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Proverbs 17
has some incredibly wise one-liners. We
get to hear about wisdom again. We also
get to hear sound practical life-advice.
This is a great chapter of the Bible.
Start first
in the middle. “Better to meet a bear
robbed of her cubs than to meet a fool bent on folly.” I think that we all understand what happens
when we meet a bear robbed of her cubs.
The she-bear is angry and murderous.
She will tear you up. E anger knows
only the limit of her endurance. Yet, Solomon
tells us that it is better to meet someone like that than a fool bent on
folly! There is a pretty simply reason,
I believe. The bear will rip you apart,
but you see it coming and the fury will pass quickly. The fool will utterly destroy your life and
you won’t see it coming. Worse, the
destruction that the fool brings to your life will cost you a long period of
time as you try your best to recover. The
she-bear brings a ton of pain that is short-lived. The fool brings a life of unforeseen pain.
I also love
the advice that starting a quarrel is like breaching a damn. I always think of the Hoover damn when I
picture this proverb. I think of this
huge, massive concrete damn and this tiny trickle of water coming out the
bottom. Then, I think of the damn
cracking so that the tiny trickle of water turns into a massive deluge. Other people might think of the famous
Johnstown Flood of 1889. The idea is the
same. When a damn breaks, there is no
holding back the onslaught that comes forth.
The same thing is true about starting an argument. Once you start an argument, you let loose a
circumstance that is no longer under your control. The quarrel could fester and unleash all
kinds of consequences the are unable to be stopped. It is best to just not begin a quarrel.
As an aside,
I personally think this proverb speaks greatly to the American political climate
of today. America has a (largely) two-party system and neither party will work
together anymore. Why? In the past, the parties quarreled. They have gotten so accustomed to quarrelling
that they can’t do anything except tote the party line anymore. The quarreling is so great that any attempt
to not quarrel is glaring to everyone involved and people are crucified for “colluding
with the other side.” In the past,
someone broke the damn of good government and we as a nation are unable to hold
back the onslaught that pours out. For
the record, I personally blame the news media for escalating the onslaught by
blowing everything up to as big of a deal as it can possibly make it for the
sake of getting people to read their news.
While there
are many other great proverbs in this chapter, the last one I’ll talk about
today is the proverb about fools having money to buy wisdom when they are
unable to understand it. This is akin to
saying that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Or it is like saying that you can dress up a
boy to make him look like a man, but you can’t actually make him be a man. The point is simple. We cannot buy wisdom. Wisdom is not a commodity for sale. Wisdom is a way of life. It is a calling. It is a passion. Wisdom is something that we pursue and invest
in, not something that we purchase or steal from others.
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