If you are reading this, then chances are you spend enough time looking around on-line that you have already encountered one or more collections of photos entitled, “Why Women Live Longer than Men.” These images of guys taking ridiculous risks are quite amusing, but those of us of the male persuasion probably have one or two similar scenarios in our own actual histories.
A suitable word for these pictures and those in them is found at the beginning of our text for this coming Sunday, Proverbs 14:16-35. Verse 16 tells us, “The wise are cautious and turn away from evil, but the fool throws off restraint and is careless.” One aspect of wisdom is certainly the discernment of proper caution.
It’s always difficult to find a unifying theme for any section of more than three or four verses in Proverbs, but I think two verses in the center of the text, 26 and 27, point to an idea that holds together this second half of Proverbs 14. Those two verses repeat a constant theme of the book, the fear of the Lord, and in connection with other verses here offer us the notion of good and proper fear.
In other words, as those stupid guy pictures demonstrate, there are just some things of which we should be afraid. Fear of an absurd balancing act with a mishandled ladder is a good thing. Proverbs helps us see that there are other actions and attitudes of which we ought to have a good and godly fear.
Verse 21 warns against the despising of neighbors and promises happiness for those who are kind to the poor, while verse 31 calls oppression of the poor an insult to God. That would suggest that it’s a good thing to fear mistreatment and neglect of the poor around us.
Verse 22 suggests that making plans to do evil is another error to be avoided, to be feared. Verse 32 promises the overthrow of wickedness, implying that we ought to fear being found on that side of the balance when judgment arrives.
The well-known verse 34, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people,” is a fine exhortation to corporate caution about widespread attitudes of which it would be good to be duly afraid. We ought to fear living in a nation where unborn children are regularly murdered and where poor children are turned away at the borders.
The last verse of the chapter, 35, invites proper caution regarding a human king’s wrath, but it can easily be seen as a warning against inviting the wrath of God to fall on us by shameful behavior.
Fear, like all human emotions, has a proper and good function. We would be better off if we men let fear keep us from doing stupid stuff quite so often, but all people will be better off if we let good fear of the Lord keep us from wrong. The positive benefit of such fear is, says verse 27, “a fountain of life.”