status", as the secular answer to grace. Look at Equal Opportunity Employment. Look at "gay marriage". Look at "transphobia". Look at "Political Correctness". The world has its own opinion on who grace should be poured out on, what it should look like, and the terms are superficially materialistic, but past the thin veneer are deeply idealistic and in denial of human nature.
Solomon emphasizes wisdom because it is not myopic, it is not fixated on just one attribute or outcome, but seeks to bring you into a holistic harmony with reality, as designed by God. In pursuing wisdom, you will know how to behave in a wider range of activities, circumstances, and when you don't have an explicit answer on the best path forward, you've got the tools to examine motivation and context to discover what the best answer for you really is.
Wisdom is not answers, it's the means by which answers are found, and thus why Solomon will constantly exhort the reader, the listener, to pursue the method by which answers are found instead of just answers. An answer is only useful so long as the same problem keeps showing up, but if you keep having the same problem, what does that say about your growth, your maturity, let alone how good the "answer" that you've clung to really is?
Later in scripture Jesus is talking about worry regarding the material care of those who follow God, and in an echo of Solomon, paraphrased "seek first the Kingdom of God." In that kingdom, if you are loyal to its king, and seeking out his righteousness, you will find wisdom, and yet so much more.
Do not be led astray by the "wisdom" of this world which offers to give you what you "really want" at a cost you haven't even begun to imagine. Seek wisdom, seek humility in understanding your place, and seek to know and glorify God.
Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth.
Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you;
Love her, and she will keep you.
Wisdom is the principal thing;
Therefore get wisdom.
And in all your getting, get understanding.
Exalt her, and she will promote you;
She will bring you honor, when you embrace her.
She will place on your head an ornament of grace;
A crown of glory she will deliver to you.”
Proverbs 4:5-9 (NKJV).
The wisdom of God does not come naturally to humans. It comes across as counter-intuitive, as foolishness, as unwise. I would argue this is why Solomon tries so hard, will say so often, the very same simple advice, because in the cacophony of "worldly" wisdom few are humble, few are seeking to glorify God.
In our modern world there is no shortage of answers offered, some free and some with a terrible price, all claiming to get you to the same end results. The variations, the paths offered, the choices, all of them are thrown at you endlessly and it's easy to drown in "self-help". Even Christian dogma, the basics, are so well known now as to have become a cliché, dismissed for lack of novelty.
Yet in pursuing wisdom, other positive circumstances that people desire for themselves will also be found. Pursuing those circumstances directly will not. This is the counter-intuitive nature of God's wisdom, that to get what you "really want", you must pursue something else, and what you "really want" is found as a byproduct.
In the most extreme example, if we "really want" salvation, we do not pursue it, but instead we choose faith in Jesus Christ. Solomon, in the smaller context of wisdom, refers to peace, to prosperity, to dignity, to grace, to attributes that one will see manifest and are desirable, but if one were to pursue directly then the others may be forfeited entirely.
For peace, to pursue it directly, you need only enslave your will to the strongest among you, to submit, to surrender, to forever refuse to resist any who disagree with you, and the cost for this peace? Everything you hold dear, from material possessions to your own dignity. You become a tool for someone else, you surrender your agency, your ability to glorify God, because so often those who have gathered strength unto themselves in this life do so in spite of God's desire for their lives.
For grace? Look at the modern phenomenon of "social justice", though merited by the "victim status", as the secular answer to grace. Look at Equal Opportunity Employment. Look at "gay marriage". Look at "transphobia". Look at "Political Correctness". The world has its own opinion on who grace should be poured out on, what it should look like, and the terms are superficially materialistic, but past the thin veneer are deeply idealistic and in denial of human nature.
Solomon emphasizes wisdom because it is not myopic, it is not fixated on just one attribute or outcome, but seeks to bring you into a holistic harmony with reality, as designed by God. In pursuing wisdom, you will know how to behave in a wider range of activities, circumstances, and when you don't have an explicit answer on the best path forward, you've got the tools to examine motivation and context to discover what the best answer for you really is.
Wisdom is not answers, it's the means by which answers are found, and thus why Solomon will constantly exhort the reader, the listener, to pursue the method by which answers are found instead of just answers. An answer is only useful so long as the same problem keeps showing up, but if you keep having the same problem, what does that say about your growth, your maturity, let alone how good the "answer" that you've clung to really is?
Later in scripture Jesus is talking about worry regarding the material care of those who follow God, and in an echo of Solomon, paraphrased "seek first the Kingdom of God." In that kingdom, if you are loyal to its king, and seeking out his righteousness, you will find wisdom, and yet so much more.
Do not be led astray by the "wisdom" of this world which offers to give you what you "really want" at a cost you haven't even begun to imagine. Seek wisdom, seek humility in understanding your place, and seek to know and glorify God.
30.3.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 4:1-4
Hear, my children, the instruction of a father,
And give attention to know understanding;
For I give you good doctrine:
Do not forsake my law.
When I was my father’s son,
Tender and the only one in the sight of my mother,
He also taught me, and said to me:
“Let your heart retain my words;
Keep my commands, and live.
Proverbs 4:1-4 (NKJV).
Fathers are important.
This seems simple, yet in our current era of rebellion, where good is called evil, and evil called good, it is a controversial thing to say. The implications it carries, the weight of the realization that things are very wrong and that, in some ways, cannot ever be made right.
Some may immediately, in an egalitarian spirit, try to quip, even if only to themselves, that "mothers are important too." While that is true, this instinctual response is not a healthy one. It's the same response that gave us a generation with "participation trophies", because for the same reason that men and women must be equalized, so too must the winners and losers of an activity, lest the loss of self-esteem and the bursting of the solipsism bubble prove to be too painful for those involved.
Comparisons, distinctions, anything that creates a disparity is inherently evil.
And so even the truth that Fathers are important was sacrificed to these false gods.
We can see the impact of fatherlessness all around us, from broken relationships to drug use to addictions, all of these being unrefined expressions of what could have been healthy. Each is instead an untamed overgrowth of emotion, of volatility, of uncouth behavior which has never been properly disciplined.
An analogy I've used to contrast the role of the father and mother is this:
Mothers nurture, Fathers prune.
You see, it's not just enough to plant a garden and then just sit back and see what happens. Despite what your best attempts are, the different seeds you chose and the arrangement you placed them in, there is always competition in fertile soil and only that which sets down roots first or deepest can survive. Weeds can soon crowd, and even if not, when a plant does grow, the growth is not based on who planted, but the nature of the circumstance the plant experiences.
This is why the importance of a mother or a father can be discussed separately without needing to bolster the other at the same time, in large part because they're not doing the same thing, so when discussing only a particular set of behaviors or attributes, you will often only end up talking about one or the other anyway.
Another way of saying the same thing is that mothers set a course, determine a direction, and fathers ensure it's being followed and make necessary corrections. The skills required to do both are different, the awareness, the actions taken, they are different, and it's extremely difficult to do both at the same time, impossible if you deny that there even are a "both" that need to occur in the first place.
Specifically, in my youth there was a "theme" in parenting where the reduction of restriction was supposed to usher in a new era of enlightened children who were not hindered by limitations, who would explore and not be held back by any struggles. The lofty idea was that struggles prevented growth, so in order to really be expressed, growth could not be hindered in any way.
The reality is that the struggles refine us to who we really are, they provide the motivation and opportunity to grow, and they give us constructive feedback.
A plant can grow wild, but when pruned or trimmed correctly, the plant will change its behavior. Think about wine grapes on the hills of Italy. Some of those plants are very very old, yet in order to get them to produce the best fruit, you must counter-intuitively stress them. When on the border between life and death, when pruned of new growth, the plants will invest heavily in producing fruit that would be desirable to the wild animals who would eat the grapes and then spread the seed of the plant, helping ensure its survival, even if the specific plant itself dies.
Placed in fertile soil without any trimming, provided all the nutrients the plant could ever want?
The resulting fruit is bland, sparse, as instead of producing fruit the plant will instead just keep focusing on new growth, new vines, expansion of the plant.
This is the model of a child who grows up without a father. It's not that the mother does not try to direct, to correct, to put forth a law for their child to follow, but they are not equipped with the necessary skills to enforce that law, and the father is.
For the same reason that men are better suited to physically demanding work, that the mental resilience of man that allows them to face both the mundane and the terrifying and still retain their sanity to provide for their families, men are simply better suited to provide the corrective action in the lives of their children, and can make the sacrifices in the relationship between them and their children as are necessary for the better of the child's growth, maturity, and future outlook.
Solomon understands this, and will emphasize time and again in Proverbs that the lessons taught by a father are to be kept and cherished even when fathers are no longer around, that it's not just enough to heed the advice, but that actually living it out will show honor to your father and also lead toward life instead of destruction as well.
Bad fathers are not going to change overnight, nor can the damage they cause be fixed easily, but even worse then that is when good fathers are prevented from ever being good fathers at all. When our culture seeks "equality", it does not push bad fathers towards being good, but instead only seeks to make bad fathers out of them all, so as not to give any child the advantage of stability, of health. All are to be equally broken, miserable, and dependent.
Encourage fathers to be good ones, to embrace the difficulty in their task of guiding growth, of correcting the path that their children walk, of the value in them investing into the lives of their children. Because fathers are important, and those investments can pay dividends on into eternity.
And give attention to know understanding;
For I give you good doctrine:
Do not forsake my law.
When I was my father’s son,
Tender and the only one in the sight of my mother,
He also taught me, and said to me:
“Let your heart retain my words;
Keep my commands, and live.
Proverbs 4:1-4 (NKJV).
Fathers are important.
This seems simple, yet in our current era of rebellion, where good is called evil, and evil called good, it is a controversial thing to say. The implications it carries, the weight of the realization that things are very wrong and that, in some ways, cannot ever be made right.
Some may immediately, in an egalitarian spirit, try to quip, even if only to themselves, that "mothers are important too." While that is true, this instinctual response is not a healthy one. It's the same response that gave us a generation with "participation trophies", because for the same reason that men and women must be equalized, so too must the winners and losers of an activity, lest the loss of self-esteem and the bursting of the solipsism bubble prove to be too painful for those involved.
Comparisons, distinctions, anything that creates a disparity is inherently evil.
And so even the truth that Fathers are important was sacrificed to these false gods.
We can see the impact of fatherlessness all around us, from broken relationships to drug use to addictions, all of these being unrefined expressions of what could have been healthy. Each is instead an untamed overgrowth of emotion, of volatility, of uncouth behavior which has never been properly disciplined.
An analogy I've used to contrast the role of the father and mother is this:
Mothers nurture, Fathers prune.
You see, it's not just enough to plant a garden and then just sit back and see what happens. Despite what your best attempts are, the different seeds you chose and the arrangement you placed them in, there is always competition in fertile soil and only that which sets down roots first or deepest can survive. Weeds can soon crowd, and even if not, when a plant does grow, the growth is not based on who planted, but the nature of the circumstance the plant experiences.
This is why the importance of a mother or a father can be discussed separately without needing to bolster the other at the same time, in large part because they're not doing the same thing, so when discussing only a particular set of behaviors or attributes, you will often only end up talking about one or the other anyway.
Another way of saying the same thing is that mothers set a course, determine a direction, and fathers ensure it's being followed and make necessary corrections. The skills required to do both are different, the awareness, the actions taken, they are different, and it's extremely difficult to do both at the same time, impossible if you deny that there even are a "both" that need to occur in the first place.
Specifically, in my youth there was a "theme" in parenting where the reduction of restriction was supposed to usher in a new era of enlightened children who were not hindered by limitations, who would explore and not be held back by any struggles. The lofty idea was that struggles prevented growth, so in order to really be expressed, growth could not be hindered in any way.
The reality is that the struggles refine us to who we really are, they provide the motivation and opportunity to grow, and they give us constructive feedback.
A plant can grow wild, but when pruned or trimmed correctly, the plant will change its behavior. Think about wine grapes on the hills of Italy. Some of those plants are very very old, yet in order to get them to produce the best fruit, you must counter-intuitively stress them. When on the border between life and death, when pruned of new growth, the plants will invest heavily in producing fruit that would be desirable to the wild animals who would eat the grapes and then spread the seed of the plant, helping ensure its survival, even if the specific plant itself dies.
Placed in fertile soil without any trimming, provided all the nutrients the plant could ever want?
The resulting fruit is bland, sparse, as instead of producing fruit the plant will instead just keep focusing on new growth, new vines, expansion of the plant.
This is the model of a child who grows up without a father. It's not that the mother does not try to direct, to correct, to put forth a law for their child to follow, but they are not equipped with the necessary skills to enforce that law, and the father is.
For the same reason that men are better suited to physically demanding work, that the mental resilience of man that allows them to face both the mundane and the terrifying and still retain their sanity to provide for their families, men are simply better suited to provide the corrective action in the lives of their children, and can make the sacrifices in the relationship between them and their children as are necessary for the better of the child's growth, maturity, and future outlook.
Solomon understands this, and will emphasize time and again in Proverbs that the lessons taught by a father are to be kept and cherished even when fathers are no longer around, that it's not just enough to heed the advice, but that actually living it out will show honor to your father and also lead toward life instead of destruction as well.
Bad fathers are not going to change overnight, nor can the damage they cause be fixed easily, but even worse then that is when good fathers are prevented from ever being good fathers at all. When our culture seeks "equality", it does not push bad fathers towards being good, but instead only seeks to make bad fathers out of them all, so as not to give any child the advantage of stability, of health. All are to be equally broken, miserable, and dependent.
Encourage fathers to be good ones, to embrace the difficulty in their task of guiding growth, of correcting the path that their children walk, of the value in them investing into the lives of their children. Because fathers are important, and those investments can pay dividends on into eternity.
29.3.18
Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 3:31-35
Do not envy the oppressor,
And choose none of his ways;
For the perverse person is an abomination to the Lord,
But His secret counsel is with the upright.
The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked,
But He blesses the home of the just.
Surely He scorns the scornful,
But gives grace to the humble.
The wise shall inherit glory,
But shame shall be the legacy of fools.
Proverbs 3:31-35 (NKJV).
This passage reminded me of the quote attributed to Mark Twain which goes "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
There are many ways to gain power in the material world, and when people have power over others the temptation is to exert that power to meet the ends and desires of whoever controls the power. Solomon starts us out by encouraging us not to be envious of those who use power to oppress.
You can't be an oppressor unless you have power, in the same way that an ant can't really oppress an elephant, let alone an entire herd of them.
It's natural, in reaction to oppression, to be tempted to mirror the oppressor, to not only seek to remove your bondage, but to chain them up and seek revenge of "equal measure" against them, to essentially become the oppressor yourself. This is what Solomon advises against.
Power attracts the corrupt, because we are born solipsistic, and will by our nature pursue any means by which that belief in our inherent deity can be confirmed. This is the heart of our "sin nature", in that to do any of that we must be first denying God the throne and constantly trying to fill the seat with anything else, whether ourselves or lesser demons who have made names for themselves in the various world religions.
I have no doubt that an "Allah" exists, or a "Shiva", or a "Jupiter", or a "Loki", and that they are finite spiritual beings which do wield power in this world as subordinates to the prince of this world. I have no doubt that humans in alignment with evil have been granted supernatural capability as a means of validating the "power" of those they serve.
I also know that many Christians can feel like God's power is almost never displayed in the same fashion, that there are many who would claim that "if God did X, then I would believe."
But the problem in that belief is akin to complaining that because the demons and lesser god-wannabe beings are making great sandcastles, that the God who created the sand is somehow denigrated, threatened, or overshadowed by what these finite creatures can accomplish with the sand that God created. Do you see the disparity in actual power being demonstrated?
To use another analogy, it's like complaining that the guy who brought the frozen water block that an ice sculptor then fashions into is "unnecessary", yet without his work, the ice sculptor can't do anything at all to manifest their desires.
It's this same dynamic wherein God is neither impressed or challenged by the smaller "miracles" and achievements of the fallen angels who rule this Earthly realm, nor why God would feel any need to offer a demonstration as a response, because anybody who is really paying attention, genuinely seeking truth, will discover this dynamic and adjust their loyalties to worship the one true God.
The perverse person will deny God's power in favor of that which glorifies themselves, and at any cost. There is no distinct course of actions, it's entirely about motivation and purpose, and those things are not always readily apparent.
Look at how the consequences of wisdom and foolishness are described as being in the future, not in front of us. In the short-term, it may very well appear that subscribing to "foolishness", acting on your own understanding and being wise to your own standards, produces a "good" result. The problem is that, even by chance, evil can find temporary success, and when empowered at all, evil can appear to be the "right choice".
The problem there is that "the end" has already been written. "Evil" loses, badly, it's not even a "fair fight". This is why God so regularly discourages revenge, not because seeking peace and justice in this life are not good things, but because the passion for revenge can distract you from glorifying God.
The temporary injustices we face may be corrected temporally by our hand, but they will all be judged between now and eternity, and even the secret deeds will be brought to light. Nobody escapes judgment, and the judge is a morally perfect being who cannot be in close relationship with any who do not share in that perfect holiness.
This is why the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf is so significant, so free, so undeserved, and so humbling. Even when we were in the midst of trying to replace God, a path of reconciliation, of eternal peace, was being cleared for us through the blood of Christ.
God favors those who glorify God, though not always by temporal means, and when you look at existence beyond the material, beyond the temporal and into the eternal, this makes sense, and provides sound reason for us to behave differently than those around us who may still be in rebellion with God.
We are not to pursue the same idols, to sacrifice to the fallen, the sinful, to repeat the patterns of depravity we see around us, even when they appear beneficial, for it gains us nothing. This does not mean that the specific actions we take are always going to be different, in that we are never to seek power or justice or responsibility or leadership or judgment with respect to temporal matters, as the oppressors do all of those things, but we are to pursue them to the glory of God.
We are purified not by our actions, but by the one whose glory we seek by those actions. God is capable, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to see that we are redeemed, cleansed from evil, our debts repaid. All the other gods are busy trying to deceive you into believing that any other path exists for salvation, in this life or the next. Their paths lead to destruction, to darkness, to eternal separation from God.
While we may not see the full effect of this in our temporal life, none will escape it in eternity. All paths do lead to God, to judgment day, but not all will have reconciled with God through the blood of Christ before their judgment begins, and no action on their part in this life to the glory of any but God will save them from damnation.
And choose none of his ways;
For the perverse person is an abomination to the Lord,
But His secret counsel is with the upright.
The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked,
But He blesses the home of the just.
Surely He scorns the scornful,
But gives grace to the humble.
The wise shall inherit glory,
But shame shall be the legacy of fools.
Proverbs 3:31-35 (NKJV).
This passage reminded me of the quote attributed to Mark Twain which goes "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
There are many ways to gain power in the material world, and when people have power over others the temptation is to exert that power to meet the ends and desires of whoever controls the power. Solomon starts us out by encouraging us not to be envious of those who use power to oppress.
You can't be an oppressor unless you have power, in the same way that an ant can't really oppress an elephant, let alone an entire herd of them.
It's natural, in reaction to oppression, to be tempted to mirror the oppressor, to not only seek to remove your bondage, but to chain them up and seek revenge of "equal measure" against them, to essentially become the oppressor yourself. This is what Solomon advises against.
Power attracts the corrupt, because we are born solipsistic, and will by our nature pursue any means by which that belief in our inherent deity can be confirmed. This is the heart of our "sin nature", in that to do any of that we must be first denying God the throne and constantly trying to fill the seat with anything else, whether ourselves or lesser demons who have made names for themselves in the various world religions.
I have no doubt that an "Allah" exists, or a "Shiva", or a "Jupiter", or a "Loki", and that they are finite spiritual beings which do wield power in this world as subordinates to the prince of this world. I have no doubt that humans in alignment with evil have been granted supernatural capability as a means of validating the "power" of those they serve.
I also know that many Christians can feel like God's power is almost never displayed in the same fashion, that there are many who would claim that "if God did X, then I would believe."
But the problem in that belief is akin to complaining that because the demons and lesser god-wannabe beings are making great sandcastles, that the God who created the sand is somehow denigrated, threatened, or overshadowed by what these finite creatures can accomplish with the sand that God created. Do you see the disparity in actual power being demonstrated?
To use another analogy, it's like complaining that the guy who brought the frozen water block that an ice sculptor then fashions into is "unnecessary", yet without his work, the ice sculptor can't do anything at all to manifest their desires.
It's this same dynamic wherein God is neither impressed or challenged by the smaller "miracles" and achievements of the fallen angels who rule this Earthly realm, nor why God would feel any need to offer a demonstration as a response, because anybody who is really paying attention, genuinely seeking truth, will discover this dynamic and adjust their loyalties to worship the one true God.
The perverse person will deny God's power in favor of that which glorifies themselves, and at any cost. There is no distinct course of actions, it's entirely about motivation and purpose, and those things are not always readily apparent.
Look at how the consequences of wisdom and foolishness are described as being in the future, not in front of us. In the short-term, it may very well appear that subscribing to "foolishness", acting on your own understanding and being wise to your own standards, produces a "good" result. The problem is that, even by chance, evil can find temporary success, and when empowered at all, evil can appear to be the "right choice".
The problem there is that "the end" has already been written. "Evil" loses, badly, it's not even a "fair fight". This is why God so regularly discourages revenge, not because seeking peace and justice in this life are not good things, but because the passion for revenge can distract you from glorifying God.
The temporary injustices we face may be corrected temporally by our hand, but they will all be judged between now and eternity, and even the secret deeds will be brought to light. Nobody escapes judgment, and the judge is a morally perfect being who cannot be in close relationship with any who do not share in that perfect holiness.
This is why the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf is so significant, so free, so undeserved, and so humbling. Even when we were in the midst of trying to replace God, a path of reconciliation, of eternal peace, was being cleared for us through the blood of Christ.
God favors those who glorify God, though not always by temporal means, and when you look at existence beyond the material, beyond the temporal and into the eternal, this makes sense, and provides sound reason for us to behave differently than those around us who may still be in rebellion with God.
We are not to pursue the same idols, to sacrifice to the fallen, the sinful, to repeat the patterns of depravity we see around us, even when they appear beneficial, for it gains us nothing. This does not mean that the specific actions we take are always going to be different, in that we are never to seek power or justice or responsibility or leadership or judgment with respect to temporal matters, as the oppressors do all of those things, but we are to pursue them to the glory of God.
We are purified not by our actions, but by the one whose glory we seek by those actions. God is capable, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to see that we are redeemed, cleansed from evil, our debts repaid. All the other gods are busy trying to deceive you into believing that any other path exists for salvation, in this life or the next. Their paths lead to destruction, to darkness, to eternal separation from God.
While we may not see the full effect of this in our temporal life, none will escape it in eternity. All paths do lead to God, to judgment day, but not all will have reconciled with God through the blood of Christ before their judgment begins, and no action on their part in this life to the glory of any but God will save them from damnation.
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