Leave Your Simple Ways

 Read Proverbs 9

Solomon touts the value of wisdom once again.  It’s a sales pitch to the simple. Leave your simple ways—stop drifting through life—and come to me.

If you do, you will live and live blessed by understanding.

Now to a nugget of wisdom.  Do not correct a mocker.  Do not waste your time correcting one who mocks God and God’s wisdom.  There is no good return on investment.

Invite them to know God and know God’s wisdom but do not correct their errant ways.  The only response they know is to return hate for love.  They reject your counsel and return abuse.

They don’t care what you have to say or what God has to say and they will defend their ignorance to the death.

Did anyone see the old movie War Games?  It’s where a computer has been given control over our nuclear arsenal and is about to launch all of our missiles.  It can’t be stopped so a kid and the computer’s creator get the computer to play tic-tac-toe, a game in which there is no winner if both parties know how to play. They get the computer to play itself and run through thousands of scenarios in seconds.

The computer then runs all the scenarios for Global Thermal Nuclear Warfare and after running all the possible scenarios in a few long seconds, spits out in its computer-generated voice:  Global Thermal Nuclear Warfare—the only way to win is not to play.

It’s the same way with trying to correct one who has rejected God and his wisdom.  Invite them to know God and receive his wisdom, but do not correct them or they will respond with the only things they know—ignorance, hatred, and abuse.

The only way to win is not to play.

On the other hand, the wise person loves correction and instruction and as we learned earlier—discipline. Wise people like to have their thinking challenged for it will be the catalyst for more knowledge and more wisdom.

I love to write and I do write, but one of the things that I miss is an editor.  An editor does more than notice the sins of the keyboard.  An editor says things like cut 200 words, rewrite this section, or don’t bury the lead.

You could take offense, unless you wanted to improve your writing, your story, or your article. Then, correction is more welcome than accolades.

On occasion, people have asked me to edit their work.  Make no mistake, editing is work, so I always ask a question first.  Do you want me to edit your writing to make it better or do you just want someone to tell you that you did a great job?

Don’t feign modesty thinking you have written Pulitzer Prize quality material on your first draft.  Your heart will be broken.

But if you really want correction and challenge, then get an editor.  Only the person seeking wisdom wants correction.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,

    and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

There is God’s way and there is everything else and the blessings lie in God’s way.  One of those blessings is understanding.  The more that we seek God and his wisdom, the more we will understand it.

We start out with little understanding.  We know that the only fear that we have is the fear of the Lord, but we don’t quite understand all of his ways. If we stay the course, we will understand more and more of the Lord’s ways.

This part ends with a basic dichotomy.  Gain wisdom and be blessed.  Mock God and suffer.  It’s meant to be an easy choice.

Amen.