Changing Perspectives

         The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings ruin. (Proverbs 15:6)

 

This proverb is like many other sayings that sound like God pays people to be good and punishes the evil. And then we look around and see evil people with great wealth and good people who struggle to make ends meet (and even fail.) This was one of Job’s arguments. While his friends insisted that if Job stopped being wicked, God would bless him with riches, Job saw the wicked and their riches and had helped the good but poor.

But this is where we need to change our perspective, and that may be the point of the proverb. If we are looking merely at money, or power to dominate, quite often the wicked are rich. But, first and foremost, their riches cannot help them when they die. We are told that the house of the righteous contains great treasure whether there is any money in the house or not. We are told that the income of the wicked brings ruin no matter how much money they have. In both cases, it’s because the leaders in the household can’t simultaneously live according to their standards and teach their children to live by a different standard. If you’re good, your children have a good example. If you are evil, your children have an evil example. It’s not guaranteed that the children of good parents will be good, and the children of evil parents will be evil, but overcoming the example is not easy.

            Changing perspectives is hard. Considering yourself wealthy – the owner of a priceless treasure – is difficult when you don’t have a big bank account. It might be worthwhile, however, to consider how you would behave if money were no object if you didn’t feel the need to worry, and if things could be counted on to turn out well. In other words, if you felt love, hope, and joy