At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: But every fool will be meddling.
Proverbs 20:3
There is a principle here that has applications in multiple directions. We necessarily look out at the world with our own eyes, and cannot do anything differently. We must look at the world through our own eyes. That’s why God gave them to us.
Problems arise when we do not recognize the limitations involved. Problems arise when we do not realize the need that we all have to see the back of our head. And that requires reliance on the wisdom of Scripture (which is a looking glass—Jas. 1:23), and the fellowship of the saints, who can help you see things that you can’t see (Matt. 7:1-5). In order for this process to work rightly, we all must recognize that we all have the propensity to the disobedience of looking out for our own interests. “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Phil. 2:4). Paul reminds the Philippians that Timothy was not like that (Phil.2:20-21). This is basic Golden Rule stuff. You can’t obey the Golden Rule if you don’t know how to step into someone else’s way of looking at the world.
In this proverb, the buyer doesn’t see how hypocritical he is being. When he is negotiating the purchase with the seller, all he can talk about is what a bag of rags the object is, and how it is astonishing that he, a sophisticated shopper, would even deign to look at such garbage. Then, having bought it, and when he is safely around the corner, he wants everyone to know that he clearly knows how to spot value. In short, he is talking in contradictory ways, and does not see how two-faced he is being.
It all depends upon which side of the bread the butter is on. It all depends on whose ox is being gored. The greenness of the grass depends on which side of the fence you are on. We have many ways of pointing at this phenomenon. Upton Sinclair captured the problem when he said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
