Mere Cognition

For the first foray into Proverbs 28, we're going to camp in verse 1 pretty hard.

The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.

The wicked flee when no one pursues. What does that even mean? Wicked, at least in this sense, definitely means evil or immoral people. Why would they run away and vanish at the slightest hint of someone coming after them? Matthew Henry may tidy it up a bit:

Guilt in the conscience makes men a terror to themselves, so that they are ready to flee when none pursues; like one that absconds for debt, who thinks every one he meets a bailiff. Though they pretend to be easy, there are secret fears which haunt them wherever they go, so that they fear where no present or imminent danger is.

Or, put even more succinctly,

Sin makes men cowards. Whatever difficulties the righteous meet in the way of duty, they are not daunted.

This is all too true. I could probably think for mere moments and easily name at least 5 times sin made me to be the hugest of all cowards, especially in my marriage. However, when the Lord came and plucked His lost sheep from the wilderness and took him back to be with the 99, he has given me strength to overcome the sin of cowardice to boldly proclaim Christ to all. To bring it home in a more contemporary fashion, we have John MacArthur exhorting:

A guilty conscience imagines accusers everywhere (Numbers 32:23, Psalm 53:5), while a clear conscience has boldness to face everyone.

It's a rather interesting duplicity. Since the days of Adam, the fall itself brought awareness of the conscience, and conscience ever gnaws at us all. Conscience is bound up in guilt and shame, all direct descendants of that one deception by the father of lies himself. Adam and Eve hid because they were afraid; they covered themselves from shame. All of these emotions bind us and leave us as helpless cowards, twisting in the wind. When we have no other choice but to be found out, we flee.

There have been so many times I have fled when I should have stood fast and resolute. Especially when I was in the wrong. I don't mean that I should have stood proudly or stubbornly in my wrongness, by no means. Instead, I should have laid claim to the error, taken it into consideration, asked for forgiveness, and owned it. We only learn by our mistakes; we are not God and we are not perfect. I let one small thing snowball into a mountainous dung heap and ended up rotting everything from my passivity. Let that be a warning to all men - retain your spine, you need it for your station.

As a parting gift, I leave you with the verse in 1 Samuel 17 where David boldly proclaims that he will righteously stand up against the Philistine champion. May that encourage us that we are not meant to always be passive and on the sidelines.

1 Sam 17:32 And David said to Saul, “Let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”

God has made men warriors just as much as He has made us gentle. It seems we have forgotten this truth in our postmodern feminist society, with its squishy love bombing and sissified, needy Jesus.

This continues a short study of ideas and themes from the book of Proverbs. As I read through the book of Proverbs monthly, I try to write up a short summary of 1-3 points from that day's chapter. There's not a particular formula I'm using to choose the points; it will just happen to be what might stick out to me on that particular day.

You may find the text of Proverbs 27 here.

Presumption of the Future

Proverbs 27 contains mostly short, pithy points of wisdom. It begins, with verse 1, providing us with a wise caution against presuming that our future is guaranteed. This does not mean to not plan for the future; only that it is unwise to presume that any future we have is certain. Anything could happen to us, at any moment. We could be in a motor vehicle accident; a medical emergency could befall us; even a tree could land on our heads. We don't really know how many seconds we have left on this planet, and we should live continually in balance between future expectations and the knowledge that today could very well be our last.

Foolish Provocation

Verse 3 makes a point about being foolish provocation - "a stone is heavy, and sand is weighty, but a fool's provocation is heavier than both. It is written expertly, as it can be simultaneously read from the perspectives of both the reader and someone external. If you foolishly incite anger, that millstone will drag both you and the target down to the depths. If someone else attempts to provoke you, and you respond, the other party has effectively lashed you to the millstone that is dragging him down. One of the interpretive challenges here centers around the realm of applicability. Sometimes provocation is called for within context of a situation, though rarely. This is where Godly wisdom and discernment help us to rightly determine whether the rare thing is warranted or if we are just being foolish.

Faithfulness and Loving Correction

Verses 5-6 punch home a very important aspect of Christian living - one where we are to speak the truth in love, even if those truths are difficult and sometimes painful.

Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

Sometimes, we end up in situations where we don't realize we are in error. Our natural, sinful reaction to correction, is to lash out at the one attempting to correct us. Maybe you have been fighting with that person and are angry at them. Perhaps you harbor thoughts that they are simply trying to manipulate you. We must always temper these thoughts of retaliation with looking at what is being said - we must divorce the words spoken to us from any presuppositions and build the understanding of them back up from the foundation. Look at the plain meaning, then begin to add context back to the correction. What is this person trying to tell me? What biases could they have? Is what I am hearing consistent with what I am experiencing? How could I be wrong here, and how is this correction possibly to help me?

We often forget that sometimes words spoken to us that sting are not meant for evil. For our own edification and humility, we must resist the knee-jerk reaction of thinking that we are being attacked and earnestly interact with what is being conveyed to us.

A couple of different commentaries summarize these concepts rather nicely:

Plain and faithful rebukes are better, not only than secret hatred, but than love which compliments in sin, to the hurt of the soul.

To genuinely love is to manifest the truth, even if it means to rebuke.

Iron Sharpening Iron

Verse 17 is one of my favorite verses in the bible.

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

The Hebrew can be translated as "sharpens the face of another" - challenging and refining our ideas through earnest discussion is a healthy means by which to ensure that we are not letting error leak into our understanding. Much like the gardener pulling weeds preserves the crop, sharpening one's own mind against another helps to remove the dross of forging and the dulling of repeated (oft simply regurgitated) use. Thinking matters.

While having an interesting conversation with someone regarding slavery, indentured servitude, and bondservantry, comparing and contrasting the concepts as practiced in Biblical times and in more recently history, I was reminded of how we often have a poor (in the erroneous sense) ability to keep an accurate view of the past.

We humans are prone to an innumerable amount of error. The further removed we are from an event, the more of these errors encroach on our own views. Our understanding becomes skewed from secondary source material that does not reveal its underlying agenda. Other people in our echo chamber reinforce fabrications and falsehoods. Our ability to discern becomes dulled, to the point where we have difficulty contextualizing even primary source material. We even get to the point where we outright reject interacting with the primary source material due to numerous factors.

The topic of slavery is a good example of this, as a person may refuse to even consider going back to primary sources due to past trauma. And even if they do, there is always the chance a dulled discernment will cause them to reject whatever truth may actually be revealed by those primary sources.

We play a dangerous game by letting the sins of the past dictate our future. I could provide dozens of contemporary examples of this concept but they are easily researched. The correct way forward is to ground ourselves with a bedrock of truth, then use that bedrock to rightly discern what is right, especially in terms of moving forward from past historical trauma.

You may disagree with me, but my bedrock is the truth provided in the Bible, and my hope is in Christ Jesus. This may seem like folly to you. That is understandable, but I am not convinced. Hope is based primarily in faith, reinforced by reason.

I invite you to interact with my truth humbly, and with an open mind. Soften your heart and do not go to your grave harboring the evils of this world. Ultimately, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.