The “Versus” Verses: Week 1
THE “VERSUS” VERSES (WEEK 1): THE OBSTINATE VS. THE TEACHABLE
Proverbs is a book about “versus” scenarios… that is, a book of “Versus” Verses.
"Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature." – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. -James Clear
Today: the Obstinate vs. the Teachable
Obstinance is self-informed oppositionality to divine instruction, correction, or truth from Scripture or community. It is being wise in your own eyes.
Proverbs 26:12 NIV: "Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them."
"We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt." –Dallas Willard (A.D. 1935–2013)
2 Timothy 4:3–4 NIV: "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."
Proverbs 14:12 NIV: "There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death."
Isaiah 5:20–21 NIV: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
"There is the pride of the heretic who will utter false doctrines because he thinks his own judgment to be better than the word of God; never content to sit like a child to believe what he is told, he is a disputant but not a disciple." – Charles Spurgeon
To Him (Christ)… I desire you to submit yourself with unreserved piety… In that way the first part is humility; the second, humility; the third, humility: and this I would continue to repeat as often as you might ask direction, not that there are no other instructions which may be given, but because, unless humility precede, accompany, and follow every good action which we perform, being at once the object which we keep before our eyes, the support to which we cling, and the monitor by which we are restrained, pride wrests wholly from our hand any good work on which we are congratulating ourselves. – Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354–430)
Humility is the disposition of a heart open and submitted to correction and discipline. The humble invites it, while the proud resists it.
Proverbs 12:1 NLT: To learn, you must love discipline; it is stupid to hate correction.
Proverbs 12:15 NIV: "The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice."
