101 Most Powerful Proverbs in the Bible by Steven Rabey

Author:Steven Rabey [RABEY, STEVEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780759508774
Publisher: Faith Words
Published: 2010-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

Resolution: In this cynical world, pray daily to keep yourself untarnished.

52

Wising Up the Scholar

Be not wise in your own eyes;

fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.

Proverbs 3:7

GOD, I thank you that I am not like other men… .” So began the prayer of the self-righteous Pharisee in Jesus’ famous parable (Luke 18:9–14). Spiritual pride takes different forms. The Pharisee looked down on robbers, evildoers, adulterers. In my college days, I looked down on Grand Ole Opry fans, Louis L’Amour fans, the uneducated, the “unenlightened.” I had to go no further than my own home to find a prime example of Dull- and Backwardness. “God, I thank you that I am not like these semiliterate, uncultured men—like my father.”

We may not, like the Pharisee, judge others’ morals, but we can just as easily judge their speech, education, dress, manners. It is pleasant to think such thoughts—but hardly constructive to good family relations, and hardly conducive to one’s spiritual growth. I was getting an A in every theology and Bible class and felt my professors appreciated me. At the same time, I snickered at seeing my dad in his undershirt on the porch, reading a Western.

Theology and Bible classes should make us appreciate God. But becoming (in our own eyes) wise and cultured can make us appreciate ourselves—we can become gods, high and lifted up, wise, looking down on the human race, especially those closest to us, for we well know their failings. “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye and do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Luke 6:41) Why? Because we feel godlike when we place ourselves beyond judgment.

In the parable, the tax collector, whom the satisfied Pharisee loathed, beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13 NIV). My father was a sinner, my professors were sinners, and I was and am a sinner. That binds us all together, sons of Adam, fallen creatures needing redemption. Whether we listen to the Opry or the opera, we need a Savior.

My reconciliation with my father came in 1982, when he nearly died of double pneumonia. I recall standing by his bed in intensive care, feeling as uncomfortable from guilt as he did from sickness. Confronted with that nearly breathless body, I could not play the role of Pharisee: “I thank you, God, that I am wiser and more cultured than this man”—no, such words do not apply in such situations, nor should such words ever enter our minds. “I love you, Dad” and “I’m here if you need me”—those words stuck in my throat, but they came out as I recalled the important fact: this was my father, the earthly authority God gave me to love and honor. I had not honored him as I should, and I could not give him back the years in which I judged him harshly. But I could love him in his illness, as I loved him through the 1991 illness that ended his earthly life.

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