Mere Cognition

The book of Proverbs begins by reiterating to us that we are to live in communion with God, with regard to his decrees and precepts. We must trust in the Lord and as Romans 8:28 reminds us, that all things work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
    and he will make straight your paths.
7 Be not wise in your own eyes;
    fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh
    and refreshment to your bones.

I once again lean on Matthew Henry to provide exposition on the above verses from Proverbs 3.

We must have a continual regard to God's providence, must own and depend upon it in all our affairs, both by faith and prayer.

1. By faith. We must repose an entire confidence in the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, assuring ourselves of the extent of his providence to all the creatures and all their actions. We must therefore trust in the Lord with all our hearts; we must believe that he is able to do what he will, wise to do what is best, and good, according to his promise, to do what is best for us, if we love him, and serve him. We must, with an entire submission and satisfaction, depend upon him to perform all things for us, and not lean to our own understanding, as if we could, by any forecast of our own, without God, help ourselves, and bring our affairs to a good issue. Those who know themselves cannot but find their own understanding to be a broken reed, which, if they lean to, will certainly fail them. In all our conduct we must be diffident of our own judgment, and confident of God's wisdom, power, and goodness, and therefore must follow Providence and not force it. That often proves best which was least our own doing.
2. By prayer: In all thy ways acknowledge God. We must not only in our judgment believe that there is an over-ruling hand of God ordering and disposing of us and all our affairs, but we must solemnly own it, and address ourselves to him accordingly. We must ask his leave, and not design any thing but what we are sure is lawful. We must ask his advice and beg direction from him, not only when the case is difficult (when we know not what to do, no thanks to us that we have our eyes up to him), but in every case, be it ever so plain, We must ask success of him, as those who know the race is not to the swift. We must refer ourselves to him as one from whom our judgment proceeds, and patiently, and with a holy indifferency, wait his award. In all our ways that prove direct, and fair, and pleasant, in which we gain our point to our satisfaction, we must acknowledge God with thankfulness. In all our ways that prove cross and uncomfortable, and that are hedged up with thorns, we must acknowledge God with submission.

We must live in a humble and dutiful subjection to God and his government: “Fear the Lord, as your sovereign Lord and Master; be ruled in every thing by your religion and subject to the divine will.” This must be,

1. A humble subjection: Be not wise in thy own eyes. Note, There is not a greater enemy to the power of religion, and the fear of God in the heart, than conceitedness of our own wisdom. Those that have an opinion of their own sufficiency think it below them, and a disparagement to them, to take their measures from, much more to hamper themselves with, religion's rules.
2. A dutiful subjection: Fear the Lord, and depart from evil; take heed of doing any thing to offend him and to forfeit his care. To fear the Lord, so as to depart from evil, is true wisdom and understanding (Job 28:28); those that have it are truly wise, but self-denyingly so, and not wise in their own eyes. For our encouragement thus to live in the fear of God it is here promised that it shall be as serviceable even to the outward man as our necessary food. It will be nourishing: It shall be health to thy navel. It will be strengthening: It shall be marrow to thy bones. The prudence, temperance, and sobriety, the calmness and composure of mind, and the good government of the appetites and passions, which religion teaches, tend very much not only to the health of the soul, but to a good habit of body, which is very desirable, and without which our other enjoyments in this world are insipid. Envy is the rottenness of the bones; the sorrow of the world dries them; but hope and joy in God are marrow to them.

Over the course of time, what I'm hoping to amass is a set of posts that address each chapter of the book of Proverbs on the day number that they share. This is somewhat of a long term project looking into applied insight and reasoning.

Proverbs of Solomon

The book of Proverbs in the bible is written by King Solomon, son of David, who ruled Israel betwen 971-931 B.C.

I don't really think I can do it any better justice than Matthew Henry, at least as the first in a long list of ponderings on Proverbs 1.

His name signifies peaceable, and the character both of his spirit and of his reign answered to it; both were peaceable. David, whose life was full of troubles, wrote a book of devotion; for is any afflicted? let him pray. Solomon, who lived quietly, wrote a book of instruction; for when the churches had rest they were edified. In times of peace we should learn ourselves, and teach others, that which in troublous times both they and we must practise.

In peaceful times indeed, should we teach what we must practice in troubled times. Sadly, the troubled times come (at least for the US), and while I had plenty of time to learn, I do realize that I squandered a lot of time not making the main thing the main thing. So now, here I am. I don't think the person who coined the idiom "better late than never" had this in mind.

    The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
        fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Fear is an operative word here. As an atheist I would say things like, "What? Your God has to use fear to keep you in line? He's got to make you afraid, son? How pathetic." What would have been more pathetic would have been the puddle of urine underneath me had God come down out of the heavens to set me straight.

It's not fear like the world thinks of fear. For the most part, the world thinks of fear as an emotion and a set of neuronal excitations and hormonal increases/decreases. The fear spoken of in Proverbs is deeper. Deeper even than emotion. Let's use a visual story.

Close your eyes. Imagine you are in a small, yet real place you have been, somewhere like your living room during the twilight before morning. Visualize your surroundings, wherever you are. Now look up, push through the ceiling and fly into the sky. Do you see the stars? The distant red tinge of the sun on the sky? The moon as it begins dipping beyond the horizon, since you're up so high? While you're up there, look out into space. Look at the planets. Unfathomable distances abound. And yet, our planet is but a speck. A pale blue dot. A grain of sand. Tiny.

Now start over again at beach, looking at a grain of sand. And continue bigger and bigger. Or smaller and smaller. Either way, every time you slice up a section of creation, there is more to delve into until we get to the end of our physical ability to delve.

You can go to the grandest of the grandest and the smallest of the smallest and you will still find the same thing. If God is capable of doing this, what else is He capable of? Therein lies the fear. If He made all of this, what am I, really? You can be told about it but it can't be explained to you, it has to be thought about to understand it.

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14:

  The end of the matter; all has been heard. 
  Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
  For God will bring every deed into judgment, 
    with every secret thing, 
    whether good or evil.

Unbelievers easily pass over these verses. If You're like me, though, you look at that and want to shrink down to an infinitesimal singularity - but for one thing: Christ.

There will come a day when all of this is over and we can dine at the feast of the King of Kings, but for the moment, we are still here. In this place. With our instructions. Therefore, hands to the plow.

Today has been a busy one, so thankfully, Proverbs 30's first four verses might be able to stand on their own.

Verses 1-4

The man declares, I am weary, O God;
  I am weary, O God, and worn out.
Surely I am too stupid to be a man.
  I have not the understanding of a man.
I have not learned wisdom,
  nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.
Who has ascended to heaven and come down?
  Who has gathered the wind in his fists?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment?
  Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and what is his son's name?
  Surely you know!

Verse 1 has some translational challenges in that it could actually be addressing two people instead of weariness; with that in mind, I do empathize with weariness. It's especially moving considering that the passage ends with an allusion to Jesus. Matthew 11:28-30:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Once again, we're reminded of humility by this writer's opening stanzas. For every small nugget of truth or wisdom I hear or learn, regardless of where it comes from, it often reminds me of how little I really know or understand. To say that my brain is kind of hardwired to remind myself of my own stupidity is a bit of an understatement.

There's an odd juxtaposition in that. I was recently talking with a person who mentioned that I sounded a bit arrogant when I was relating something new that I had learned. I started to correct him and stopped. In that moment, I realized something - I think I have an issue with my verbal delivery. I changed direction and starting asking him if he could explain why, because I wanted to understand what I was doing. He couldn't really explain what he meant by it, so instead I asked him some more questions. When queried on whether it seemed more like I was excited about what I'd learned or if I was condescendingly explaining what I learned. He told me it was the latter.

We then drifted off into a conversation about tone and intonation in speech, and he affirmed that yes, I may have been excited to convey something new I'd learned, but it sounded more like someone who knew everything having to annoyingly teach an introductory course. That hit me like a giant lead brick.

One can think one way, and actualize it another. It's another form of double-mindedness. I can't see or hear myself as an outside observer, so I never really realized that I was doing it.

As an introvert, I'm very thankful that people are willing to point out these things to me. Of course, my impatience makes me wish it hadn't taken 40 years to happen, but it's all in God's time, who has the looong term in view.