Proverbs 1 - A Message from Jesus to the United States (Part 2)
Proverbs 1 - A Message from Jesus to the United States (Part 1)
The Enticement of Sinners
8 Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
9 for they are a graceful garland for your head
and pendants for your neck.
Spoken to a son, spoken in love. We are each God’s son, God is our father, the Church is our mother, who is the bride of Christ, who is our God who would come as man. And so we can know that whatever message follows is a message to the members of God’s Church, to the elect, the saved. Just John would one day write the Book of Revelation to churches who were in God’s grace, yet erred nonetheless, Solomon is doing that here. But instead of hearing Solomon in these lines, hear God in these words, a father talking to a son, Christ talking to His bride…
10 My son, if sinners entice you,
do not consent.
11 If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
let us ambush the innocent without reason;
12 like Sheol let us swallow them alive,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;
13 we shall find all precious goods,
we shall fill our houses with plunder;
14 throw in your lot among us;
we will all have one purse”—
15 my son, do not walk in the way with them;
hold back your foot from their paths,
16 for their feet run to evil,
and they make haste to shed blood.
Who in the church is God speaking to? It could be the entire church, but the church itself is divided. Each has chosen sides, and these are words that warn of the side one chooses to be on. Where they are united is that Christ was crucified for our sins, but outside that the division is sharp.
The Church on the left feels invited to conduct war (i.e., Bush in Iraq), and believes they must resist. Perhaps they read verse 11 and see President Bush inviting them to “lie in wait for blood.” They believe the war in Iraq is not justified, and so to them the invitation continues, an invitation to “ambush the innocent without reason,” a seemingly clear reference to being held in prison without a hearing, and without a trial. “Like Sheol let us swallow them alive, and whole, like those who go down to the pit;” A reference to solitary? Moving on to oil the proverb continues and says ”we shall find all precious goods, we shall fill our houses with plunder;” Speaking of Haliburton, “throw in your lot among us; we all will have one purse.” And so seeing this guidance not to endorse what to them is clearly an unholy war, they read verses 15 and 16, which say, “my son, do not walk in the way with them; hold back your foot from their paths, for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood.”
Oh, if only it were that simple, because if those against the war are correct, then I would have to be one of the people fooled, a son of God enticed by sinners. But here is why I know I am not. When Bush made a case for the war, the arguments I heard are nothing like those in this Proverb…
“Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;” — Bloodshed was to be minimized, with every attempt to be limited to the guilty. Blood was not the goal. And we never lied in wait… we went right to the source. It is true that innocents die in war, but the purpose was to avoid the shedding of even more innocent blood later.
“let us ambush the innocent without reason;” — But innocents were never the target, and we have offered humanitarian help. No, the targets were Saddam Hussein and a list of known terrorists, and there was reason. Hussein had closed his country to weapons inspections during the Clinton administration, his people been caught on satellite moving trailers from sites just days before inspections that were about to be conducted, and it was clear that people terrorist leaders were now willing to attack us in whatever way they knew how (even airplanes flying into buildings)… just give them the opportunity, and they will kill us and terrorize us, and we could not let that happen.
“like Sheol let us swallow them alive” — We turned Saddam over to his people for execution, and killed many more terrorists. Unlike Sheol, the targets of our detention centers were not meant to be innocents. I am unaware of innocents there to be honest, but supposing there are, it was never the message I heard, and it is not a message I would have supported, and if there are any innocents being held, then I am glad they will be getting their day in court… I just wish the that the guilty non-Americans could in fact be held until they could be turned back over to their own countries. Terrorists do not deserve America’s Constitutional protection, and the money that it costs us, as a reward for trying to kill us.
“we shall find all precious goods” — We have taken none of their oil, though it was our right of war to do so.
“we shall all have one purse” — We have tried to get as many countries as possible to participate. By their own choice not to participate, the battle is left largely to us.
I find it frustrating that things have the appearance that they do, that the arguments I heard and was convinced by are never aired or even defended anymore. The miscoverage of my perspective and those who agree with me makes us seem like war mongers to fellow Christians who do not realize that there are limits to what even Right wing Evangelicals feel is appropriate.
I do believe there are those who wanted to attack Iraq, and were just looking for a reason, to finish the job Bush Sr. started many years ago. They were wrong, and I do not support them. Killing for its own sake is wrong, and conquering nations just because we don’t like the leaders is not godly or holy, and I for one do not support it. But, Saddam himself told us after his capture that he was the only person in his country who knew they had no nuclear weapons… the only one. His top henchmen all believed they had them, and that they just weren’t privy to it. And when we did go in, we found massive stock piles of weapons… not nuclear, but enough to do a lot of damage.
I do believe that we have mistreated prisoners, but that not all treatment represented as mistreatment necessarily is… and I believe that much of what we call torture would be so to an innocent person, a person who is not accustomed to war. But, for soldiers bent on doing us harm, it’s the cost of doing business. This also means that whoever we interrogate… well, we’d better be right. Is that too high a standard to ever meet? It could be. It could be.
I believe in treating foreign prisoners-in-waiting humanely, but do not believe they deserve protection under the American Constitution.
I believe that we deserve enough Iraqi oil to pay us back for their liberation, but I consider it generous and humane (albeit economically foolish for us) to leave it all for Iraq and their new government. It speaks for our humanity as a country that we are doing this, not against it.
I believe that Bush will leave office with a low approval rating, the king of nothing, with a legacy of creating yet one more Democratic ally for the U.S. in this world, an ally that could be future kingdom of the Anti-Christ though.
When you make war with your army, there are sure to be warmongers within the mix, but they are not running the show, or else Iraq would have been blown off the face of this earth, and we would filthy rich in oil. But to be sure, those warmongers are there, and I believe that when we go to war, this Proverb serves in part as warning against them. It is not a warning to avoid war, but to avoid a certain attitude when carrying out war.
17 For in vain is a net spread
in the sight of any bird,
18 but these men lie in wait for their own blood;
they set an ambush for their own lives.
19 Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain;
it takes away the life of its possessors.
But America’s gains in this war are security, and a new friend in a self-governing Iraq. The righteous among our government and troops deserve our support, while the greedy among us set an ambush for their own lives… but I have to admit that that’s beside the point. If this proverb is indeed prophetical, then it is far more in line with how my liberal Christian friends have seen the issue than I have. And so, I cannot be so dismissive. If Wisdom is shouting in the streets, then I want to hear it. I’ll explore this more next time, as we move on to the rest of the Proverb… The Call of Wisdom.