I was playing a computer game, but I suddenly had to make a choice which yanked my mind out of the game world and into spiritual reality. It was early in the nineties and this was the Sierra On-line adventure, Conquests of Camelot. I was playing King Arthur, and my knights had gone missing while pursuing the Holy Grail. Arthur was setting off to find them and to find the Grail itself.
The game began with Arthur’s preparations, among which was seeking spiritual guidance in a nearby chapel. There I saw two altars (I found this old screen shot on-line). One (on the left) had a Christian chi-rho symbol, while the other had what looks like a cross. But I learned that the “cross” decorated an altar to Mithras. I could make the Arthur character kneel at the Christian altar and offer a gold coin. That seemed to be the right answer. To my dismay, though, I discovered I could make no further progress beyond that point. I looked for on-line hints and learned that the puzzle could only be solved by having Arthur kneel at the other altar as well and offer a gold piece to Mithras. He has to worship both gods to succeed.
I had been looking forward to hours of mental enjoyment playing through this game, but I simply could not bring myself, even in a fictional world, to make that gesture of offering and service to a lord different from Christ (I even hesitated today to post the screen shot, which has Arthur kneeling before the Mithras symbol). I erased the game from my hard drive, boxed up the floppy disks and sent it back to Sierra. Fortunately, they were willing to refund my money.
We’ve gone through the first nine chapters of Proverbs, seeing that either/or of commitment to the true God versus something else portrayed in the two female figures of Wisdom and Folly. Now as we begin the actual proverbs of the book, we find that either/or built into the first large section of sayings in chapter 10 through chapter 15. Almost all the verses in those six chapters consist of some statement and then an antithesis, signaled by the English word, “but.”
So in this week’s text, Proverbs 10:1-17, all except verse 10 take the “this, but that” form. Verse 1 starts it out with, “Wise children bring joy to their father, but foolish children bring grief to their mother.” Verse 17 concludes our text with “Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores corrections leads others astray.” Joy/grief, life/death, righteous/wicked, poverty/wealth, blessing/cursing, hatred/love–all these dichotomies show up over and over as Proverbs helps us discern how many of our little choices aim in one big direction or the other, away from God or toward Him.
My wife Beth would vehemently urge me to remember that within the Christian faith, there are many opportunities to practice a health, wholesome both/and thinking. Christians affirm both the body and the soul, both the heart and the mind, both love of God and love of neighbor. Yet the way into that blessed and happy world of holistic both/and celebration of all that God has made also requires some separation, some either/or, some choice to seek Him rather than the other ideas or gods proposed to us.
That good both/and also unfolds here in Proverbs as we see the negative warnings paired with and counteracted by the positive assertions about life which show God at work. So the warning of verse 2 that “Ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value, but righteousness delivers from death,” is supported by the gracious word of verse 3 that, “The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.”
As we work through all these either/ors in the next few weeks, my hope is that we will be drawn toward the One who truly centers all of life and connects us together in His kingdom.