At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“He that walketh uprightly walketh surely: But he that perverteth his ways shall be known” (Proverbs 10:9).
A proverb tells us how it usually goes. It is generally the case that when the ungodly take the kind of short cuts that they want to take, their approach usually comes back to bite them. And when the godly decide out of principle to walk in the way God instructed us to walk, their path is secure.
This proverb tells us that to walk upright is to walk confidently, with no risk of taking a tumble. The other half of the proverb tells us, by implication, that the perverted man reveals his perversion by taking that tumble. God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Driving recklessly is a good way to hurry toward the wreck. You cannot plant Canadian thistle and go out at harvest time to bring in the barley.
The person who is trying to persuade himself that it is sensible to pervert the way will perhaps tell himself that an entrepreneurial spirit is one that “takes risks.” This is certainly true, and there is a wise way to take risks. In the parable of the talents, the slaves who received five talents and two talents went out and risked what they had received. They risked what the worthless slave did not want to risk, which is why he buried his. But realize that this means that the parable could have had quite a different ending. The slave with five talents could have lost everything, as well as the slave with two talents, and the wicked slave could have been the only one who returned any of the money to the master. That would not have changed anything.
So taking risks really is a good thing. But to take the risk of bending or breaking the laws of God is not, according to this parable, taking a risking at all. It is running headlong toward that tumble.
