God’s Created Order

Proverbs 12-13

            Proverbs has no use for get-rich-quick schemes: that’s a theme through the first half of Proverbs 12. “Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies have no sense.” We sure live in an age of such schemes. My social media is filled with ads about earning thousands of dollars from the comfort of your home with only a few hours needed. I have a theory, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” In this matter, Proverbs overlaps the wisdom of say, Aesop, who told a story of an ant who worked diligently in preparation for the winter and a grasshopper who did not and starved, and who told a story of a tortoise and a hare in a footrace only to have the tortoise win because “slow and steady wins the race.” The wrinkle of Proverbs is that it sees such behavior as righteousness, acting as the Lord intends, according to His created order of things.

            In our age, we need to see a created order of things, especially since so many voices are saying that any such order is just a social construct, rules made up by men that don’t necessarily have to be followed. The German philosopher Frederich Nietszche articulated it in the 1800s, arguing that morality of all sorts is just a bunch of human rules and the truly strong person can break them because he is strong enough to see that they’re just human. Whether we recognize it or not, that kind of thinking undergirds a lot of our modern life. You can see it in the way that we ‘freed’ ourselves sexually so that everything is permissible. You can see it in the corruption that taints our government. You can see it in the unchecked pursuit of profit in business. Anywhere that the created says, “No,” humans are capable of saying, “Who says?”

            Proverbs reminds us that it is God Himself who says, “No,” who says, “There’s a way things should be done,” who says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”