The Wise Man

Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. -- Proverbs 3:7

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. -- Proverbs 16:25

I have seen quite a bit the last few days about an article someone wrote describing the “modern man”.  The piece has been the subject of ridicule in certain quarters.  I have not read more than a few of the twenty-some marks of the modern man, but I think I get the idea.  I am not a modern man by that writer’s definition, and that does not bother me in the least.  My goal, which I doubt I will reach in this life, is to be a wise man. 

Sometimes I get caught up in trends -- for example, I have boots with square toes.  Most of us follow fashion now and then.  We upgrade our electronic devices, wear boxer-briefs, or eat hummus.  Hairstyles and clothing styles come and go, but values, principles, and truth are eternal.  The modern man follows the trends.  The wise man seeks the truth. 

The modern man cultivates good opinions among his set of friends and associates.  He wants to be thought of as knowledgeable and sophisticated by those whom he admires and envies.  The wise man desires a good report before God and to be a righteous witness in the world.  He genuinely loves his fellow man but does not trust himself to him. 

The wise man knows that there is evil in the world, that there is no safety or security in this life and no guarantee of tomorrow.  He makes prudent plans for the future but lives fully in the present as in eternity.  The modern man believes that humans are better and smarter and kinder than they were 50 or 500 years ago, that the future will always be better than the past, that values have evolved, that truth is relative to the age, and that traditions are mere amusements. 

The modern man has some admirable traits, no doubt, but most of them have been picked up from the Christian world view that he is now convincing himself is archaic, barbaric, and crude.  The wise man is in the world but not of it, a possessor not possessed, seeing the snares that lie behind lures. 

Civilization can endure so long as it is based on reality.  The wise man builds on the Rock.  When we, as a whole, destroy the foundations, the house will not stand.  The modern man builds on the sand.

The Beginning of Wisdom

All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. -- Proverbs 8:8

I have an older brother and two older sisters.  My brother is the “good one”.  My oldest sister is the defiant one, and my other sister is the conniving one.  It’s not really bragging in this field if I say that I’m the smart one.  My father was not a person who put up with defiant children.  I got in trouble a time or two and was surprised that it didn’t bother him that much.  On the other hand, if I had ever defied him, I would have suffered.  He and my sister, his first-born child, were very much alike, and they clashed a lot.  My sister loved her father, but she just couldn’t take orders.

I always did what Dad said.  I never learned to take orders from anyone else, not even my wife, as letting her have her way was more like being indulgent with a child than being under orders.  But by the time I could walk and talk, I had figured out that I was going to do what Dad told me to do one way or another.  There didn’t seem to be much point in getting a beating beforehand -- hence, the smart one. 

The other thing I figured out was that Dad wasn’t going to tell me to do anything actually “bad”.  Sometimes we played practical jokes on people.  Sometimes we did things that would be considered illegal – but never immoral (hillbillies know about Romans 13; we also know we are the authority).  Sometimes I had to do things that were unpleasant, even painful, but there’s no point in getting bigger without getting tougher.    

This is not to say I did not have my time of rebellion.  I did, but it was against teachers and cops and bosses and rules in general, and against God.  What I eventually found was that God is a lot like Dad.

Defying God is self-destructive, and it runs counter to our own good.  Remember, I was only the smart one in a cohort of four where there was little to no competition.  In the bigger world, among all God’s children, I had to learn the hard way. 

God doesn’t give His law, revelation, guidance, and wisdom to my hurt.  He will never tell me to do wrong, which is one of the tests to let me know whether it was actually God talking or not.  It will sometimes be unpleasant, challenging, and, yes, even painful to do what He says.  But there’s no point in going to heaven if I’m not fit for it.    

Wisdom's Banquet

Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars.  She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.  – Proverbs 9:1-2

Wisdom is another one of those gifts for which I have asked, and few would argue that I don’t need it.  Wisdom, though, is more than realizing it might not be a good idea to try and clap twice when doing push-ups on a concrete floor.  I don’t think I could clap once now.  Who knew a lip had so much blood in it?  It looked like I’d butchered a hog in the bathroom.  Experiences that don’t kill you tend to impart, if not wisdom, a certain degree of judiciousness.  Let one of your friends try it first. 

In the Bible wisdom is personified.  Sophia, if we will let her, becomes our friend and advisor.  The seven pillars which uphold her house are, traditionally, the seven heavenly virtues:  chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility to nicely counter the seven deadly sins of lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

Wisdom has “slaughtered her beasts”, perhaps meaning that wisdom puts the animal nature in its proper place and to its proper use, such that it serves rather rules and is nothing to be either feared or petted. 

Those of us who have might have imbibed or been around those who imbibed in the fruit of the vine or corn squeezings to excess know that such intoxicants have the potential to change us into different people and lead us to do things we would not normally do.  So Paul warns: …do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery… (Ephesians 5:18).  The verse does not end there, however.  He tells us that instead of drinking the old wine that leads to foolishness, we should drink to the full the new wine of the Spirit.  That is the wine Sophia pours into our cup:  Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.  Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight (vv. 5-6).

She is offering us communion:  the Bread of Life -- the Word of God and the Spirit.  Those with whom we commune, with whom we break bread and share a cup are our friends.  There is trust and an implied covenant even in the most informal and transient of situations.  How much more true is this in the eternal communion Wisdom offers us in Christ?  Here is one we may fully trust, in whose house we may rest, secure and without fear.  

Eye on the Sky

Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-gilead, and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.”  But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, “On this condition I will make a treaty with you, that I gouge out all your right eyes, and thus bring disgrace on all Israel.” – 1 Samuel 11:1-2

The right eye represents wisdom whereas the left eye speaks of knowledge.  Jesus talks about having an eye that is “single”, clear in its vision and balanced.  Spiritually speaking, a lot of us have a much better left eye than right eye.  We acquire a lot of knowledge.  People think we are smart.  We even think we are smart.  Yet our eye for wisdom is short-sighted.

The world and the devil are not enemies of knowledge.  The natural order is not threatened by information or even by cunning and cleverness.  We are told, though, that the fear of (i.e., respect for) the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  Godly wisdom will mess up our relationship with the world system.  We may end up seeming foolish, since the wisdom of God is foolishness to man.  Our thinking and behavior will not always line up with the logic of the Flatlanders because we are operating in additional dimensions. 

Nahash typifies the devil in desiring to blind us to those divine, vertical realities.  He states his case plainly and reveals the enemy’s plot throughout the ages:  to enslave humanity to the material and deny us access to divine revelation, wisdom and understanding. 

All the “Left Behind” scenarios and typical evangelical thinking and descriptions of the beast and the mark of the beast and the antichrist always rang a little hollow to me.  If you want to see the beast at work, turn on your television.  The news is mostly partisan propaganda.  Commercials play with our lusts, our fears, and our appetites to control our habits.  Some of the programs numb our minds and anesthetize our thinking allowing still others to perform the surgery necessary to render us blind to truth.  

The beast is not in retirement.  The antichrist is not in hiding, waiting for some snatching away of the righteous that he might be revealed.  The enemy adapts new methods but never a new end.  The history of the one-eyed is a bloody history.  Those who could see only with the eye of knowledge have dug mass graves and slaughtered their fellow men by the millions in the last century alone.  We do not need to fear them, but we cannot trust them or submit to them.  We need both eyes.  Open.

Too Wise

Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. -- Proverbs 3:7

I just realized that I have been alive in seven decades.  I almost didn't get out of my second one.  The good die young, but so do the stupid.  In my case, they must have cancelled out.  I have done a lot of stupid things. What was the apex?  It would be hard to pick a single event or action.  It was probably the state of mind that convinced me that I knew not only more but better than everybody else.  Vanderleun had the thing about the evils of Cool, and what is Cool in this sense except to be wise in one's own eyes?

There are a lot of skeptics, but there are too few good skeptics.  The first requirement of being a good skeptic is to be skeptical of my own perceptions, thought processes, and conclusions.  A question to ask early on is, does thinking this way and understanding the situation from this perspective benefit me materially or emotionally?  When you ask an expert for a solution to a problem, if the expert makes a buck off that solution, be sure that you take that into account in your evaluation.

On OC yesterday I mentioned the boys who play the alpha male games to manipulate women into sex.  It's easy for a man to convince himself that playing the game is acceptable because women aren't perfect little angels.  If he is not careful, though, the player will end up damaging himself and becoming ensnared in an empty, diabolical system with the only exit an obstacle course of pain and loss.  Thus the proverb tells us to "fear the LORD", i.e., let His statutes be our first principles and live with pleasing Him rather than ourselves as our purpose.

Humans tend to "fear ourselves" -- to think that we must have whatever we want whether it is good for us or not.  Not wise at all.

Twisted Threads

Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back. -- Isaiah 38:17

King Hezekiah was stricken with a disease to the point of death.  In affliction, as might be expected, he despaired.  No matter how harsh and hopeless we may find life from time to time, the thought of its cessation can be frightening and overwhelming.  There is an interesting metaphor in Job 7:6 -- My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle and come to their end without hope.  Matthew Henry comments on this verse, saying, “Our days are compared to the weaver's shuttle … passing and repassing very swiftly, every throw leaving a thread behind it; and when finished, the piece is cut off, taken out of the loom, and showed to our Master to be judged of.”

I had never thought of the “finished product” but always focused on the swiftness of the passing.  Each day, though, is a strand added to the tapestry of our lives.  Some are bright, others dark, forming a pattern and telling a story that can be seen and comprehended now only by the Weaver, the one who knows the pattern He follows. 

Hezekiah longed to live and for good reason:  that he might faithfully lead his people and serve the God of Glory.  The love and mercy of the Lord spared his life, yet there is a twist to this story.  Hezekiah lived fifteen more years, during which time the son who would inherit the throne was born.  His name was Manasseh, and he may have been the most wicked of Judah’s kings.  It is the sin and abominations of Manasseh that led to the eventual fall of Jerusalem and the deportation and dispersion of the Jews by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar.

 A lot of my days are composed of black threads.  Many, many years ago, I was still a relatively young man, and I had a dream or perhaps a vision.  In it I saw a man clad all over in dark brown leather standing on a road.  His hands were gloved and balled into fists.  He extended his left hand and opened it to reveal something white and bright, like a large diamond, or a star.  The vision had a specific meaning for me at the time that doesn’t matter anymore.  I think there was also another interpretation in the longer term, that no matter how dark and muddy and colorless my life may appear, there is always some light.  It may illuminate my own path, or it may help someone else find their way. 

I don’t know.  I can’t know, any more than Hezekiah could know what his life or death would mean.  God responds to our cries and to our faith and makes that part of the picture.  Maybe He is making a rug that pulls the room together.  Hezekiah’s healing, by itself, was a good thing because Hezekiah was a righteous king.  Manasseh and his apostasy, taken in isolation, were unholy and unrighteous and evil.  But what are those threads laying side by side, the black mark on the white paper?  What is that message and what does it say?   In love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.  Or, as the final and ultimate Heir of the throne of David (and Hezekiah and Manasseh) said, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.