To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here
Each day this month we’re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible – exploring what we can learn from chapter one / verse one of various Old and New Testament books.
“The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel.”
When the British luxury liner Queen Mary was retired from regular passenger service in 1967, she had made 1,001 Atlantic Ocean crossings.
After safely journeying to her final harbor spot in the port of Long Beach, California, her three massive smoke stacks (each over 60 feet tall) were temporarily removed for maintenance.
The restoration crew was shocked when all three of them crumbled on the docks. They had been made of sheets of steel over an inch thick. Over the years, each had been slathered with at least 30 coats of black and orange paint. Those layers of paint were all that remained. The steel had long ago rusted away under the influence of extreme heat and moisture.
In her old age, the Queen Mary had become a kind of living lesson: Something can look great on the outside while simultaneously coming undone on the inside.
Or, if applied to the human race: A lot of smart people do really dumb things.
A fairly large slice of any day’s headlines – what we call “news” – turns out to be a recitation of the missteps, miscalculations, and mistakes of people who probably should have known better.
Stephen Glass was universally admired as a 25-year-old wunderkind reporter for The New Republic – that is, until 1998, when it was discovered he had invented many of the “facts” supporting his latest feature. Follow-up research revealed that 27 of his 41 pieces for the magazine were fabrications in part or in whole, including phone numbers and websites made up out of thin air. Glass explained he had been under a great deal of pressure to look brilliant.
Senator Gary Hart was the frontrunner to become the 1988 Democratic Party nominee for president until reporters asked him to respond to accusations of infidelity. Hart dared reporters to follow him around. “You’ll be bored,” he assured them. Within 24 hours reporters had uncovered a hidden relationship and Hart’s political career was over.
Why do educated, knowledgeable people routinely make decisions that shipwreck their lives and reputations?
“Westerners live in a culture that has separated knowledge from ethics,” writes author Terry Muck. Standardized methods for identifying “smart people” – whether IQ tests, SAT’s, or routinely winning your family’s annual Trivial Pursuit competition – are not to be confused with measurements of spiritual and emotional health.
Insightful and informed people on the outside, in other words, are not necessarily good-hearted people on the inside. It’s quite possible to know a great deal about a lot of stuff, yet not know how to live.
So what’s the need of the hour?
It’s wisdom. And searching for wisdom always leads us to this Old Testament destination like no other.
Proverbs is widely regarded as the most down-to-earth of the Bible’s 66 books. Reading it is like gleaning good advice from an older, wiser friend or a favorite grandmother.
It’s ironic that the author of most of these pithy sayings was Solomon. As we discovered earlier this week, the exterior of his reign might have looked magnificent, but it turned out to be little more than beautiful coats of paint on an empty shell.
The first lesson of Proverbs, therefore, is simple and important: If things can go sideways for the guy who gets top billing in chapter one / verse one, it can happen to us, too.
The first nine chapters of the book have the feel of a series of lectures or pep talks. Then comes a 20-chapter patchwork quilt of “sentence proverbs.” Poring over them is a bit like opening hundreds of fortune cookies at a single sitting. Some hit the mark while others leave us scratching our heads. Some make us laugh while others help us see old problems in a new light.
Above all, this unusual book – essentially a collection of collections – has one aim: “Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding” (4:7).
Wisdom isn’t about becoming a more intelligent person. It’s a practical guide to becoming a “spiritually street-smart” person – someone who knows how to thrive in a culture where listening for God’s voice has become something of a lost art.
There’s an old saying that it’s hard to fly with the eagles if you have to live with the turkeys.
Proverbs has the unique power to remind us that we, too, are card-carrying turkeys.
But the God who invites us into his family is able and willing to teach us how to soar.