Grace & Peace: Proverbs 13:4

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice:
But when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.

Proverbs 29:2

Being the Word of God, this proverb is always true in any case, but depending on the nature of the wickedness, the people who mourn may not know the cause of their sorrow. There are two kinds of ungodly rulers—the brutal and the manipulators—well represented by two famous dystopic novels, 1984 and Brave New World. In the former the motive force is fear while in the latter the motive force is drugged seduction. In our day, the wicked who would rule over us alternate between the two, first threatening and then cajoling. But the bottom line in all government is force, and so that should be remembered. 

The end result is sorrow either way. But when the righteous are in authority, the end result is joy in the populace. I said a moment ago that the bottom line in all government is coercion, and that is just as true of righteous government as it is of wicked government. The difference between the governments has to do with what sorts of activities coercion is applied to. 

A righteous government is going to crack down on rapists and thieves and forgers, and the end result is greater peace and security for all, and the people rejoice. When judgment is not speedily executed upon the criminal, there the heart of man is filled to do evil (Ecc. 8:11), and that has a direct impact on those who are trying to live quiet and peaceable lives. It enables them to do so. In addition, Scripture says that one of the roles of government is to reward and honor the righteous (Rom. 13:3; 1 Pet. 2:14).

By way of contrast, a wicked government is one that will discipline the righteous.  Discipline is inescapable. If the government is not disciplining the wicked, then the government is wicked, and it will just be a matter of time before they are persecuting the godly. Neutrality is a pipe dream. In a world where both good and evil exist, governments must take sides. And when they take the wrong side, the people mourn.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

Divers weights are an abomination unto the Lord; And a false balance is not good.

Proverbs 20:23

The first thing to note about this proverb is that is has an obvious and immediate application. This is talking about a butcher with his thumb on the scale, with the result that he can sell a pound and a half of hamburger as though it were two pounds. This is simply cheating and fraud in business. A rigged scale is no good (false balance). A different set of weights in the bag allows a merchant to cheat with one set and do honest business with another, which means that the whole bag is rejected by God. 

The second thing to notice is how much God hates this kind of thing. It is described here as an abomination. That means that such a cheating approach is loathsome to God. God hates every form of dishonesty, particularly those forms of dishonesty which harm or rob the victim of it. It is no trifle, and cannot be dismissed as “shrewd business practices,” or “cutting corners.” God does not praise it as business savvy, but rather sees it as detestable, execrable, revolting, odious, hideous, disgusting, and abhorrent. He despises it. That is what abomination means.

And third, divers weights should be taken by us in our application as a metaphor for every kind of rigged system. Parents who treat one child as a favorite. School administrators who allow a board member’s kid to get away with things that somebody else’s child cannot. Courts that favor the rich over the poor. Courts that favor the poor over the rich. Referees in a basketball game who show favoritism. Teachers who grade papers with an eye on who needs to qualify to start in the football game this weekend. In short, all of us are called, every day we are called, to use equal weights and measures in all our dealings with everyone else.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning; But the end thereof shall not be blessed.

Proverbs 20:21

Envy and discontent love to whisper various lies to us, and one of those lies is the one about how we would handle riches better than those who currently possess them. The chances are actually pretty good that we would not. 

This can certainly creep up on us, but the truth of the principle can best be seen when people come into wealth suddenly. We may call this the “redneck winning the lottery” problem. Coming into a sudden possession of wealth, without the gradual acquisition of those habits that are necessary to manage it, results in someone going up like a model rocket and coming down like a stick. The arc may be described as Doublewide > McMansion > Doublewide.

But the heart of man loves the idea of getting rich quickly. In other words, we love the idea of gaining wealth in precisely the way that God’s Word says is not good for us. It turns out that God’s “secret” for gaining wealth that does not corrupt is a secret that can be hidden in plain sight, out there on the table. It can be hidden there because nobody wants to look straight at it. His secret is that we should work hard, say for forty years or so, we should be generous to others, we should honor God with the first fruits by tithing, and so on. But this is not the way we prefer. We would rather learn how to make millions in three weeks in real estate, which is to say, that we would like to live in a world that is very different than the one we actually live in.

The proverb does acknowledge that some do come into a sudden inheritance. That part does happen. But when it happens, it is not the blessing that we all assumed it would be. 

As we run spiritual diagnostic tests on ourselves, we should present the question to ourselves this way. Do we want this additional wealth because we want the weight of our responsibilities to go away? Or do we want them because we want the weight of our responsibilities to increase? If it is the former, then we are simply wanting to indulge our sloth. If the latter, then there is hope for us yet.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine:
But a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Proverbs 17:22

This is a proverb with many points of application. It can apply to someone’s personal life, to relationship challenges, and to the broader subject of our culture wars. The applications generally work in the same way, so let’s consider the latter.

One of the besetting sins of conservatives is the sin of shrillness. We love what is being threatened by the various forms of unbelief, and so we react poorly. Our responses are too often the responses of panic, and so we start yelling. We write our comments online with a fisted crayon. If asked about it, we justify our response by pointing out how terrible it would be if the threatened object of our love (e.g. marriage, the Constitution, America) were to be harmed or destroyed. We justify reacting this way because what they are promising to do would be terrible.

When someone goes into battle as a merry warrior, the people who have responded this way are often disconcerted by it. It seems that such a person isn’t taking the situation seriously enough. If he were, then he would be panicked also, right? As Jean Kerr once put it, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.”

But it is also possible that such a one is the only person who is in a position to do something about it. A merry heart does good like medicine. It strengthens. And a broken spirit dries up the bones, which is not what you want in your fighters. There have been times when fighting men have given up all hope, and have fought on in a savage and dull despair. But more often than not, they just go down, or scatter to the four winds in a rout. So say what you will about it, merry warriors are far more formidable. And if the situation really is dire, you want someone who will actually help you out of it, rather than someone who has internalized the need for help, crumpled up his own spirit, dried up his own bones, and who has then curled up in the fetal position. 

A merry warrior is someone who takes the situation seriously without taking himself seriously. Daniel Daly was a Marine sergeant in the First World War, and is one of the small handfuls of men who have received the Medal of Honor twice. In the Battle of Belleau Wood, he once yelled at his men before going over the top, “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” He died in 1937, many years after the war.

As Chesterton once put it, memorably as usual, “The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle—and not lose it.”

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