At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Also to punish the just is not good, nor to strike princes for equity”

Proverbs 17:26

“Also, to punish the righteous is not good, nor to strike princes for their uprightness”

Proverbs 17:26

Christians who want their fellow believers simply to defer to the state whenever some decree or other is handed down are quick to appeal to Romans 13. But that famous passage does not teach us that citizens are subjects who must do whatever they are told. 

No, that passage teaches us that all of us are under authority, the magistrate as well as the citizen. The magistrate is called diakonos twice in v. 4 and leitourgos in v. 6). The magistrate is a servant, a deacon, a minister. He is under orders. In that passage, he is commanded to reward the righteous and to punish the wrongdoer (vv. 3-4).

That point is reinforced in this proverb. When the magistrate rebels against his heavenly commission, and begins to punish the righteous, we have crossed over into a state of tyranny. Proverbs says that to punish the just is “not good.” In the same way, it is not good to strike at princes who are, unlike the king, standing uprightly. 

If the king has gotten out of line, the princes are lesser magistrates, and they might be in a position to do something about it. Moreover, taking all of Scripture into account, they are under an obligation before God to do so. 

When a citizen takes a righteous stand, say by protesting at an abortion clinic, and he is arrested and wickedly charged, this is a photo negative of what the magistrate—God’s deacon, remember—is charged to do. It is not the case that Christians who resist this are rejecting God’s authority. They are resisting a man who took the badge that God gave him, spit on it, and threw it away.

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; But the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth”

Proverbs 17:24

This is a proverb that encourages us to think that the wise thing for us to do is right there in front of us. Duties are rarely across the globe, but rather are to be found in the “next step.”

By the same token, the fool’s eyes are beyond the horizon. 

A moment’s reflection should reveal why this is. If our duties are right in front of us, we can see what they actually are, and we are responsible to engage them. There they are—pick them up and go. In this scenario, our duties come to us from outside. They are assigned to us. We don’t make them up as we go.

But if we are playing the fool, and our eyes are darting back and forth, thousands of miles away, we are in a position to make up our duties, to fashion all our responsibilities to our liking, and to award ourselves with as many honors and awards as we can think of. In other words, we are set free to daydream. And all this daydreaming is detached from what is actually going on in the actual world.

Put another way, daydreaming grants us a measure of felt autonomy. When we look at the path of wisdom, however, there is no felt autonomy at all. There is the diaper to change. There is the report to write. There is the class to teach. We are summoned by the providence of God to do the next thing, which is an obvious thing. Moreover, it is an obvious thing that we are not in charge of, which is the principal reason it rubs us so wrong. 

All things considered, we sometimes feel like we are lost, not knowing what we should do. But the real problem is that we do know what we should do, and we don’t really feel like it.

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly”

Proverbs 17:12

There are times of the day when a fool is in a quiescent state. They are not “on” all the time. But this proverb tells us that when a fool is “in his folly,” that is an extremely dangerous time to meet him. How dangerous is it? It would be better to be hiking in western Montana, and glance over to the right side of the path and see a mama grizzly, and then to look over to the left side of the path and see three small grizzly cubs.

In other words, to meet a fool when he has gotten up a head of steam is a very dangerous thing indeed. 

One of the reasons why it is more dangerous is that when you meet the bears, it is possible that you might have some idea of which direction to run. There might be a path of escaper that makes some sort of sense. But when you are entangled with a fool, there really is no defense because it is impossible to defend against irrational behavior. 

In his most insightful book, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, Carlo Cipolla makes this point. It is possible to defend yourself against a thief because, although the thief is malevolent, he is nevertheless engaging in rule-guided behavior. It is possible to anticipate what his next move might be, and if you can anticipate that move, you can guard yourself against it. But Cipolla defines a stupid person as one who harms others without receiving any real benefit from those actions himself.

If you don’t want to meet a grizzly robbed of her cubs, then it is best just to stay out of bear country. But living in the world as we do, it is not really possible to stay out of fool country. The best defense a person can have is, after one encounter with a person who has been a fool in this way, to steer clear.

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death”

Proverbs 16:25

No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Well, I must make sure to ruin my life today.” And yet, there are multiple mornings where people do get up and have breakfast, all to give them the strength to . . . ruin their life that day.

We are rationalizing creatures, which means that when we are hellbent on doing wrong, we have the capacity to explain to ourselves how the whole thing “seems right.” And there are a range of options here. We might convince ourselves that what we want to do is genuinely right when in fact it is really foolish. Or we might acknowledge that it is “technically” wrong, but how can it be wrong when it feels so right. 

In short, the way of disaster is a lot more pleasant at the beginning than it is at the end. Scripture teaches us to evaluate the beginning by the end, and not to evaluate the beginning by the sensations we are experiencing at the beginning. Because we are not there at the end, because the end is not yet upon us, we have to rely on God’s Word to inform us of the nature of that end. 

God is not mocked. You reap what you sow, and there is a straight line connection between what you sow and what you reap. But the crop looks very different than the sack of seed does. The sack of seed had “seems right” emblazoned on the side, and the crop was nothing but death and ruination. 

So when we sow, we must do so in faith. Because we see only the seed, and not the harvest, we must make a point of listening to God’s description of the seed. We must live carefully, and need much more assurance than “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Read Full Article

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”

Proverbs 16:18

There is likely an inverse ratio between how well known this proverb is, and how closely it is followed. 

Everybody hates pride and conceit . . . in other people. And the reason we don’t like to see it manifested anywhere else, speaking frankly here, is because we don’t like the competition. Ambrose Bierce once defined a boor as someone who talks when you wish them to listen, which is a definition that kind of puts a finger right on the sore spot. 

The interesting thing about pride, also defined here as a haughty spirit, is that what it delivers is very different that what was expected. Pride, or haughtiness, claims to be able to see, and to be able to see better than anyone else. All the signs, all the warnings, all the cautions from friends . . . what do they know?

This proverb tells us that destruction lies straight ahead. A fall is coming. Not only so, but this destruction, this fall, is predicted beforehand. The person walking straight toward it is blind to the realities of his situation, while at the same time claiming to be in full control of his situation. 

This is what happened to Haman in the book of Esther. Mordecai was descended from Kish, the father of Saul, the first king of Israel. Haman was descended from Agag, the one that Saul had failed to execute. The two men are rivals from the opening of the book, and the rivalry goes back generations. Now Haman was exactly the kind of man that this proverb speaks of. He was conceited and vain, and when the king asked him how best to honor a man, Haman, believing himself to be that man, lavished semi-royal honors on him. The honor then went to Mordecai, with Haman having to lead him around as he received that great honor. This was his harbinger of doom. And when he went home and told his family about it, his wife saw the meaning immediately. But it was not the kind of thing that Haman was able to see. And so he went to the banquet, where he would receive his condemnation, and then he was hanged on the gallows that he had built for Mordecai. 

Pride truly does go before destruction.

Read Full Article