Observation: Proverbs is pretty much a book of common sense. Work hard, learn right from wrong, follow the way your parents raised you (assuming of course that you had parents or guardians who were willing and able to provide good instruction) and all will be well. God actually does not seem to play a starring role in any of this. It's more about setting up personal rules and guidelines for success.
Application: The book of Proverbs contains some wonderful poetry, but all of this moralizing about hard work, following the rules, and doing the right thing to get ahead in life just kind of rubs me the wrong way. Not because I don't believe it or I think it's bad advice, but because it so perfectly fits the stereotype of what people think the Bible is, when the Bible is so much more. I remember learning in Sunday School that B-I-B-L-E stands for "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." It's catchy but it's completely wrong! If you want that, you can hang out in the book of Proverbs for a while, but elsewhere there are countless stories of humankind gone wrong: broken people in need of grace, and a God who grants it, over and over. Maybe my resistance to the kind of home-spun common sense I find in Proverbs is that the Bible itself bears witness to human nature, that just because advice is good does not mean anyone will actually follow it. In fact, time and time again, what I see is that the better the advice is, the more people will test it, and learn the hard way exactly how good the advice is. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe the best thing about wise counsel is not necessarily that we will follow it, but that it will remind us when we are off course, and make us more ready to reach out to God. It's better than making it all up as we go along, I suppose.
Prayer: God, thank you for mentors. Thank you for the people who tried to tell me I was wrong even when I needed to find out for myself. Thank you for lessons learned both the easy way and the hard way. Amen.
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