The proverbs are rich with turns of phrase and rhyming of ideas. Often I look for threads of a theme between the proverbs in the same chapter, but often find that it is limited to only a few verses in a small neighborhood of one another.
There are a few themes, however, that run the course of Proverbs, and are worth taking to heart. The clearest theme, probably, is the idea that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The respectful reverence of the one who created us puts us in our place and its only in that place that we can begin to grasp wisdom. The next might be to get wisdom because it is of great value. We hear lady wisdom calling out to us, and are admonished over and over again to get wisdom and not sell it.
In addition to the clear themes about wisdom, there is one that is as pervasive, but less obvious. It is the theme of faith. Faith is what is required, I think, to demonstrate true wisdom. Or maybe, it's that true wisdom really is an expression of faith. After all, wisdom is an application of knowledge, and often times it's simply an expression of confidence that the same thing that happened in the past will happen again. That's faith. Certainly our faith can carry us to things that we haven't seen before, but so does wisdom. Wisdom tells you that if your dad was right about 90% of what you have experienced, you can probably trust him for another 10% of things, or at least 5%.
In Proverbs 19, there are three people whom we are told to respond to in different ways. Each of these requires faith. We are met with a poor man, our son, and a hot-tempered man.
In verse 17 we are told, "He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done." We meet the poor man. The thing about poor men is that they are needy. They need something from us. Usually money, or food, or a job. But the interesting thing here, is that if we give to the poor, we can trust that we are lending to the LORD. In other words, we are believing that the LORD will repay us for what we gave, and that with interest! It requires faith to be kind to the poor.
In verse 18, we find our son. Here we are admonished, "Discipline your son, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death." We have someone for whom we are responsible for training, not doing what they are supposed to. A difficult conversation is coming. Possibly even punishment. We are smart creatures, and we know that if we have to administer discipline we probably won't be liked very much. Nevertheless, this verse says that if we don't discipline we are letting him carry on toward his death. We didn't warn him that his disobedience will lead to his destruction. So, by adding faith to this verse, we convince ourselves that having tough conversations early, and being willing to enforce discipline will bring hope to our sons.
Lastly, in verse 19, we meet the hot-tempered man. The sage tells us, "A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again." I don't exactly remember this story, but it's written in the footnotes of my Bible. When we were on our honeymoon, we saw this drunk at the airport. He was throwing trash on the ground, and shoving items around that were bumping into people. He of course had no idea what a scene he was making. You could feel everyone around him was annoyed and bothered by his actions. His friend with him, though, was kindly apologizing for each incident. Then when it was time to fill out the customs forms and get everything prepared the friend was filling it out for him. But one thing was certain, this wasn't the first time, and it wasn't going to be the last. Faith here, requires that we believe that in rescuing a hot-tempered man does him no good. Sometimes we really have to discern that some need to feel the consequences of their actions that they may change. Cecil, a co-worker of mine, put it like this, "Hunger pains are some of the world's strongest motivators. Feeding people can be the worst thing you can do for some people."
Cecil's point is that if you continue to provide relief to people that can change and work, then you are keeping them from developing the skills they need to be independent. Paul the Apostle said practically the same thing. The tough part here is between these three verses. We must be discerning for verses 18 and 19, and yet kind in verse 17. May God grant us the faith to discern the correct course of action, and yet be kind to all along the way.
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