The Amazing Old Testament: 4 more proverbs
One week ago I touched on some Proverbs. Here are 4 more! (1) “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice” (Proverbs 12:15). Humility pervades the life of wisdom. If I get cozy and think “Ah, now I am wise!” then I prove I’m a fool. The humble are wise enough to know what they don’t know, that every new glimpse of truth only exposes how much more truth has not yet been comprehended – and so it goes, the delight residing in the wisdom we know we don’t have just yet. Obviously what we don’t know exceeds what we know exponentially. It’s also hopeful. The wisest of the wise always “listen to advice” – and really from anyone at all.
The fool leaps to “agree” or “disagree” on hearing somebody else’s thought, spouting half-truths cockily (Prov 16:2). What are the odds that I have thought through things so shrewdly that I have it all straight and there is nothing else to learn? Isn’t this insecurity masquerading as confidence? Even if I do know true things, doesn’t more counsel help me test their validity? Doesn’t the openness of the wise enable us to build relationships with people who inevitably don’t think exactly the way we do? Don’t I honor the other person when I listen to their counsel?
(2) “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Thomas Jefferson, not known for his piety, said “I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just.” Lewis Mumford wrote that the Roman Empire collapsed, not because of the barbarians invading from without, but because of the barbarism within.
Is a country “exalted” by righteousness? Instead of righteousness, don’t we resort to power or rah-rah patriotism? It’s easy to spot sin in the culture and bemoan the ruin of a country. Do we even view sin as a national “disgrace”? The “good life” in America might be defined as a brazen embrace of the “seven deadly sins” (pride, greed, envy, sloth, lust, gluttony, anger). And isn’t the “righteousness” we wish to see this country enact more often than not political ideology instead of genuinely biblical righteousness?
Thomas Merton moved into a monastery in Kentucky and called it “the center of America, holding the country together, keeping the universe from cracking into pieces, the axle around which the whole country blindly turns.” Why a monastery instead of Washington? Because of the monastery’s single-minded devotion to prayer. Perhaps the wisdom of people who remember to pray is a nation’s best hope.
(3) “He who mocks the poor insults his Maker; he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 17:15). Proverbs 14:31 spoke of acts that crush the poor; 3:27 urged the wise person to lift up the poor. This proverb probes the inner attitude toward the poor. How are the poor mocked? We blame them; it must be their fault. We pity them; “oh, bless their hearts.”
Why can we not in empathy enter into their situation, or walk with them? Is it fear, as if poverty is contagious? Is it pride? There is a sneaky kind of mocking of the poor: we think we must do for them. It seems so noble, so charitable! But charity can squash the poor. What they need is friendship, someone to listen, to share social capital, to weep with them. Mother Teresa reminded us what Jesus told us: we love the poor, for Jesus is the poor one. By loving them, we love him (Matthew 25:31-46).
The second half of the proverb adds a tragic twist: there are those who rejoice in disaster. Robert Alter points out that modern Hebrew uses this proverb’s simchah le’eyed (“rejoice in disaster”) as its term for the German notion that has entered English parlance: Schadenfreude, deriving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. The wise will ponder how such a mood could be. The wise will be on guard not to let it take up residence in their souls. We learn instead to, as Bob Pierce put it, “let our hearts be broken by the things that break God’s heart.”
And (4) “The words of a whisperer are delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body” (Proverbs 18:8). Gossip has its allures. You hear the low-down, it’s usually salacious, and it’s not being spread around to just everybody. It was whispered “just to you, so don’t tell anybody else.” Typically gossip is couched in the disguise of care: “But we’re just concerned.” Delicious morsels aren’t they? Passing along a rumor, or damaging facts about someone, diminishes not merely the object of the whispering, but all of us. Gossip may be true, but is not truthful.
There is a hidden virtue in gossip: in the lifted eyebrow, we declare ourselves morally superior. “Oh, he cheated on her” is a moral stand against adultery. We not only don’t approve; we’d never do such a thing. And yet the whisper “goes down to the inmost parts,” and eats away at the whisperer.