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Wisdom Wednesday: Proverbs 22:13

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The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.
(Proverbs 22:13)

Passages of scripture like this pose one of the greatest challenges for risk averse people. Many of us think we are wise for avoiding risk. And indeed, Proverbs itself says that the wise hides himself when there is obvious danger (22:3)*. This piece of good advice, as with all wise practices, can become a shield from personal responsibility (see Matthew 6 for Jesus’ discussion of this fact with regards to prayer, fasting, and even alms).

Often in life, we who are risk averse take the slothful route and claim that the time isn’t right for action because things aren’t perfect. My karate instructor said that the most common excuse he received from people skipping karate after a vacation was “I need to get back into shape first.” Some people won’t go to church because “I need to get right with the Lord first.” If you’re super risk averse then you’re probably waiting for circumstances to be exactly right, but you’ll actually be in the process of waiting when good circumstance pass you by. Check this actual sloth out:

I suppose he could have died crossing the road, but there is simply no such thing as a “perfect time” for a sloth to cross a road because it’s just gonna take him an hour to do it and during that time a car is gonna get him. No, I don’t know why he’s crossing the road; maybe he’s got a lady friend. Maybe he’s rescuing other sloths from a sloth villian. But the fact remains that the circumstances for good action would have passed him by if he’d waited too long to cross the road.

*The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.
(Proverbs 22:3) This verse is important for people who’ve ever said YOLO.

Wisdom Wednesday: The Master of Destruction and Deep Work

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Proverbs 18:9 Even he who is slack in his employment is a brother of a master of destruction. (Author’s Translation)

I can’t tell if I translated the passage above based solely on a desire to be literal or because “master of destruction” simply sounds better than the less literal, “him who destroys (ESV).”

Anyhow, the book of Proverbs, at its heart is about the good life. And central to the good life in the Bible is work. Many people see work as a punishment, but this is not so. Work is the task of humanity from the beginning (take dominion…tend the garden, etc).

Today we are apt to face distractions. These distractions can keep us from fulfillment in terms of skill level, relationship quality, spiritual growth, and employment.

The proverb above reminds me of Cal Newport’s concept, of deep work, which is work “for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.”

To work in a fashion designed to produce the most efficient and highest quality results leads to the good life.

Now, let’s look at the rest of the proverb at hand. One who is slack (by doing less than required) is cheating those to whom the work is owed. You may as well destroy their property. On the other hand, one who does not do their best, while meeting the expectations of the job should still feel the force of this proverb. Why? Because while not being literally like the one who destroys as in the previous case, such a person is still missing out on their potential for blessedness (Proverbs 3:13), which is the lot of those who destroy rather than create and tend.

So, find a way to do deep work, or be the brother of the master of destruction.

 

Wisdom Wednesday: The Song of Solomon in 3 Layers

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One of the most confusing books in the Bible is the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs or Canticle of Canticles). People have trouble with it for several reasons:

  1. It doesn’t seem very spiritual with all its talk of breasts, muscly abs, and midnight visits.
  2. It doesn’t seem like an ode to proper courting with all its talk of not being married, yet.
  3. It doesn’t seem very allegorical (if the allegory is of God and Israel) with all of its use of sexually charged analogies.

So, what do we do with this book? When I was about 21, I read through Song of Solomon right after reading the Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. What I noticed was that that in 1-2 Kings there is a real skepticism about the good that was being accomplished through the kings who came after David (troublingly, David is spoken of way more highly in 1 Kings than in 1-2 Samuel, I think the authors are the same so this might be some intentional sour grapes irony…we have a king and look how bad they all are compare to our best, and he was soooo good).

Anyhow, Song of Solomon struck me as having very little to do with what I had heard from evangelical interpreters in my then brief stint as a Bible reader.  I had heard that it was certainly not an allegory, but it was a chaste example of godly romance within the bounds of marriage. But the two lovebirds don’t live together and the persistent refrain for times when they are apart is “do not awaken love before its time” (2:7, 3:5, and 8:4). But, what did strike me was that the female lead in the story was apparently a member of Solomon’s harem and that her lover was an Israelite man who was very dashing and of good repute (in 1 Kings, by the time Solomon has a harem, his reputation has gone to pot). So, I concluded that the point of the book was that Solomon’s kingship had put Israel back in bondage to Egypt and false gods and that Israel needed to repent of Solomon’s legacy and return to the true picture of Israel outlined by David’s rule or idealized in the Torah.

This interpretation has the advantage of not having to force Solomon to be the woman’s lover (she doesn’t speak highly of him, he’s more like a distant force), of making sense of the scene when the city guards beat her up (5:7), and of allowing the song to still be a sexy love poem. As a work of literature it is like the Iliad or the Odyssey. The love story is the driver of the narrative, but it is not the point. This allows for some layers and nuance to reading it:

  1. It really is about God’s relationship to Israel, or rather Israel’s need to relate to God aright by abandoning the culture created by Solomon.
  2. It really is a super sexy love poem right in the middle of the Bible.
  3. It really does contain advice about flirting/romance just like any love poem or work of romance written by a successful flirt (like Ovid’s Art of Love, Shakespeare’s Sonnets or The Book of the Courtier).

Anyway, those were my thoughts. I’ve since found most scholarship on the Song of Solomon to focus on saying something like:

  1. See, the Bible is all for sex.
  2. See, the Bible is pro-gender stereotypes
  3. See, this is so racy, it can only be an allegory.

I recently read Iain Provan’s NIV Application Commentary on the Song of Solomon. He sees the book almost exactly as I do. This verisimilitude made me think, “Oh neat, maybe I’m right.” But I suppose that it could also be the case that we’re both way way off.

Wisdom Wednesday: The Wisdom of Solomon 8:7

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One of the most interesting pieces of ancient literature (in my mind) is the Wisdom of Solomon. If you’re Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox, it will appear in your Bible. If you’re Protestant some Bibles include it, some do not. It represents an attempt to express Jewish wisdom in relationship to Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism. I find the book to be intriguing and in many ways compelling. One of my favorite parts is where the author, using the voice of Solomon says this of wisdom:

2 I loved her and sought her from my youth,

and I desired to take her for my bride,

and I became enamored of her beauty. 3 She glorifies her noble birth by living with God,

and the Lord of all loves her. 4 For she is an initiate in the knowledge of God,

and an associate in his works. 5 If riches are a desirable possession in life,

what is richer than wisdom who effects all things? 6 And if understanding is effective,

who more than she is fashioner of what exists? 7 And if any one loves righteousness,

her labors are virtues;

for she teaches self-control and prudence,

justice and courage;

nothing in life is more profitable for men than these. 8 And if any one longs for wide experience,

she knows the things of old, and infers the things to come;

she understands turns of speech and the solutions of riddles;

she has foreknowledge of signs and wonders

and of the outcome of seasons and times. 9 [1]

Note the bolded text. If anybody loves righteousness/justice, then wisdom will teach that person self-control, prudence, justice (righteousness), and courage. If one is truly concerned with being right with God and man, then wisdom (no longer merely a word for skill or cunning in this book) will provide its adherent with all of the other virtues.

Why does this matter?

  1. New Testament Interpretation
    I think that the presence of the four cardinal virtues in this book is important to the modern Christian because in 2 Peter 1:3-11, Peter refers to virtue as a trait of Jesus that attracts us to the gospel and as a trait that brings us into conformity to his will. So, Jesus excellence (perhaps in terms of these four traits) is part of what makes the gospel appealing and is part and parcel of Christian character (as Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.” One might rephrase it thus, “If we cannot manage the pagan virtues like courage and cleverness, the Christian ones like innocence and meekness will be of little avail.”
  2. Old Testament Interpretation
    An ancient Jewish interpreter of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Song of Solomon, and of the whole Old Testament found that wisdom as a way of life ultimately taught what was best in paganism. In other words, an ancient Jewish Bible scholar thought that self-control, prudence, justice, and courage were important virtues exemplified or shown by counter example in the Old Testament.
  3. Christian Life
    If we use the four cardinal virtues as lens (not the only or the main one) for reading the Bible, they can help us learn which Biblical characters should be treated as exemplars and which would be shameful to emulate. And if we treat the Bible as a legitimate repository of wisdom that is part of the pathway to a life of fully orbed character and joy in God and his creation, then I suspect it will help us on that path. Indeed, Paul says that the Old Testament is inspired for training in righteousness in a passage where he says that it also makes us wise for salvation (2 Timothy 3:14-17). The connection between righteousness, wisdom, and virtue is very important in our Bibles, far more than certain reductive readings of our Bible have led us to believe.

[1] The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Wis 8:2–9.

Wisdom Wednesday: Faithfulness to Good Routines

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Don’t You Hate It When
I’m a routine guy. I love routines. Routines, in my mind, are exactly what makes spontaneity pleasant. Now, interestingly, if you love routines, spontaneity can also become a no-go. But that isn’t the topic. The topic is veering off from routine for no good reason.

Example
Most mornings I wake up, do some reading, work on some writing, do my exercises, and get ready for my day.  This morning I woke up and decided I would send an email, first thing. When I checked, I had an email from my boss which he wouldn’t have expected to receive a response to for days. But, many of the questions contained in the email were interesting and pertained to something I’d been thinking about for a few months. So, I spent about an hour writing him back. Basically, what happened is that I missed my routine almost entirely. I am writing my Wisdom Wednesday post where I reflect on the Bible’s wisdom literature, but most of my routine was missed.

A Topical Proverb
I had a different post in mind that maybe I’ll write tonight (broken routine), but I was reminded of this Proverb:

Proverbs 20:9 ESV  Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”

The easy way to respond to breaking one’s routine is to give up on it for any number of reasons:

  1. Too hard
  2. It got boring
  3. Too easily distracted
  4. I missed it a few times so it wasn’t right for me

But this Proverb reminded me that people do wrong things on a much more important scale (the moral one). We plan for evil, we fail to plan for good, we give up on our good plans, we pursue the good with evil intent, we pursue the good with bad methods, and so-on. So, the Proverb asks all of us, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin?’ To whom is the question addressed?

  1. The self-righteous and judgmental fellow
  2. The person on a permanent diet from sin who has a cheat day every day of the week
  3. The Christian who still struggles with anger/lust/laziness/idolatry after decades of discipleship
  4. The person who thinks that God owes him/her

Now the wrong response to the Proverb is, “Screw it, who can stop sinning? Not this guy!” Instead the idea is to be gracious with oneself and others and get immediately back on the right path. Our routines (for basic self-discipline or for following Christ) are always going to be human and therefore puny. The human will is so wussy (try moving something with your will but not your body). The earth in its circuit is difficult to move out of routine. A human being can be moved off of the path by an email. But, like a parenting tactic I learned from a friend, “You put the kid back in bed until he’s too tired to fight it and goes to sleep.” This process is similar to routines: “You break it Monday, you do it again Tuesday through Friday” until it becomes easier (or it doesn’t, what’s wrong with hard?). Then you can adapt it to your needs. If you fall of the wagon every other day, keep the routine every other day (better than no days). If the routine break involves falling (or running excitedly) into sin, do the same. Quitting some sinful habit every other day is better than doing it every day.

I suppose it is important to remember this as well:

Ecclesiastes 7:20 “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.”

Wisdom Wednesday: The Simple

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In Proverbs 14, the simple get a bad rep. But the point of that is to remind us, who might be simple-minded, to gain some nuance in the way we think.

For instance, Proverbs essentially outlines four ways of coming to know:

  1. Senses
  2. Inference
  3. Testimony (correction, tradition, instruction, or divine revelation)
  4. Trial and Error

Proverbs says that the simple believe anything that they hear and that they inherit folly.

Proverbs ESV 14:15  The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.

Proverbs ESV 14:18 The simple inherit folly, but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.

The simple, in Proverbs, is essentially the person who does not stop and think things through, whether a good or bad person. They are easily swayed, this is why Lady Wisdom is always trying to get their attention and way Lady Folly and the scoffers find them such easy prey.

Anyway, the prudent is the person who through habitual attention to the four modes of knowing learns to consider the way to go forward. What this means that that a prudent person considers propositions before acting on them and situations before forming definite opinions. In other words, the prudent uses trial and error to test methods, senses to test ideas, inference to move forward from sensory data, and to compare ideas to one another.

Interestingly, I think that the simple person (from the rest of Proverbs) has a tendency to over complicate simple things, “I can’t go to work…there are lions in the streets,” and to over simplify complicated things, “I’ve gone to work for like 6 weeks and I’m not rich. This work thing isn’t worth it.”

Don’t be simple.