ProverbsIII.html

Life can be so discouraging. It is difficult enough just to find the time and energy to discover your own skill, and then you often are opposed at every turn by people who don't really want you to succeed in what you do. I think life must often be discouraging for US Presidents. We expect so much of these people--and put so much hope in them. But then, when a war goes sour or the economy tanks, we, as it were, throw the President in the tank with the economy. Just today new "polls" were out showing that public support of President Obama's ambitious agenda is waning. Perhaps in this country we never can get beyond partisan bickering and entrenched interest groups, groups that simply have their own interests at heart and not those of the "public" at large. One of the things that encourages me about life is that the Book of Proverbs teaches us that the way of wisdom is available to us, can be attained by us and that it leads to a blessed life. Of course, Ecclesiastes will take issue with Proverbs on the last point, but Proverbs holds firm that life can be mastered, and that life-mastery leads to "riches and honor and life" (22:4). Let's turn to a few characteristics of this "wise" life.

The Way of Wisdom--Three Principles

Three characteristics of the life of wisdom are that it is best characterized as a path or way, that wisdom comes from the heart, and that it is most obviously instantiated in our speech. The wise person keeps to the path in front of her, while the fool's eyes are "to the ends of the earth," 17:24. The wise person realizes that the distractions from a good and useful life are so prevalent and powerful that the only wise choice in life is to keep to the straight way of wisdom. Exhortations especially in Prov. 2-4 stress the importance of getting on the "right way." This way of wisdom will protect us from the myriad things that want to get us "off our game." Care should be taken to identify, get on and stay on this way.

A point not often made in connection with the life of wisdom is that it is a life lived from the heart. That is, wisdom is not simply a series of principles that should be memorized or internalized, as important as that activity might be. Instead, wisdom begins in the heart. An important verse for this is Prov. 4:23, "Keep your heart with all vigiliance, for from it flow the springs of life." The Hebrew of the verse is even more arresting than the English translation. It reads, with only slight paraphrase, "Above all things that can be guarded, guard your heart..." We know that we have many precious things in life, many things that we take special care to preserve and protect. They are our "valuables." Proverbs is convinced that the most valuable thing we have, the mother of all valuables, is our heart.

And I am convinced that Proverbs is correct. Let me illustrate. For years, one of the issues I worked on most diligently, and where I have failed most ignominiously, was my anger. I was frustrated with the pace, scope and direction of my life. I was unwilling simply to trust the world and life to God's good hands. But over a number of years I felt I have been able to put anger aside. I have demonstrated patience in hard circumstances and with difficult people; I have learned to take my time before responding; my heart has been deepened as a result. But a while back I lost my temper; someone who was supposed to be giving a useful presentation to a group I was in just blew it, in my judgment. But he did more than "blow" it; he was arrogant and glib. I confronted him in ways that I shouldn't have done. Even though it was an uncomfortable moment, which passed soon enough, the effects of this stayed with me for about 10 days. I realized that I had compromised my heart, that I had not fully guarded the precious jewel that was my heart, and that I had to live with self-accusation, guilt and a sense of lack of clarity in my thinking. I realized anew how important it is to cultivate and protect the heart--principally because if you don't protect it, you have to take all the more effort to bring yourself back into a good position in life. The most valuable things in life we put inside at least two protected things--a bank and a safe-deposit vault. Our heart's protection may mean that we have to be especially sensitive to the kind of things that will tend to damage it. For some people this might mean that you can't even watch or take part in certain activities. But I have realized anew how absolutely essential it is to take special pains to protect the heart.

We protect the heart by implementing "wisdom principles" in life. The rest of the Book of Proverbs lays those out, but two of them are important here. On the one hand, the wise person ponders rather than presses on in response (15:28). The wise person is aware that the best decisions and best advice arise when a matter has been mulled over, and when emotions that might rise immediately have a chance to gather and settle. One man at the seminar, born in the early 1920s, told us the story of his work with students over the years. He mentioned that he learned as a young man that when a student was acting foolishly in his class, he would have the student stop the activity and then wait until the morrow to let the student know his objection. The lapse of a day enabled him to think of how he should respond to the student, but it also gave the student a kind of "space" to reflect on what he had done. In fact, by guarding his response the teacher was showing respect to the student. The man's comment was to the point: "every student who I treated this way would afterwards do anything I said. They would be eating out of my hand." The importance of pausing or pondering, rather than continuing on and responding quickly, has the most alluring benefits..

Then, the wise person also has learned to use language properly. This includes three things, none of which really can be developed here (you will have to buy the book when it comes out!). Right speech includes right content, right form or style of speaking, and right timing of the words. "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver" (25:11). "A word in season, how good it is" (15:23). Words aren't the only way to measure our growth in wisdom, but they are the chief measurable and visible manner in which we can mark our progress in wisdom. A most challenging verse to me today is 20:15, "There is gold, and abundance of costly stones, but the lips informed by knowledge are a precious jewel." May your speech be so informed, and may you strive to make your speech even more so...

Conclusion

So, we finished the seminar for the day, knowing that we had just begun to probe the surface of Proverbs. But we had made a very good start. The way of wisdom really is a life. Dedicate yourself to it today, and your life will be different, gloriously so.

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