*Are Our Daily Habits Productive?

The economic woes the world has experienced over the past half-decade or so have exacerbated the perceived—and often real—gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement focused on the super-rich, the top one percent of Americans by income, complaining that these ultra-wealthy people should "pay their fair share" of taxes to support the poor. This disaffection with the rich was no doubt encouraged by the rhetoric of the current President and his supporters, who promised fundamental change in America and a progressive (read "socialist" or even "Marxist") redistribution of wealth under the guise of fairness.

The OWS movement, never truly coherent or successful in its aims, has fizzled, but its underlying spirit of dissatisfaction with the wealthy lingers. Just yesterday, while waiting for my truck to be serviced, I heard the cashier complain to another customer that the salary and benefits package promised to a local top bank executive was ridiculous. "No one," she said, "needs that much money, and there is no way we [bank customers] can make up for it." In other words, the executive was so overpaid that the bank would fail trying to pay it!

The OWS crowd assumes two foundational beliefs about the rich that are not necessarily true. First, they believe that the wealthy are born with silver spoons in their mouths, and having inherited their money from their parents—who are fixtures in a permanent upper class—thus did nothing to earn their mansions, luxury yachts and automobiles, and hefty portfolios. While this is true for a small percentage of the super-rich, the people who inhabit the top tier of the wealthy come and go with regularity as fortunes are made and lost in the volatility of the markets and the business world. The names on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans are different or in different places every year. America is still the land of opportunity—both to rise and to fall.

Second, OWS supporters believe that, if they did not inherit their money, the wealthy acquired their riches through underhanded means. By hook or by crook, by defrauding the poor or knifing their coworkers or competitors in the back, the wealthiest among us clawed their way up the ladder of success, leaving the ruined lives of others behind them. While a tiny minority of wealthy people may have taken this sordid route, the vast majority of top income-earners simply rolled up their sleeves and outworked everyone else. The Pareto Principle, also known as the "80-20 Rule" or the "Law of the Vital Few," essentially posits that 80% of the effects derive from 20% of the causes. In this case, it means that 20% of the people do 80% of the work—and the wealthy among us usually fall into that productive top quintile.

Earlier this week, a friend recommended an article to me on the website of financial guru Dave Ramsey, whose main goal is to help people get out of debt and establish a solid financial footing. The article, "20 Things The Rich Do Every Day," was a blog entry by a man named Tom Corley, author of Rich Habits, "the groundbreaking financial self-help book that shares the secrets of financial success by exposing the daily habits of wealthy individuals," according to his website, RichHabits.net. In short, Corley has found that wealthy people generally share certain habits that enhance productivity and thus prosperity.

Doing one or more of the habits on the list will not by any means guarantee a six-figure salary, but they are generally commonsense practices that can help a person do more and better with their time, energy, and skills. Here is a sample of the list:

1. 70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day. . . .
3. 76% of wealthy exercise aerobically 4 days a week. 23% of poor do this.
4. 63% of wealthy listen to audio books during commute to work vs. 5% for poor people. . . .
10. 88% of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs. 2% for poor. . . .
13. 67% of wealthy watch 1 hour or less of TV every day vs. 23% for poor. . . .
19. 86% of wealthy believe in life-long educational self-improvement vs. 5% for poor.

The underlying premise behind Corley's list is that some people, by virtue of their daily habits, set themselves up for success and the money that invariably follows, while others doom themselves to being poor and staying poor by their unproductive everyday lifestyles. As the sample from the list shows, a good diet and frequent exercise can lead to productivity because the body will likely be healthy, allowing it to work better, longer, and harder. Cultivating the mind through education, creative listening, and reading keeps a person informed, engaged, and expanding his skillset. Finally, productive people do not waste much time on vapid entertainment.

In summary, a reason why the wealthy are wealthy is because they work at doing advantageous things while avoiding detriments and distractions. They do what is helpful and shun what is useless. As the old song goes, they accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. These are things anyone can do—and from a spiritual point of view, should do.

The book of Proverbs is teeming with advice on being productive and prosperous, such as these few: "Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise" (Proverbs 6:6). "Getting treasures by a lying tongue is the fleeting fantasy of those who seek death" (Proverbs 21:6). "Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings" (Proverbs 22:29). "By knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches" (Proverbs 24:4). "Prepare your outside work, . . . and afterward build your house" (Proverbs 24:27).

In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus heaps praise on those who wisely and energetically profit from His gifts and condemns the one who squanders them (Matthew 25:14-30). Many of His teachings use illustrations lifted from situations involving money, wealth, debt, wages, work, and stewardship. He even speaks of making "friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon (Luke 16:9), just before warning, "If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" (verse 11).

So, do our daily routines set us up for success—financially, relationally, spiritually—or do they doom us to failure? Are they productive or unproductive? It is well worth our time to evaluate our lives for ways to improve them by adopting more profitable habits.

RBV: Proverbs 12:7

The wicked are overthrown and are no more, 

but the house of the righteous will stand. 

—Proverbs 12:7

This proverb stands at the end of a short section, beginning in verse 5, illustrating the progression of the sinful person in contrast to those who fear God. The opening verse describes both of these types of people making plans: The upright have good goals and mark out an ethical route to reach them, whereas the wicked devise devious ways to get what they want. The middle proverb, verse 6, describes the thinking and speech of each type: Evil people use and abuse others—often the good people, who seem to be easy pickings—to get their way, while the righteous trust in their integrity, which they have learned from following God's ways, to get them out of troubles.

Solomon concludes his short character sketch with a confident announcement of the fates of these two types of people. In fact, the sense of the verse is that these ends are sure and inescapable. While we realize that God could intervene and turn the evil person to him, and that the good person could be derailed and fall from his godly integrity, Solomon is speaking in terms of the general human condition. The percentages are high that matters will run their course along the lines he draws in this proverb.

He sees the end of the sinful person as "overthrown and no more," a rendering that most of the major translations follow exactly or nearly so. The illustration behind their being overthrown is of a "turning of the hand," that is, an indefinite catastrophe will take them away in a moment. They will be here today and gone tomorrow, swept away in a vicious flash-flood of ruin, whether physical, financial, or otherwise. In other words, the wicked are setting themselves up for spectacular failure.

That they are "no more" implies that they will vanish from the scene. They may seem so formidable and permanent, but the catastrophe reveals just how powerless they really are, and they disappear as if they were never there. Underlying this assertion is a sense of the long-term, that the family line wicked person will not last, that no dynasty will be built. Their evil will consume them in short while, as sinfulness is really a kind of slow-suicide.

The more positive side of the proverb is that those who stand fast in God's way will have long life and perpetuity in their family. Again, this is not always the case—certainly, some righteous people never marry, and other righteous people, though married, never have children. However, the general truth is that right living produces conditions that encourage health, long life, and good habits and traits that are passed down from one generation to another.

The thought in this verse is expressed in several places in Scripture, perhaps best in the second commandment:

For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20:5-6)

The effects of a person's sins reach down the next few generations and cause untold harm, yet the righteousness of a godly person can produce blessings in the lives of his descendants hundreds or thousands of years in the future (consider the example of Abraham and his faithfulness). If we want good things for ourselves and our children, the clear choice is to "fear God and keep His commandments" (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

Old Pope, New Pope

From the January-February 2013 issue of Forerunner.

When Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the papacy, very few had seen it coming. The Bavarian pope cited his declining health as the main reason for leaving his office, stating, "I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry." Many knew that the 85-year-old pontiff's health had deteriorated of late, but no Vatican observer ever thought that he would step down—especially because no pope had resigned from office since 1415, when Gregory XII ended his nine-year papacy. Benedict XVI's voluntary resignation is only the third such resignation in the nearly 2,000 years since Roman bishops have ruled the Catholic Church. 

Despite few anticipating such a move, The Economist reports in a February 16, 2013, article, "The Pope's Resignation: See You Later":

Benedict had been toying with resignation for almost four years. Visiting the earthquake-stricken Italian city of L'Aquila in 2009, he left his pallium, the woollen band that is a symbol of the papal office, at the tomb of Celestine V, a reluctant pope who resigned [in 1294] to pray. In 2010 he said that a pope who became unable to do his job properly "has the right, and in some circumstances even the duty, to resign."

And so he did, retiring initially to the Papal Palace in Castel Gandolfo, and later, once its renovations are completed, to the newly refurbished Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican.

Considered by many in the media as far too conservative and boring, Benedict's papacy has been reported as having been a failure. The truth is that, overall, his pontificate was quite successful. He steadfastly defended Catholic doctrine, as would be expected from the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (known historically as the Inquisition), the Church's doctrinal enforcement agency. He preserved his office and Church against the relativistic and progressive attitudes and ideas that so dominate today's world. Though the Vatican suffered a handful of scandals during his administration, Benedict did not allow them to soften his beliefs or approach. His holding the line against such staunch opposition obviously took its toll on his health and strength.

He has been succeeded by 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the son of Italian immigrants. The new pope, the first Jesuit to wear the papal mitre, chose the name "Francis" in honor of Francis of Assisi because, he said, he is especially concerned for the welfare of the poor. Of Francis of Assisi, Bergoglio once expressed, "He brought to Christianity an idea of poverty against the luxury, pride, vanity of the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the time. He changed history." His admiration for the founder of the Franciscan Order may portend how he will frame his papacy.

By all accounts, Pope Francis is a mild-mannered, soft-spoken man of the people who is known for his sense of humor. He has "a well-earned reputation for holiness and humility," as one writer for Maclean's put it. In the dozen years that he was head of the Catholic Church in Argentina, he never lived in the ecclesiastical mansion but shared an apartment in downtown Buenos Aires with an elderly priest, heating the place with a small stove. He took public transportation and cooked his own meals. He regularly visited the city's slums and washed the feet of the poor, the sick, the elderly, or the imprisoned every Maundy Thursday. In 2011, he did this for newborns and pregnant women.

As his papacy begins, he has not changed his habits in this regard. He has a "no frills" style that endears him to the public yet exasperates his Vatican handlers. Just after being elected, he chose to take the bus with his fellow cardinals back to his hotel rather than the papal car, and the next day, he picked up his own luggage and paid the bill himself. He has refused to take up residence in the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace, preferring to live in the Vatican guest house, though he has conceded to an "upgrade," a suite of rooms where he can conduct meetings and receive visitors. On his first Maundy Thursday as pope, he continued his practice of footwashing, washing and kissing the feet of twelve juvenile offenders in Rome.

His easy, gentle manner could make some underestimate him. Underneath his plain white cassock and iron cross is a forceful personality that brooks no argument on the tenets of his heartfelt positions. He is solidly in the conservative wing of Roman Catholic theologians, as a disciple of John Paul II and fellow of Benedict XVI. Though holding traditional views on most doctrines, he cannot be said to be a hardliner in the sense that his predecessor was thought to be. His sermons and writings often contain language that makes fine distinctions between theological dogma and measured, merciful responses in light of living in a sinful world.

One of his heartfelt positions—one that could bring him into conflict with certain parts of the Western world—is his left-leaning criticism of global capitalism, calling it a "tyranny" that values human beings solely by the goods they consume and a "cult of money" that makes people miserable. Believing that unbridled capitalism has exacerbated poverty and led to the disregard of ethics, he advocates more stringent controls over financial markets. 

What his papacy accomplishes only time will tell. Despite rumors of its decline, the Catholic Church, 1.2 billion strong, is still a force to be reckoned with, especially in Europe, Africa, and particularly in Latin America, where more than two-fifths of its adherents live. There are already a few signs that this new pope may flex the Vatican's political muscles more than the old pope did—if only in his insistence that Catholics need to live out their faith in the world—and that could make for some interesting times ahead.

Like a Growing Seed (Part Two)

Part One introduced and explained the Parable of the Growing Seed found in Mark 4:26-29:

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.

The parable is clearly about the process of growth, comparing the development of a plant from sowing to harvest to the spiritual maturation of a citizen of the Kingdom of God, a Christian. What sets this parable apart from other similar parables is that its emphasis is on the invisible and miraculous nature of growth. The sower may put the seed in the ground and do some cultivating, but "he himself does not know how" real development happens. God is behind the scenes, bringing His children to spiritual maturity in preparation for their harvest to eternal life.

Like its physical counterpart, spiritual growth happens slowly and incrementally. We should not expect a newly baptized Christian to be able to produce self-control as easily and to the same degree as one who has been in the church of God for several decades. In the parable, Jesus compares the Christian to a growing seed, and no one expects a sprout to produce ripe fruit immediately. This process takes time and steady progress through a series of stages of learning and experience.

This should be comforting, especially to those who are new in the faith. It should also set a goal or series of goals for each of us to strive toward. We do not want to remain a spiritual sprout like the wicked servant with one talent in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:24-30). Fearful and lazy, he squandered all of his opportunities for growth by burying his talent while making excuses and blaming his master for his own shortcomings. Instead, we should desire to fulfill by the end of our spiritual lives the awesome goal Christ Himself gave us, to "be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

As we continue to develop under Christ, we must accept that we may not see a great deal of improvement at any given time. It is not as some Christian pollsters try to tell us, that spiritual growth is easily quantifiable, whether we read so many chapters of the Bible or pray for x hours each day. Because it is of a spiritual nature—by definition, something that is beyond our physical senses—Christian growth can be difficult to determine, discernible only when a person's godly speech and actions reveal a marked improvement. We may be able to see growth somewhat crudely in certain stages, but most of it will occur unnoticed and unheralded.

The actual mechanics of spiritual growth are beyond understanding, like trying to fathom the infinite depths of the mind of God. As hymnist William Cowper wrote, "God moves in a mysterious way/His wonders to perform." We might as well ask how a kernel of grain becomes a fruitful stalk of wheat. All we really know is that God is faithful, continuing to work in His people to bring His crop of firstfruits to harvest (I Corinthians 1:4-9). He will make sure that every plant that He has chosen for His field has what it needs to grow, produce pleasing fruit, and enter into the fullness of His Kingdom.

The apostle Paul may have drawn upon this Parable of the Growing Seed in his analogy recorded for our edification in I Corinthians 3:6-9:

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one [united in their work], and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building.

He changes the metaphor at the end of the passage to God's building because he is progressing toward describing His people as the Temple of God (verses 16-17). However, the idea in his analogy is the same as in the parable, that God is the One who gives the increase to the crop in His field. He has provided the ministry to help things along (see Ephesians 4:11-16). He will give His sons and daughters whatever is needed to bring them to maturity—the best resources and experiences to cause real growth.

As he continues the building analogy, Paul cautions in I Corinthians 3:10, "But let each one take heed how he builds on it." He is speaking specifically to the ministry here, but this care also applies to the individual. In other words, returning to the growing-seed metaphor, the plant has some work to do too; it does not just stand in the soil and do nothing. Even though God provides the bulk of the resources for growth—water, nutrients, sunlight, etc.—the plant has to absorb them and use them to maintain itself and to grow.

In the illustration, the seed, activated by water, puts out roots and a shoot. Continued use of those resources causes it to put on height, develop a head, display flowers, and eventually produce fruit. God could spend eternity supplying sun and water to the earth, but if the seeds never responded to His blessings, not one sprout would ever break the soil's surface.

In the same way, God provides the knowledge, environment, energy, gifts, and whatever else is needed for a Christian to grow and produce spiritual fruit, but the Christian must consistently respond to God's providence to make them happen. Paul goes a step further and cautions us that, not only must each Christian respond, but he must be careful how he responds.

A plant that does not respond well to what God supplies withers and dies, and so does the improperly responsive Christian. Jesus addresses this in His Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23), speaking of seed that "fell on stony places" and that "fell among thorns." These fail to grow due to "tribulation or persecution" or "the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches." In effect, they let external troubles and the stresses of living in this world halt the growth process. Such a Christian, Jesus says, "stumbles" or "becomes unfruitful."

Obviously, an analogy can be taken too far, but this one holds up well. God has planted us in His field, and He is looking for spiritual growth so that He can harvest us for His Kingdom. For our parts, we can cling to the promise in Malachi 4:2: "But to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall . . . grow. . . ."

Like a Growing Seed (Part One)

Mark 4 contains a parable that is not often discussed, probably because it does not appear in Matthew 13 or among those well-known parables that Luke alone records, like the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Parable of the Growing Seed is unique to the book of Mark, the most basic of the gospels, perhaps due to it being so simple and its point so self-evident.

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come. (Mark 4:26-29)

This parable has obvious similarities to the Parable of the Sower, but it teaches a completely different principle. It is like the parables in Matthew 13 only in that it is a Kingdom parable and that it has a similar form. As a Kingdom parable, it is a metaphoric explanation by Christ about how God's Kingdom works. Jesus tells His disciples in a kind of spiritual code how they should expect the Kingdom of God to function.

We must understand that the Kingdom of God that He is speaking about is not what we normally think of as God's Kingdom, that is, the time after Christ returns in great power to the earth to set up His government. A future aspect certainly exists in the Kingdom parables, but in most of them, He specifically refers to the present reality of God's church and its future until the return of Christ. Recall that Paul writes in Colossians 1:13 that we have already been "conveyed into the kingdom of the Son of His love." Spiritually, then, we, as members of His church, are already under the dominion, reign, and rule of God. We have been called out of this world (I Peter 2:9) and given citizenship in God's realm (Philippians 3:20).

Kingdom parables show generally how the true church and true Christianity operate in this world. When He brings the Kingdom in its fullness in the Millennium, Christ will deal with matters much differently. His instructions in these parables, however, are to help us in our current, physical lives, not later, for how helpful would they be if they spoke only of things that will occur after the resurrection? As part of Christ's instruction to His disciples, these parables describe how God's Kingdom—in its present, spiritual manifestation—and its citizens function among men on the earth.

In this parable, therefore, Jesus uses the natural process of plant growth to explain how those whom God calls develop spiritually in this world. The process is quite simple, paralleling the growth of a seed into a full-grown, food-producing plant. Just like the growth of a plant, it happens invisibly and somewhat mysteriously too.

Since the Enlightenment, science has taken much of the mystery out of agriculture. We understand a great deal more about how it works than the people of the first-century church did. They would sow seed in their fields, the rains would come, and they would wait. In a few days, they would see sprouts coming up—a miracle! It was just as miraculous to think that the sprout would develop and not only produce another seed, but many other seeds, a great crop.

Jesus says that one becomes spiritually mature in a similar way; the spiritual process contains many parallels. For instance, He says that the sower sows the seed and goes his way, sleeping and rising, watching how things are going, but he really does not know how these things work. He knows that they happen, and he trusts that they will.

This brings out the fact that the sower in this parable is not Christ but a human. Notice that He does not say, "The Sower goes out to scatter seed," but "A man goes out." In other places, especially Matthew 13, He is specific about who the Sower is, but here it is general, a man. If it were Christ, it could not be said that He does not know how they grow. No, this sower is a man whom God uses to sow the seed. He scatters the seed and then goes about his other tasks.

Soon, the seed sprouts due to the resources that God provides; at a certain time, He supplies the light, warmth, water, and nutrients, and the seed germinates. The sower does little more than cast the seed. All that the sower—a minister—does is to speak a word, write an article, or preach a sermon. The recipient is attracted by it, but it is God who does the bulk of the work.

Ministers are not aware of all the ways that God is working behind the scenes to bring a person to the knowledge of the truth. They understand that He does it but not the mechanics of how He opens an individual's mind, turns him to the truth, and allows him to begin to accept His way of life. Ministers, like the sower, just go to bed at night and get up the next morning to continue to do His work. God does the rest, working behind the scenes. He is the Prime Mover, working invisibly and mysteriously to bring forth a productive "plant."

His work goes far beyond just helping the plant to sprout, for He also wants to see, as Jesus says, ". . . the head, after that the full grain in the head" (Mark 4:28). He is looking forward to the fully developed plant, along with ripened, finished fruit—spiritual maturity.

A Christian develops spiritually in the same way as we see in this analogy. God will use whatever method He chooses to get a person's attention. It might be something insignificant that we might not think would catch anybody's eye, but in God's hand, it is sufficient to lead the individual to the truth.

That is just the beginning. God continues to work with him in ways that are beyond human discernment. A minister can be highly instrumental in feeding and cultivating the individual, but he cannot see the invisible, spiritual ways that God is developing that person for His Kingdom. He may have a long experience in the churches of God, but it is not necessarily the case that a minister will be able to see someone's spiritual growth in detail.

In the same way as the plant's growth is described in the parable, a minister may be able to see major changes, but they are crude gauges of all the development that is taking place. He cannot discern each individual's efforts to grow. This is what Christ is suggesting: Growth is taking place despite it being unseen.

If a person inspects his plantings each day, he will see almost no growth from the day before, but if one waits a few days or week between inspections, it is amazing how much they have grown! Similarly, each Christian grows in stages and at a slow enough pace that it can seem like no growth at all. But God is working, and He is aware of the growth—and that should be very encouraging.

RBV: Proverbs 13:6

"Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless,

But wickedness overthrows the sinner."

—Proverbs 13:6

This verse seems like a fairly straightforward statement of a truth repeated in various ways dozens, if not hundreds, of times throughout the book of Proverbs. Those who practice righteousness will ultimately succeed, while the sinfulness of the sinner will be his undoing. The way Solomon composes this proverb, however, brings out a few particular points.

First, the emphasis in the first half of the couplet is not necessarily on the godly man's success but on the fact that his practice of goodness shields him from adversity (compare Proverbs 2:11; 4:6; 13:3). A practitioner of God's way of life is protected by the fact that he does what is right. If a person does good things, avoiding what is evil, he will be drawn into adverse situations far less frequently than those who dance on the edge of the cliff.

For instance, the Christian who lives by the injunction found in the seventh commandment—"You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14)—will not put himself or herself in tempting situations; and on the rare occasion that a temptation of that nature presents itself, he or she will, like Joseph, run in the other direction (Genesis 39:12). Such a person's righteousness—his right doing—guards him from the destruction that sin causes, and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). We could also understand this to suggest that a person who walks uprightly shelters under the protection of God, who is pleased with those who practice righteousness (Colossians 1:10; Hebrews 13:16).

The second half of the verse communicates the exact opposite: He whose conduct is determined by sin is bound to fall into destruction. The sinful way of living offers the sinner no protection at all; the course of sin will run unchecked through his life all the way to death (see James 1:14-15)—provided that God Himself does not arrest it through His calling. This is the course of the world that we see every day on the street (Ephesians 2:1-3).

We can take this principle to the bank. Even though we see in various places in Scripture (for example, in Psalm 10), and even in our own experience, that the wicked seem to prosper, we can be assured that their prosperity is only temporary (Psalm 37). The evil that they do will catch up to them in time and begin to take its toll. The corrupt always pay the piper.

The Hebrew text contains a pair of technical oddities in this verse's second half, making it difficult to translate into English but bringing out a significant point. The oddities are that both nouns, "wickedness" and "sinner," are abstract nouns in the original. The NKJV translators, as in many translations, chose to render only one of them as abstract, "wickedness," and changing the other to a concrete noun, "sinner." Literally, though, this part of the verse should be read as "wickedness overthrows sinfulness."

The point this brings out shows just how pervasive sin is once committed. There is no such thing as a partial sinner; one is either righteous or sinful. In practicing sin, the sinner is perfectly wicked—he is sinfulness, nothing but sin, a mass of evil and corruption. James puts it another way, writing that if we break one commandment, we break them all (James 2:10-11). Jesus, speaking both to His disciples and to His audience of Jews, calls them "evil" (Matthew 7:11; 12:34). Paul writes of all humanity, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). James states the simple truth that we all stumble (James 3:2).

Each time we sin, then, we become evil and require the gracious forgiveness of God through the blood of Jesus Christ to become clean once again. The lesson in this proverb is to make it our practice to do what is right and good in God's eyes, and that will greatly diminish our chances of falling into sin and straining our relationship with God.

The Erosion of Religious Freedoms

Forerunner, "WorldWatch," May-June 2013

Ever since the United States Supreme Court ruled against prayer in the public schools in 1962, religious freedom has been under assault, despite the fact that the Bill of Rights clearly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The government, under the guise of the “separation of church and state” principle—which it perverted just enough to widen the scope of its attacks—has steadily barred religion from the public square, twisting the phrase, “freedom of religion,” to “freedom from religion.” Christianity, the primary religion of Americans, has been the chief target.

The tempo of the march against religious freedom has sharply increased in the last several years, particularly under the Obama administration. The following examples of blows against the free exercise of religion have occurred within the last five years:

• After a Christian photography company in New Mexico was sued for declining to photograph a homosexual couple’s commitment ceremony, the state’s Supreme Court held that the law compels the owners to compromise their religious beliefs. The business had to be closed.
• The city of San Diego pressured four Christian firefighters with disciplinary action if they refused to take part in its “Gay Pride” parade, during which the firemen were subjected to verbal abuse and sexual gestures. Winning their lawsuit, they were awarded $30,000 in damages.
• A day after a visit from Federal Reserve employees, an Oklahoma bank was forced to remove Bible verses from its website, crosses from teller stations, and buttons carrying a Christian Christmas message.
• A Missouri university threatened to withhold a Christian student’s degree after she refused to write a letter to the state legislature in support of homosexual adoption.
• Under Obamacare, the Department of Health and Human Services mandated that all organizations (except churches) that offer group health insurance to provide for abortifacients such as Plan B (the “day-after pill”) and Ella (the “week-after pill”).
• In New Jersey, a second-grade public-school student was forbidden to sing “Awesome God” in an after-school talent show. Another girl in Port Charlotte, Florida, was barred from singing “Kum Ba Yah” at a Boys & Girls Club talent show because the song included the words “Oh, Lord.”
• Despite a previous written agreement to respect a pro-life nurse’s religious convictions, a New York hospital threatened her with termination and loss of license if she refused to participate in a late-term abortion.
• Florida withheld grant money from students attending Florida Christian College because the college did not satisfy the state’s “secularity checklist.” A lawsuit forced the state to reverse its policy.
• The Centers for Disease Control fired a Christian counselor because she refused to lie about why she was referring clients with same-sex relationship problems to other counselors.
• A third-grader in Plano, Texas, was forbidden to include a religious message in the goodie bags that he was bringing to the “Winter Party” to share with his classmates.
• A Cisco employee was summarily fired for his belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, though he had never mentioned his view at work, but only in a book that he had written.

From just this sampling of infringements of religious liberty, it is plain to see that the trend is widespread. Christians, especially, are seeing their religious freedoms limited by federal, state, and local governments; schools and universities; institutions and corporations; and community groups. Liberty Institute, “a nonprofit legal group dedicated to defending and restoring religious liberty across America,” has documented a list of nearly 1,200 incidents of bigotry against religion in the U.S., most having occurred in the past ten years (http://www.libertyinstitute.org/pages/survey-of-religious-hostilities). While various courts found many of these occurrences to violate the First Amendment, too many have become legal precedent and the law of the land.

Another inference from the above list is that many of them involve Christianity’s stances against homosexuality, homosexual adoption, homosexual “marriage,” and abortion, all sexual-freedom issues. American values have been so turned on their heads that today, sexual freedom, which receives no mention in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, trumps religious freedom, which is specifically named. Moreover, as the New Mexico photography case shows, a Christian, protecting his conscience, cannot even politely say, “No,” to a homosexual without being hauled off to court for discrimination and losing his business along the way.

Many Christians and churches have tried to “stand in the breach” to uphold biblical moral values, but they have only delayed the crumbling of all barriers to sexual expression. Lately, all opposition has seemed ineffective, as California, for instance, now requires public schools to allow self-perceived transgender students, regardless of their birth gender, access to whichever restroom and locker room they wish to use. Clearly, the cultural trend in America is toward “anything goes” and nothing being stigmatized—or else.

And who but Christians would denounce “anything goes”? Thus, Christians have been targeted as enemies of “progress,” and every effort is being employed to stifle, ridicule, or delegitimize Christianity’s voice in society. So far, anti-Christian attacks have mostly been legal maneuvers, designed to marginalize Bible-believers, not yet reaching the level of outright persecution. However, Scripture warns repeatedly that true Christians will suffer intense persecution in the end time (see Luke 21:12-19; II Timothy 3:12-13; Revelation 6:9-11; 12:17; 13:7, 15; 17:6). To paraphrase our Savior, these incursions against our religious freedoms are just the beginning of sorrows.