Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, who have left the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.
Wisdom will save you also
from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words, who
has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God.
Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the
dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life. (Proverbs 2:12-19)
It’s nearly Christmas
time, which means it’s the time of year when I’m permitted to make Penuche. It’s
a brown sugar fudge that should basically be described as a diabetic coma
waiting to happen. I’m only allowed to make it at Christmas because if I made
it more often, I’d weigh 600 lbs. This morning, I made a batch, and I have never
had it fail like it failed. So after lunch, I made another batch. It’s in the
refrigerator, but I have a feeling when I try to cut it, it’s going to crumble,
too. I need to look up the recipe because either the recipe is incorrect somehow,
or there’s something about the sugar, the milk, the butter, a gas stove, Florida,
or 2020 that makes Penuche not work. I made it a year or two ago in Florida on
a gas stove, so I’m blaming it on the year, or the ingredients.
By now, you should be
asking yourself what Penuche failures have to do with wisdom, wicked men, or
adulteresses. The connection is that it takes wisdom to make Penuche. If you
don’t put it together right, it doesn’t work. You may think you did it right, but
the proof is in the…fudge. Wisdom is inextricably linked to reality because it
involves doing things in accordance with how the universe actually works.
If you’re read the book
of Proverbs, one of the things you’ve probably noticed is the fact that, as in
the verses above, wisdom is also inextricably linked with morality. It’s common
today to hear people talk about social constructs. It seems as if everything
dealing with traditional, Biblical morality is a social construct that we must
not shove down the throats of anyone. But, of course, what they propose in its
place may be shoved down anyone’s throats even though it is clearly a social
construct.
The problem, of course,
is that Biblical morality is inconvenient. Of course it’s inconvenient. Reality
is inconvenient, too. Those Legos you step on in the night hurt! That’s because
they are real. Debt and death are inconvenient. Work is inconvenient (at least
for some.) COVID-19 is the height of inconvenience, but it’s real.
So why should we expect that morality – living
in accordance with how our relationships with others work best – is going to be
convenient? Relationships are hugely inconvenient, but where would we be
without them? And the question must be asked whether the inconvenience of
relationships doesn’t have something to do with a lack of wisdom. If we were
wise, I suspect we wouldn’t find them so inconvenient. We would be safe from
the evil men and women, including adulterers
(male and female.)
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