People of Wisdom (Proverbs 1)

"Wisdom cries  aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks" (Proverbs 1:20-21). 

Reading verses like the above tells us that the kind of faith taught in the Bible is not something private. This is contrary to what most people think today saying that when you talk about the things of God or matters of religion, you should keep it personally either in your home or in your local church, or you just talk about it during Sunday. 

The introductory chapter of the book of Proverbs tells us that wisdom calls in public space. This teaches us that the whole of society cannot escape the call of God. To ignore such call will certainly reap disastrous consequences. 

How about if the people of God Himself who supposed to live such wisdom are the ones undermining it? We do this either by disconnecting our faith from our public lives or by consenting to the ruling social norms thinking that religion has nothing to say during week days.   

In this article, I just want to share insights from Gary North's God's Success Manual: An Economic Commentary on Proverbs. 

In the first chapter of the book, we will see the reason why King Solomon compiled this book and showed us the way to attain wisdom. We will also read in this chapter the warning of the King to his son to avoid violent men. And lastly, we will see that people who listen to the call of wisdom are able to protect themselves when times of disaster happen. Arranging the material homiletically, I would like to describe the qualities of people who live in wisdom. 

Wise People Live in the Fear of the Lord

As already mention, verses 1 to 7 show us the purpose of the book of Proverbs and the way to attain wisdom. Verses 1 to 6 in particular tell us the reason why King Solomon compiled the book. Reading the passage, the words that caught my attention are wisdom, understanding, wise dealing, hearing and the need to increase learning. 

The book as whole is part of Wisdom literature. Wisdom too is "personified in the book as a faithful wife" (p. 28). For North, the reason for such personification is "because covenant-breaking is pictured throughout the Old Testament as the equivalent of harlotry, and because the theme of the first nine chapters of Proverbs is the conflict between wisdom and foolishness," and therefore "the personification of wisdom as female makes sense” (ibid.). 

Understanding is the next word. Not all who read, listen and receive instruction understand the content they are studying. Understanding requires attentive listening, humility and grace. Wise dealing is defined in terms of righteousness, justice and equity. To increase one's learning is a moral responsibility. 

And then in verse 7, we are told that the way to obtain wisdom is to live in the "fear of the Lord,"  which is the subjective summary of religion in the Old Testament.

Wise People Avoid Violent Men

Verses 10 to 19 provide us a warning against men using violence to achieve dishonest gain. The King warned his son to avoid such men, described as bloodthirsty, those who are ready to shed blood of innocent people for the sake of ill-gotten wealth. Their goal is to have a common purse. 

Gary North describes the curse of a common purse. North claims that the common purse guarantees the downfall of this group of gangsters. The common purse is considered "the supreme prize in an organization that imitates a family, but without the bond of love” (p. 22). And then North specifically identifies the nature of such curse by saying that coercion is the rule to determine who receives a greater portion in the purse. "The strongest get the largest portions" (p. 24). But in order to implement such rule, ruthlessness characterizes such violent societies. And then there is this secrecy and traps, Secrecy is basic to such kind of violent gangs of men. Setting traps is another. Each must conceal the nets he is preparing to ensnare other members of the gang. And that is why every gang member knows "that he is a potential bird, and he must live a life of continual wariness" (ibid.). For such men, putting a snare is "a way of life” (ibid.).

Wise People Are Able to Protect Themselves in Times of Disaster

From verse 20 until the end of the chapter, verse 33, we read the call of wisdom. Wisdom in the book of Proverbs is not "the possession of knowledge as a mass of facts, including economic facts" (p. 31). "Wisdom is not simply right knowledge, but also right action. Wisdom is applied ethics” (p. 32). From this perspective, wisdom is "a form of capital" (p. 32). Adhering to it "produces an increase in personal wealth" (ibid.). But this is not enough. To attain success, wisdom tells us "to serve as a faithful steward of the wealth that is to come." To provide "men a handbook for increasing wealth is not enough; they need moral capital to make proper use of the forthcoming" wealth (p. 33).

And then North describes our need of the Bible as our guide “in order to integrate the laws of economics with the facts of economic life" (ibid.). He describes the Bible as God's special revelation that "gives men the interpretive framework for understanding economic cause and effect" (ibid.). And then he issued a warning to men "not to misuse their knowledge of economic cause and effect" (ibid.). And that is why according to North "we are given the introductory chapters of Proverbs, to convince us that the ultimate goal of personal wealth is the increase of capital necessary to implement biblical wisdom in a corporate public form: the kingdom of God" (p. 34). He describes that using "the knowledge found in Proverbs for any purpose other than the extension of God’s kingdom is a form of rebellion” (ibid.).

And then North proceeds to describe a dark picture due to the scarcity of wisdom: 

“Christians should recognize that the market for wisdom is almost always minimal, except in historically rare periods, such as the late Roman Empire, Europe in the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, and America’s two religious revivals. A revival of interest in God’s wisdom is abnormal. When societies self-destruct, they are not often replaced by a Christian social order. Christians should work toward the reconstruction of the existing social order, but they had better recognize that the market for wisdom is limited today. Their message has not been taken seriously, any more than it was taken seriously in Solomon’s day. The distressed masses run toward new, radical variations of today’s Moloch State” (p. 37).

Though the market of wisdom today is rare, but in time of crisis, it will be sought. But the problem is it will never be found because of the fact that God is hiding Himself "from those who do not regard His word as valid and valuable in good times as well as bad. When bad times come, men seek answers, but wise answers are not to be found by those who are in rebellion against God. They seek, but they cannot find. God restricts the easy availability of wisdom in times of crisis whenever men have failed to take Him seriously during prosperous times” (p. 35). And North cited an example of this in history:

“The roaring twenties turned into the disastrous thirties. Economic depression broke the public’s confidence in the West’s economic order. Socialists, redistributionists, and populists of all varieties came into power, or close to power. Germany and Italy went fascist-socialist. Britain and the United States went Keynesian, which was basically a form of statism, as Keynes admitted in his long-neglected introduction to the German language edition of his General Theory in 1936. The corporate State is still with us, struggling wildly in its death throes, desperately trying to find a way to achieve rapid economic growth without price inflation and massive indebtedness” (p. 36).

“The crises of the 1930’s and 1940’s did not lead to widespread repentance in any Western nation. People chased after a number of superficially different economic and political solutions, but these all were variations of the Moloch State. The public’s theology did not change, so their solutions were no better than the problems they were intended to solve. The debauchery of Weimar Germany – the pornography, homosexuality, occultism, and nihilism – has become today’s universal subculture, and is increasingly being absorbed into the common culture of the day. So has Weimar Germany’s policy of monetary inflation, though not nearly that severe” (ibid.).

And describing today's situation: 

“There is a tendency on the part of deeply ideological groups to work for the destruction of the present world order, which is run by an Establishment. Anti-Establishment ideologues work for social revolution on the assumption that their group will pick up the pieces. Without the destruction of the present order, they say, there is no hope. Simultaneously, the current Establishment is desperate to consolidate its much-heralded new world order. It does so by means of its traditional strategies: political manipulation, control over money, control over education, international treaties, government-regulated trade agreements, government subsidies to big business and large voting blocs, and elitist initiation” (p. 37).

North concluded his study of chapter 1 of Proverbs by saying that “the introductory remarks in Proverbs are an expansion of the closing remarks of Ecclesiastes: ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil’” (Eccl. 12:13–14)” (p. 38). And finally, North argues that the kind of faith found in Proverbs "is not an exclusively private faith with exclusively private consequences. It is a public faith with public consequences. It is covenantal faith. It involves the whole of society. This is why wisdom must be in the streets, calling covenant-breakers to turn back from their poverty-producing ways” (ibid.).