Tag Wisdom

Blessed are Those Who Mourn #1

Todd R Leave a comment

This post continues a series about the Beatitudes, the opening statements from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, starting with Matthew 5:3 – “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The crowds who gathered to hear Him needed to hear this Beatitude first of all because if anyone refuses to be humble before Christ, the rest of His speech won’t matter.  The more we see Him as the King we need, the more He can, and will, bless us.

Next Jesus moved to the second of the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:4 –
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Before digging into the meaning of this statement, today’s focus is on the idea that Jesus did not put the set of Beatitudes in a random order, but that He intends them as a sequence. Not everyone takes this view, but to me the sequence makes sense and Jesus – the best teacher ever – would not do anything by accident.

To see the connection between the first two Beatitudes, consider the book of James where he cautions against being a “double-minded man”.  The book begins by saying that going through trials helps a Christian grow.  In testing times, we should ask God for wisdom – trusting God’s voice within our conscience, calling us to action by faith – and he contrasts that with being “double-minded.”  While God gives wisdom “generously to all without reproach,” a double-minded man ignores wisdom and ends up “driven and tossed by the wind…unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:5-8). The original Greek language suggests being “double-minded” is like “having two spirits.”  Such a person cannot make up their mind which voice to follow in their conscience; while having God’s guidance, they are unable to follow it and end up lost.  They do not have the kingdom of heaven.

Later, James comes back to the word “double-minded” in 4:8, saying that overcoming this inability to follow God’s guidance is “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you” (4:1).  Then in verse 9, he recommends: “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.”

Thus, James provides a link in the Beatitudes’ progression.  Being double-minded is like lacking the kingdom of heaven.  Inability to follow the right voice leads to our “quarrels” and “fights”, while leaving us “unstable.”  Knowing these consequences of failing to be poor in spirit, James suggests mourning as the first, and proper, response to our spiritual poverty.

We do not naturally associate blessing with mourning, but neither did being poor in spirit seem like blessing.  When we mourn, we acknowledge that we have not been poor in spirit but have sought our own way.  That this has consequences.  Jesus offers us blessing now in the reassurance of comfort to come.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” – Matthew 5:4

In coming posts, I hope to expand on what this mourning means, Jesus’ reaction to those who mourn, hope God provides for those who mourn, and the link to the next Beatitude.  For the rest of the Beatitudes, I hope to show how each one builds blessing upon blessing as the kingdom of God is built within each of His people.

This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here

The Traps of the Wicked

Todd R 2 Comments

The world is, unfortunately, full of people who seek to get other people in trouble, and this has been true for millennia.  Far back in Old Testament history, King David wrote in Psalm 140:4-5:

“Guard me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
            preserve me from violent men,
            who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
            and with cords they have spread a net;
            beside the way they have set snares for me. Selah”

When David wrote this, he was probably describing immediate, physical threats against him, but when I read verse 5 it sounds like many obstacles Christians currently face.  Every day, we encounter traps put in front of us, and David’s Psalm has many applications.

What about irresponsible news coverage, which too often includes inappropriate opinions and suggestions about how we should think or act?  We could pray, “Guard me, O LORD, against putting my faith in falsehoods.”  Or “Guard me, O LORD, against temptation to hate my enemy.”  Or “Guard me, O LORD, from putting aside the work you have for me to do to fight battles that aren’t mine.”

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

Also, the internet is a dangerous place.  Many websites use sexual images to get our attention, and in some cases if we even stop for a second to stop scrolling and look, those websites take that as interest and show us more of the same.  We could pray “Guard me, O LORD, when websites ‘have hidden a trap for me, and with cords they have spread a net’”. Other websites use misleading and provocative headlines to pull us away from what we intended to look at.  “Guard me, O LORD, against click bait that leads me where I should not go, and that makes me spend my time unwisely.”

Back to the Psalm, note that in verse 5 David describes threats as being “beside the way,” meaning they are off the main path we should travel.  The traps may be hidden off the side of the road with bait trying to lure us aside to an ambush.  Therefore, the key is to stay on the road.  Proverbs 1:17 says “For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird.”  Even birds, if they see a trap, will know to avoid it.  Yet people don’t seem to be as wise, or else they wouldn’t fall for click bait and other temptations.

One of the best ways to stay away from those who “have planned to trip up my feet” is to stay busy doing good things.  Samuel Johnson wrote: “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.”  He knew temptation is most powerful when we are alone with nothing to do, which applies to much of our time online.  I try to use writing as a way to stay busy when solitary, but that doesn’t always work for me and might not work at all for others.

Staying on the right path, we avoid snares and traps, which are near, but not on, the true way.  Once we allow temptation to move us a little, we often find it has moved us a lot, and into a trap.

What can we all do to avoid the traps of the wicked?

“Guard me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
            preserve me from violent men,
            who have planned to trip up my feet.”

“Whatever Works”?

Todd R 4 Comments

Proverbs in the Bible can be hard to understand, like many parts of the Bible.  Sometimes one proverb seems to contradict another, as these two seem to:

Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash

“A bribe is like a magic stone in the eyes of the one who gives it;
            wherever he turns he prospers.” – Proverbs 17:8
“Whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household,
            but he who hates bribes will live.” – Proverbs 15:27

What are we to make of this?  Can both statements be true and can both statements contribute to our growing in wisdom?  Of course, the answer is yes, or they wouldn’t both be there in the Bible.

The reason the two Proverbs aren’t a contradiction is that the first just tells us the way things are, but the second tells us the way things should be.  Said another way, Proverbs 17:8 is descriptive and Proverbs 15:27 is prescriptive.  The first makes no judgement as to the eternal value of bribes, but the second suggests that those who reject bribery will have eternal reward.  Both Proverbs are true, but in different ways.

Put the two proverbs together and we see that, even though bribes can be effective, God’s people should hate them.  Christians shouldn’t be pragmatic and do whatever works, but they should seek to do what is acceptable to God, even if it’s not effective in achieving worldly ends.

The wise should understand how bribes work, but the wise also know that “whatever works” often isn’t the right answer.

We Don’t Understand God

Todd R 2 Comments

Several chapters at the end of the book of Acts in the Bible detail how Paul was destined to share the Gospel in Rome and how God preserved his life in order for him to get there.  One such story happened when Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta.  The people on the ship carrying Paul were welcomed by the people of Malta, but when Paul had gathered sticks to add to their fire, “a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand.” (Acts 28:3). The next verse is where things get interesting:

“When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.””

Notice that “Justice” is capitalized.  Why?  The people weren’t thinking of justice in an abstract, impersonal sense, but this “Justice” in the original Greek was “Δικη”, or “Dike.”  Dike, in Greek mythology, was “the goddess of justice and the spirit of moral order and fair judgement as a transcendent universal ideal”[1]  This “Justice” was personal.  In Greek mythology there were many gods and each of them oversaw or represented some aspect of the world.  In the case of Acts 28:4, the “native people,” instead of seeing Paul’s snake bite as a random event, saw as its cause an intervention by one of their gods against someone who must have deserved justice.

Paul, “however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm.” (verse 5). Seeing this, the people “changed their minds and said that he was a god.” (verse 6).  Because they thought a god was trying to punish Paul, they had to further conclude that Paul was powerful enough to overcome Dike and therefore must be a god himself.  Modern readers know this is all just superstition, but what’s interesting is how superstition builds on superstition.  The belief in one false god led to the belief in another.  This story is an example of lies building on lies.

The tragedy is that this happens far more often than we think.  What we see as a superstitious instinct – bad things happen to people who deserve justice because there is a god of justice – also was (and is) believed by people who claim to believe in the true God.  In John chapter 9, disciples of Jesus asked Him regarding a man blind from birth, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”[2]  These disciples believed in a God of justice, and so when they saw something bad happen, they attributed it to a direct intervention by God against someone who surely deserved it.

Christians believe that God is a God of justice, and yet Jesus corrected His disciples and said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”[3]  Jesus then healed this blind man, and God was glorified in a way that couldn’t have happened if the man had not been blind.  Likewise, when Paul shook off the snake in Acts 28, God was glorified in a way that couldn’t have happened unless Paul was bitten by a snake.  The lesson is that if something bad happens to someone, it doesn’t mean there is some specific sin in that person that deserves a specific act of justice in the form of punishment.

God’s ways aren’t that easy for us to understand, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”[4]  If we believe God acts in easy-to-understand cause-and-effect relationships that we can see and understand (or even predict) we are just as superstitious as the people who believed in Dike.  And if we believe this, we are more likely to add to this belief just as the people did who thought Paul was a god.  We draw more conclusions from our own false conclusions, thinking it’s “logical,” although our starting point was off.  As Mark Twain wrote: “It’s not what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.”

When Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 said “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” an important point was being made that needed to be repeated: our own logic can lead us down the wrong way, even to death.  Our logic sometimes begins with a misunderstanding of how God works, and often with us thinking we can understand God completely.  We can believe God is just (and it is true that He is), but that doesn’t mean we know everything about how He accomplishes justice in the daily events of our lives and of the world.

So, what do we do about this?  We will never be perfect in this world, but I find that the way to move in the right direction is constant fellowship with God.  Constant prayer, daily Bible study, regular meditation on the Word.  Cultivation of a humble heart that knows it is flawed and can always be made better.  Repeated questioning of why we believe what we believe and do what we do.  Can we trace everything back to His Word?  All of our thoughts and actions?  Do we ask Him to show us where we’re wrong?

Pray that we may know God truly, even though we can’t know Him completely.  That God will better reveal Himself and His will to us, today and every day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dike_(mythology)
[2] John 9:2
[3] John 9:3
[4] Paul in Romans 11:34, quoting Isaiah 40:13

Glory Days Have Not Passed You By

Todd R 1 Comment

One of my favorite books of the Bible is Ecclesiastes, and chapter 7 in particular is full of practical wisdom, such as:

“Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. – Ecclesiastes 7:9-10

People commonly refer to the “glory days” of their past.  When they were an athlete.  When they were younger.  Before they had responsibilities.  Before they experienced a loss of a loved one, job/career, home, or anything they held valuable.  Before the Covid-19 pandemic.  Somehow the past looks better.

In these verses, Solomon, who lived a life where he gained and lost far more than nearly anyone else ever will, categorically says this is foolish. He’s not doing this to criticize, but to keep others from repeating his own mistakes. To advise against anger for the wrong reasons about things that can’t be changed or fixed.

God’s mercies are new every morning, and with the path we’ve taken before today, He has prepared us for the day ahead in a way no other path could. Strive for what is ahead – your true “glory days” in Him! Start from here and listen for Him. Perfection lies ahead.

“Give us each day our daily bread” – Luke 11:3