God's Wisdom for Navigating Life

by Timothy Keller

  Jesus forbade speaking contemptuously or treating anyone disrespectfully (Matthew 5:22). And though Jesus’ claims of divinity were so lofty, his actual demeanor and behavior were kind and lowly. He associated with people whom respectable society considered outcasts. And he looked down on no one. So how can we?

  What person or kind of person do you, frankly, despise? What can you do about that?

  Prayer: Lord, you ate with the tax collectors—collaborators with the Romans—as well as the prostitutes and sinners. When you were here on earth, you despised no one. You even ate with Pharisees—you were not bigoted toward bigots. Change my heart so I can walk in your footsteps. Amen.

  May 11

  The LORD tears down the house of the proud, but he sets the widow’s boundary stones in place. (15:25)

  FALSE MAJESTY. Pride not only looks down on others; it also fails to look upward. It refuses to let God take his proper role in our lives. The Hebrew word for proud (15:25) is ge’eh. Applied to God it means supreme majesty, so to use it for a human being is ironic but also very telling. We want to be our own saviors and lords. We want to run our own lives, to earn our own self-worth, to decide what is right and wrong for us.

  Lewis Smedes writes: “Pride in the religious sense is refusal to let God be God. It’s to grab God’s status for one’s self. . . . Pride is turning down God’s invitation to [be] a creature in his garden and wishing instead to be the Creator, independent, reliant on your own resources. . . . Pride is the grand delusion, the fantasy of all fantasies, the cosmic put-on.”106 Because pride makes us overconfident and out of touch with reality, it makes us foolish. It also, according to this verse, leads to social injustice. But when the proud try to trample on the helpless, they find themselves opposing God himself.

  What are some of the ways that we can refuse to “let God be God” in our lives?

  Prayer: Lord, I don’t like some of the things I find taught in the Bible. I don’t like some of the ways you arrange the circumstances of my life. I confess I don’t even like the doctrine of grace—I’d rather earn my salvation so you owe me. In all these ways I refuse to let you be God. Forgive me. Amen.

  May 12

  “Those who are pure in their own eyes and yet are not cleansed of their filth; those whose eyes are ever so haughty, whose glances are so disdainful.” (30:12–13)

  UNSYMPATHETIC. The eyes of the proud are haughty, literally, they “lift up their pupils.” They don’t look people in the eye to understand and engage them as equals. They look past them to the goals they have for themselves, for which others are mere instruments, objects.107 They see others as a means to an end, as dispensers of acclaim, admiration, and other ways to bolster their self-image. Pride makes sympathy nearly impossible. Pride keeps us from really noticing people, from putting ourselves in their shoes, from recognizing when they are hurting or unhappy. It keeps us absorbed with our own agenda and needs. If the proud see someone suffering, they think they are too smart to let that happen to them, or they feel too sorry for themselves about their own problems to care about someone else’s.

  By contrast, look at Jesus sighing deeply over the deaf-mute (Mark 7:34), weeping at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35), and being our sympathetic high priest (Hebrews 4:14–16). Here is one who looks us in the eye with a full ability to enter into our troubles.

  Do people seek you out to talk to you about their problems? If not, is it because you are not very sympathetic?

  Prayer: Lord, I confess that my own self-pity and self-absorption make me impatient with people who have problems. I want to surround myself with “low-maintenance” people. But if you had done that, where would I be? Reproduce your sympathetic heart in me. Amen.

  May 13

  A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense. (19:11)

  TOUCHINESS. A body part that is injured or inflamed responds with instant recoil when touched. The Hebrew word for patience here means a relaxed face rather than one that instantly snarls when provoked. When people say something you don’t like, do you shoot right back? Or do you slow your response and act rather than react? What is so touchy about us? We feel we must defend our glory or honor. It is our ego that is so sensitive.

  This should tell us something. We don’t notice body parts unless there is something wrong with them. We don’t say, “My elbows are working great today!” But the ego calls attention to itself every minute. Sin has distorted our identity, the very basis of our sense of self. We need saving, repairing grace. If our ego was working properly, we would know that true glory is to let a slight or irritation go without paying back. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). That is real glory.

  Do you fairly easily feel hurt, slighted, and put down, and do you take criticism very hard?

  Prayer: Lord, today I was very touchy with someone. Yes, I was tired and stressed out over many things. But so what? You were under far greater stress and never shot back an angry word. Let me wonder and praise you for your patience until it begins to grow in me. Amen.

  May 14

  The LORD detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished. . . . Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (16:5,18)

  THE BLINDNESS OF PRIDE. The Bible does not say that pride might lead to destruction—it says it will. Why? The practical reason is that pride makes it difficult to receive advice or criticism. You can’t learn from your mistakes or admit your own weaknesses. Everything has to be blamed on other people. You have to maintain the image of yourself as a competent person, as someone who is better than other people. Pride distorts your view of reality, and therefore you’re going to make terrible decisions.

  In Troilus and Cressida, when the great warrior Ajax says, “I do hate a proud man,” a character says to the audience, “Yet he loves himself: is’t not strange?” Ajax is completely blind to what all others can see—he is a man of enormous pride. It led him to kill himself in his humiliation when the armor of Achilles was awarded to Ulysses rather than to him. As another character says about Ajax, “He that is proud eats up himself.”108 Indeed.

  What negative practical results of pride have you seen recently worked out in your own life or the lives of others you know?

  Prayer: Lord, my pride makes me sometimes feel inferior and sometimes superior. It sometimes makes me too afraid and sometimes not cautious enough. It seems to be at the root of so many other things wrong with me. Do whatever it takes, Lord, to diminish its power in my life. Amen.

  May 15

  Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice. . . . A fool’s mouth lashes out with pride, but the lips of the wise protect them. (13:10, 14:3)

  THE STRIFE OF PRIDE. There is another practical reason that pride leads inevitably to a fall, namely, because it stirs up interpersonal strife. 14:3 says the pride of one’s mouth lashes out, but comparison with the second clause of the verse, where wise speech protects the speaker, reveals that the pride of a man’s mouth lashes him.

  Bruce Waltke writes that the image in this verse is of a man or woman beating themselves with a rod or whip. How does arrogant speech do that? It is because “the indiscreet, insulting speech” that always marks the braggart and the thin-skinned “prompts others to react with anger, derision, disdain, and revenge.”109 Pride means you are constantly getting into arguments, and it is only a matter of time before you pick a fight with someone who can really hurt you. Humble, careful, discreet speech, on the other hand, disarms people and protects you from the great cost of interpersonal strife. The ultimate example of this is Jesus himself, who, unlike fools who turn friends into enemies, made a career out of making enemies into friends (Romans 5:10).

  Identify someone who is opposing or criticizing you. How could you at least try to disarm the animosity and make the person a friend?

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bsp; Prayer: Lord, I need help with my tongue. I can speak intemperately and later regret what I’ve said. And I see some relationships that have been hurt by my ill-advised words. Teach me how to reach out in peace and make friends where I have potential enemies. Amen.

  May 16

  Better to be lowly in spirit along with the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud. (16:19)

  GOD HATES THE PROUD. There are practical reasons that pride leads to destruction, but there are also what we could call cosmic reasons. The Lord loves the oppressed—the widow, the fatherless, and those without power. But why?

  Within one being of the triune God there are three persons loving and glorifying one another through eternity (John 17:1–6), an “other-orientation” of love.110 Therefore, if you are scrambling for glory and recognition for yourself rather than giving it and serving others, you are going against the grain of the universe. The servant life of Jesus Christ is a revelation of the nature of God, the very heart of things. You are also on a collision course with God’s future, because the Bible says that, eventually, God is going to lift up the humble and put down the proud. If God wants us to identify with the oppressed by being lowly in spirit, why should we hate it so much when we don’t get recognized and treated as we feel we deserve?

  Do you take it hard when you are snubbed or ignored?

  Prayer: Lord Jesus, I still covet glory and honor, but I know I should serve without thought of getting credit. So hard! Make your selfless love for me so palpable and affecting that I don’t care what others think. Amen.

  May 17

  Wisdom’s instruction is to fear the LORD, and humility comes before honor. (15:33)

  THE PARADOX. Those with humility do not seek their own honor. Yet they are the ones who receive it. (Humility comes before—leads to—honor.) This paradox is at the core of the biblical message. The Old Testament shows us God bringing his salvation into the world through Sarah rather than Hagar, through Leah rather than Rachel, through Jacob rather than Esau, through David and not his older, more presentable brothers. God ordinarily works through the girl nobody wanted and the boy everybody has forgotten, in every generation.

  And when God came into the world, he came into the world as a poor man—not a general or an aristocrat. At the end he did not take power but lost it and died, yet by his sacrifice he brought salvation to the world. The dishonor of the cross led to our being given glory and honor. And now the humility of repentance and simple faith in Christ bring the unimaginable honor of being in Christ, adopted and accepted. The ultimate power in the universe showed that it was strong enough to become weak (Philippians 2:5–8). Humility is the only way out of foolishness and into honor.

  When was the last time you saw this biblical paradox played out in your life or in the life of someone you know?

  Prayer: Lord, I am swayed by people’s credentials and appearance, but you aren’t. If you judged me like that I’d be lost! Keep my vision clear so I am not dazzled by sheen and glitz. Amen.

  May 18

  Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among his great men. It is better for him to say to you, “Come up here,” than for him to humiliate you before his nobles. (25:6–7)

  MODESTY: TRUE AND FALSE. How does humility show itself in daily life and interactions? One way is through the trait of modesty, or its lack. Immodest people exalt themselves in numerable ways. They do it in conversations—interrupting routinely, always assuming their thoughts are more penetrating and important. They do it in the workplace, always taking credit for what others have done, never taking the blame. They can do it online, “playing to the crowd” by loudly promoting themselves. Self-promotion can also take more harmful forms, such as unwarranted litigation, ruthless power plays, and other ways to manipulate people and climb the ladder of success. 25:7, however, shows that there is nothing wrong with receiving honor in itself. That means there is such a thing as false modesty, which is a not-so-subtle way of promoting oneself as particularly humble.

  Jesus turns Proverbs’ advice against social climbing into an attitude toward all of life (Luke 14:7–11). True modesty is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. We should not even notice where we are in the pecking order but should simply be looking to serve those around us.

  Prayer: Lord, the whole subject of humility is difficult to even approach. Even when I pray for it, I sense a secret self-satisfaction growing over my modest demeanor. All I can say is that, Lord God, be merciful to me a sinner, and never let me forget I am only that—a loved sinner. Amen.

  May 19

  “I am weary, God, but I can prevail. Surely I am only a brute, not a man; I do not have human understanding. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I attained to the knowledge of the Holy One.” (30:1–3)

  LONGING FOR GOD. The speaker says he has no more understanding of life and God than an animal (a brute). Exaggeration? Yes, but a healthy, paradoxical one. He says he doesn’t know God, but that very statement is a mark of spiritual awakening. Those who are confident they know God well don’t. Those who cry that they don’t know him at all have begun to do so. Sometimes a keen sense of God’s absence is a sign that he is actually drawing us closer to him.

  The man who cried, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” was actually putting faith in Jesus at that moment (Mark 9:24). The first step to remedying ignorance is to know the full extent of your ignorance. “If anyone would like to acquire humility I can, I think, tell him the first step. . . . If you think you are not conceited, you are very conceited indeed.”111 The sage in 30: 1–3 took that first step by admitting the infinite gap in knowledge between God and human beings, and therefore the need for God’s revelation. The next step is to listen to the Word of God and admit we are sinners in need of grace.

  Can you honestly say you have a hunger to know God?

  Prayer: Lord, teach me the absolutely essential spiritual skill of repentant self-examination, but help me to avoid the self-absorption of morbid introspection. Amen.

  May 20

  It is to one’s honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel. . . . Pride brings a person low, but the lowly in spirit gain honor. (20:3, 29:23)

  SELF-RENUNCIATION. In 2006 a gunman killed a number of Amish schoolchildren before killing himself. Unlike in other U.S. communities, where the surviving families of shooters have received death threats and had their homes vandalized, the Amish community forgave and loved the gunman’s family. Some expressed hope that others could emulate this example.

  But forgiveness, as socially and emotionally healthy as it is, is a form of self-renunciation, and we live in a culture that counsels self-assertion. If we are not being treated with the honor we think is our due, we are trained to protest loudly, and our anger is considered a sign of self-respect. Our society, then, does not produce forgiving people, but rather those who are quick to quarrel and who assert their honor. So our culture will continue to grow in strife.112 “Most of us have been formed by a culture that nourishes revenge and mocks grace.”113 Again we see that it is the height of dignity not to always be standing on one’s dignity. Ironically, the person most quick to defend himself comes off looking weak.

  When was the last time you felt you had to defend yourself? Were you too quick?

  Prayer: Father, your Son is now my great advocate (1 John 2:1). His shed blood defends me against the penalty of the eternal moral law. In him I am pardoned and accepted. Why, then, do I feel the need to defend myself all the time? Take away my need to do so by reminding me of my wonderful high priest. Amen.

  May 21

  Whoever disregards discipline comes to poverty and shame, but whoever heeds correction is honored. (13:18)

  CORRECTION. The irony is that pride, which hates correction, inevitably leads to public failures that bring shame, a translation of a Hebrew word that means to be taken lightly. So human arrogance brings abo
ut its own greatest nightmare. What, then, can remedy pride?

  Here is one way: Deliberately submit yourself systematically to correction from others. The only path to become not a lightweight but a person of honor is the formative discipline of submitting one’s ego to another self.114 You must lose your pride to find it rightfully. This can happen inside the church, if we take vows to submit to the counsel and instruction of wise leaders. This can happen in a marriage if we make it safe for our spouse to correct us. This can happen when we give Christian friends the right to speak to us regularly about our flaws and sins (Hebrews 3:13). It can happen, but only if you choose for correction to be a part of your life.

  Do you live in a Christian community with genuinely close, accountable relationships so this can happen? Have you experienced correction recently?

  Prayer: Lord, I don’t have enough people in my life I trust to correct me. I will need the patience and commitment to cultivate them and then the courage to open up to them. Give me both! Amen.

  May 22