Tuesday, June 17, 2014

June 2014: Proverbs 17

A quick look at the Proverbs today. Proverbs 17:16 to be precise:

Why is there a price in the hand of a fool to buy wisdom,

When he has no sense? (NASB)

There is a footnote that points out that “when he has no sense” is a rendering for the phrase “when he has no heart.” The idea is the same: fools have no sense, no heart or head for growing in wisdom.

Here, then, is the question: Are we spending gobs of money to get smarter when we have no sense in the first place?

You must go back to Proverbs 1:7 and start there. Without beginning with the fear of YHWH, without surrendering to Jesus Christ as Lord, then you’re not doing any good for yourself. You are simply spending and spending to add words to your head.

Likewise, one might raise this issue with educational spending. Why do we spend for knowledge and provide nothing for character? Why expend and expend to get smarter when we still have no sense?

That’s a problem in all levels of education. Having just completed seminary, I’d argue that it’s often a problem in theological education as well. We spend to learn languages and histories and methodologies. Then we end up with educated fools who have no sense.

Don’t detach the knowledge in your head from sense. And do not think to attain wisdom without knowing the Lord God Almighty. It will be an empty thing—like the box of ice cream sandwiches that got left in the freezer after all the last kid got the last sandwich.

And left the box.

So is knowledge with the Lord: a vain promise, destroying the hopes of many.

No comments:

Post a Comment

To deal with SPAM comments, all comments are moderated. I'm typically willing to post contrary views...but I also only check the list once a day, so if you posted within the last 24 hours, I may not be to it yet.

Sermon Add-on for March 10

 Continuing the use of Artificial Intelligence to try and generate discussion questions from the sermon, here's what it gave me this wee...