Friday Proverb

When a scoffer is punished, the simple becomes wise; when a wise man is instructed, he gains knowledge.  -- Proverbs 21:11

A scoffer isn't a joker but rather one who does not take the laws of life seriously.  He doesn't think that tradition has much, if any, value.  He looks upon those with experience as timid or foolish or out-of-touch.  A lot of people seem to conflate tradition with superstition.  Tradition is, at the very least, pragmatic.  It is what worked and what got us to this point.  That we may not be able to perfectly articulate all the reasons behind traditional values does not mean those values are not shaped by reality. 

The fact is that most humans are average, a little above and a little below.  We are busy with the demands of daily existence -- some clearly more than others, and we mostly don't have the resources to adequately figure out every move we need to make from scratch.  We rely on tradition. 

The scoffers would replace tradition with crowd-sourcing, consensus, the democratic process, academic authority, government expertise, etc.  Most of the time these things are untested and untried and the promoters have no idea what the effect will be next week, let alone ten or twenty or fifty years down the road.  I'm pretty sure the genius social planners who came up with Medicare had no idea that its policies and practices would lead to ridiculous pricing schemes for medical procedures and drugs, to skyrocketing government deficits, or to insurance premiums out-running inflation. 

If scoffers are prone to disregard the values of prior generations, received wisdom, and common sense, how much more are they inclined to devalue God's word, His law, and His revelation?  God's punishment of those who esteem Him lightly, though certain, is not always perceived as swift when we see it at all.  Many will conclude that they can violate moral law without a lot of consequences so long as it is legal in the world system, or so long as they don't get caught. 

In this world, it is often the case that the seeds planted by yesterday's scoffers are reaped by the generations of tomorrow.  We are about to see that very thing take place perhaps more dramatically than has happened in the last seventy-five years.  All the old hens do come home to roost.  The wise can read Kipling.  There are scoffers who will deny the truth even as the fire burns: 

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."