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If you’ve ever been part of a conversational Bible study, you’ll probably relate to this statement: One person’s initial take on a proverb may be vastly different from another’s.

Years ago in a small mid-week study, we went around the room over a number of verses in Proverbs sharing what we thought they meant. Now, differences of opinion are to be expected in situations where there exists no real context from which to more accurately pin down Solomon’s intended meaning. But as I digested the various subjective impressions about the text laid out for us, there were times I was convinced we weren’t all reading from the same book.

And of course if you really want to examine an entire range of possible interpretations to seek out the best one, ask a woman what she thinks.

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If you live long enough, you will find there are times when a soft answer just doesn’t turn away wrath. We are living in times like that today.

Watch carefully the next time the social media point-and-screechers descend en masse upon an unfortunate public figure accused of violating some new PC piety. No apology, no show of contrition and no amount of craven deference slows down the social justice juggernaut once it has a full head of steam. It pours out its bile until a tastier snack inadvertently presents itself.

That doesn’t make Proverbs 15:1 incorrect. After all, it’s a proverb, not a prophecy or a doctrinal statement.

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Most proverbs are by their very nature generalizations. Two-liners are too pithy to cover every eventuality. Really, they just give you a good sense of what the odds are that Behavior X will produce either a favorable outcome or a bad one.

Now, for any individual sub-optimal way of doing things, there are almost always a few rare favorable outcomes. Exceptions to the rule. People love to point to these oddities as if they somehow invalidate the wisdom of the sages who warn us about the consequences of bad behavior:

“My dad drank all day, every day for 40 years and his liver is just fine!”

Hey, sure, there are probably a few dads around like that.

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“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”

They say there is no free lunch, but Wisdom and Folly are out advertising one. Their message is delivered in the same venues: the highest places of the town, where everybody can hear them and see the long-term results of responding to one or the other. They have the same ad campaign, and they target the same hungry demographic. They reach out to those in need of a set of principles by which they can order their lives. Both metaphorical “women” offer to meet that very common need, but only one can really do so, for reasons that will shortly become evident.

Solomon contrasts living wisely and living foolishly.

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The book of Proverbs was written almost three thousand years ago and preserves truth gathered well prior to that. It is genuinely ancient, and comes out of a cultural setting (or really, cultural settings, plural) with which we can only pretend to be even slightly familiar.

Thus, even if we study and research until the cows come home, we should not be the least bit surprised to find that there are occasional words and phrases in Proverbs that we just can’t parse properly. We can make educated guesses. We can eliminate ridiculous suggestions (of which there are more than a few). But in some cases we will have to content ourselves with being less than 100% sure what a particular word, phrase or sentence really means.

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I will say this, and I will say it again: there is no substitute for the prayerful, meditative, daily reading of scripture. None. You cannot be the functioning, useful, growing, joyful, discerning Christian that God means you to be without it.

Sure, in every generation there are plenty of Christians around the world who can’t read, and there have been plenty throughout history who have had much smaller portions of God’s word to mull over and put into practice than are available to us today. But none of that matters to you or me, does it, because we CAN read.

And of everyone to whom much is given, much will be required. That’s our problem in a nutshell.

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We now find ourselves with an interesting and hotly contested portion of Proverbs to consider.

Unitarians argue that it describes for us the origin of God’s Son, the Logos, or the Christ. Their conclusion is that the Son is not, therefore, equal to God, but rather his greatest creation. Likewise, Jesus Christ is said to be not uniquely God’s Son, but only one son among many.

And here I didn’t think there was all that much in Proverbs to “hotly contest” until we get to chapter 31 ...

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When the U.S. congress passed The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) in 2007, it is highly unlikely they anticipated triggering a cereal grain price jump of 67.4%, or that the rising food prices that resulted from the passage of the bill would end up plunging nearly 70 million people into extreme poverty.

What prompted the EISA? In theory at least, it was the desire to reduce dependency on foreign oil, scale back greenhouse gas emissions and keep the price of gas down. None of these are bad ideas. While I am as easily attracted to conspiracy theories as the next guy, I doubt the average elected representative planned on starving the third world to reduce U.S. gas prices.

But the unintended consequences of the Act have caused and continue to cause near-incalculable damage. This is where wisdom comes in.

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Anyone who reads here regularly probably already knows I am highly suspicious of claims the Bible teaches egalitarianism. Fairness, absolutely. Justice, always. Equality, in the sense it is currently used politically, not so much.

That said, there are aspects of God’s dealings with mankind that are indeed universal. For example, every single man and woman on earth can reasonably anticipate the judgment of God, either in this life or in a coming day. Likewise, God’s has displayed his love to the entire world and offers salvation freely to all. Again, the offer of fellowship with Christ is extended to any who will open the door and let him in. These things are universals, not limited to a privileged few.

We should probably add wisdom to this list.

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According to Jenna Birch at Women’s Day, more than 60% of adulterous liaisons get started via the workplace. Business trips are the most common settings. The Telegraph reports that a recent American study showed women who travel for work are three times more likely to have had concurrent sexual relationships in the past five years than women in general. And the Huffington Post reports that 46% of women who cheat do so with someone they met at work.*

Keep these claims in mind as we jump back three thousand years or so.

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Our society is pretty much cool with anything sexual that takes place between consenting adults, especially whenever acute desire can be trotted out to excuse it.

There is, perhaps still, the tiniest residual social resistance to adultery; though feminists are working tirelessly to convince us that wives are not to be viewed as “property”, and once they eradicate that legitimate, biblical aspect of the marriage relationship from the corporate conscience, society should be good to go in the adultery department too.

So, apart from Christians already sold on monogamous marriage as the sole legitimate outlet for human sexuality, there likely to be few takers for these next 44 verses of Proverbs.

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There’s an old Monty Python sketch called “Nudge Nudge”, in which Terry Jones plays a man just trying to have a quiet drink while the stranger seated beside him pesters him non-stop. The chatterbox pours out a stream of apparently innocent questions loaded with subtext that might be overlooked if it were not for his knowing leer and constant barrage of lines like “Know whatahmean, know whatahmean, nudge nudge, know whatahmean, say no more?”

Eventually even the monumentally oblivious Jones has to ask, “Look ... are you insinuating something?”

I can’t read the next few verses of Proverbs without picturing that scene. One big takeaway from it for me is that it’s possible to make people think terrible things (in this case, the audience) without really saying very much at all.

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Ah, ants and sluggards.

This next bit is one of my favorite sections of Proverbs, and probably my youngest brother’s least favorite. I recall quoting it to his prone form on at least one occasion as he lay blearily sprawled across his waterbed, the hour approaching noon. I have always been a very early riser (these days it’s usually somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m.) and found his inertia appalling in some indefinable, slightly jealous way. So I leaped on him fists-first and played the part of the proverbial bandit.

Not my finest hour or my most accurate application of scripture, but when your parents raise a bunch of boys together, these are the sorts of things that happen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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The vast majority of the Bible aphorisms we call proverbs are comparatively short; a phrase or two at best.

Sayings like “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” are so very memorable precisely because they are concise. Those of us who grew up in Christian homes often know dozens even if we have never intentionally committed them to memory. They tend to pop into our heads at the most opportune moments.

Sure, more could have been said, but there’s no need. We get the point.

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No backlink on the following, for obvious reasons; you can do your own research on this one.

The Ashley Madison Agency claims, among other things:

• Over 50 million married men in the United States are currently cheating on their wives.
• About 50 percent of cheating husbands have multiple affairs.
• More than 50% of unfaithful husbands witnessed their fathers cheat on their mothers.

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Some people never learn from experience. Proverbs 1 talks about two of those: the scoffer and the fool.

Others learn only through negative examples, either by charging in and doing it wrong themselves the first time, or by watching others fail. That’s better than never learning at all, but for those who only learn from their own mistakes, it’s somewhat like bellyflopping your way through life. Every bad landing hurts more than the last one.

A third sort of person is well aware they know less about life than they would like, and therefore looks for guidance.

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One in three American children is currently growing up without a father in the home.

Fatherless children are four times more likely to live in poverty as those with a dad at home, twice as likely to die in infancy, twice as likely to struggle with their weight and twice as likely to drop out of high school. Fatherless girls are seven times more likely to become pregnant as a teen. And while the actual numbers are hotly debated, it is evident having an absent father also correlates statistically with higher levels of criminality, incarceration, drug and alcohol abuse, behavioral problems and the likelihood of having been beaten up at home.

This is going on in a country with one of the best social safety nets in the world and with more money being directed toward the social problems exacerbated by fatherlessness than at any time in human history. Despite its deep pockets, the State is no substitute for a loving, involved father.

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Do you remember a few years ago there was a rash of child psychologists telling parents not to say no to their children? Maybe there still is, but I’m past the stage of life where finding optimal child-rearing techniques is an urgent matter; I probably wouldn’t notice.

Anyway, it seems to me the rationale was something along the lines of “No” being an abstraction that is not aligned with the need of young children to explore their world and to develop their sense of autonomy and initiative.

Still, I remember finding the word moderately useful, so I’ve always wondered how voluntarily abandoning the use of it worked out for the parents and their kids. My guess is probably not well.

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How much time do you devote to becoming wise?

You may not put it that way, of course. Reading the Bible may never have presented itself to you as some kind of quest for understanding. You may think of it as just enjoying the word of God. Or you may have been trained from childhood to read your Bible every day “just because”, and so you keep doing it like a robot. You may do it grudgingly, conscious that your life is insanely busy and twenty minutes every morning is often an imposition. Or you may go to the word of God and dig through it regularly in order to better understand yourself, your world and, most importantly, your Lord and Savior.

Whatever your motivation, if you’re reading God’s word and trying to put its principles into practice, you are becoming more skilled at living life every single day whether you notice it or not.

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Have you ever taken one of those biological age tests that are all the rage on the internet? (Warning: most are designed to pitch you something at the end.)

There is probably some marginal utility to such things. Obviously you have an actual age, and that age cannot change; the year you were born is the year you were born. But the medical reality at the root of these tests is that the number and intensity of stressors in your daily life tend to shorten it, while the absence of such stressors will, at very least, not make things any worse. Thus your “biological age”, as these folks define it, is something akin to your own personal doomsday clock.

Do you smoke? Lose five years. More than two drinks a day? Ooh, you’re in trouble. Hate your job or sleep too little? Another strike or two. Depending on your situation and habits, you may start to wonder why you haven’t keeled over already.

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David Gooding has a knack for taking great wedges of ancient text and breaking them down into manageable chunks of related material, then dissecting those pieces line by line until we are able to think clearly about them. That’s not unique to Gooding of course — all decent Bible teachers do it — but I especially appreciate his sensitivity to the natural flow of poetry, narrative or argument. I have yet to find him analyzing a passage and think Boy, that structure he’s describing looks awfully artificial.

To the extent we are up to the job, it’s a useful trick to imitate.

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Dictionary.com says a proverb is a “short pithy saying”. Most familiar Bible proverbs are no more than one or two lines.

A proverb communicates a great deal in the fewest possible words, presumably as an aid to memory, and the reader is usually left to meditate on how best to apply it. The vast majority of biblical proverbs are universally relatable. Even the more obscure sayings ring with plausibility, though they may express truths unfelt or unexperienced.

Or so we might argue. But there are some people to whom the offer of objective truth holds no interest at all.

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According to the FBI, the United States has more than 1.4 million gang members affiliated with roughly 33,500 gangs. Less than a sixth of these were in jail in 2011, and those in jail were likely as active in gang business as those outside.

Other than the obvious tax burden, what does any of that have to do with you or me? Probably not much. I met a Hell’s Angel once. He was a pretty scary guy. But that’s a few minutes out of one day in my life. Not a big deal.

Christians who work with the incarcerated would probably have a different take.

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How many ways can you ruin your life, or at very least dig yourself a hole so deep that climbing out of it affects the rest of your days?

I suspect the number is large, and the book of Proverbs is full of too many to list. You could have an affair, be chronically lazy, refuse to listen to good advice, marry the wrong sort of woman, make a practice of telling lies, turn your home into a war zone, talk too much or be characteristically proud. All of these things, we are advised, tend to bring about varying degrees of destruction and ruin. Simple observation of the world around us demonstrates their essential truth.

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Just who is Solomon talking to in Proverbs anyway? Ever wondered?

“Well, that’s easy,” says the Bible student. “He’s talking to his son. Look at verse 8.”

“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching.”

Now, the Bible student might well be right, but before we agree with him, let’s address the herd of elephants in the room.

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Wisdom is rare today: rarely understood, more rarely expressed, even more rarely followed.

As a result, we live among people with a chronic inability to connect the dots; to discover where and how the choices they made at various points in their lives have inexorably rung in the consequences they experience and bemoan today.

In a ward full of patients, we are desperately short of diagnosticians.