Letting it all hang out seems to be
acceptable today. If you don’t believe me, walk around the local mall and watch
for the droopy pants and belly button piercings. And then you hear the
language! Yikes!
Our proverbs today deal with this lack of
boundaries in our actions and words. If you are going to go into business, or
build a close friendship, you want someone who is seeking the LORD. You want
someone who will be straight forward in their dealings with you and with
others. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of deception.
We need to be careful about who is giving us
advice. They might be setting a trap for us. They might be working for their
own benefit to our detriment. Their words just sit there, until they do their
harm. Like a sleeper cell, you don’t know it exists until it is too late. So it
is with the wicked and their words.
Prudence means to know and act according to
a known standard. It could also be translated wisdom. It is easy to tell a fake
if you have studied the genuine long enough. Bank tellers are trained using
real money. When they know what the real looks and feels like, the counterfeit
is easy to spot.
If we could use the same standard for people
we would be better off. If you have been around genuine, caring people, you can
spot a fake a mile away. You might not be able to tell exactly what is fake about
them, but the warning bells are sounded.
Now I don’t want to imply that I am
completely genuine all the time. We all use masks from time to time to protect
ourselves. For years I was the class clown to protect the fragile kid who
wanted to be accepted. But our goal is to become more and more transparent,
thus allowing the LORD to shine through us.
We need to know what genuine love looks like
lived out in another human being. When we see it enough we can spot it in
others and in ourselves. If all we see is deception, without an active seeking
of the grace of God, we will become deceptive. Our mind will be warped by the
sin and we will call evil good and good evil.