“But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:” (Pr 1:25 AV)
This is wisdom speaking. Wisdom is personified in the book of Proverbs and given a voice in which to address mankind. In chapter one, the foundation is laid for the whole book. Wisdom is necessary for mankind to enjoy the existence God always intended. There are consequences for poor wisdom and blessings for applying wisdom. In the first chapter, there is a rebuke from wisdom to mankind. She correctly states the nature of man in relation to wisdom. Man does not want her. The reason is stated above. Man, in his pride, does not want wisdom because wisdom necessarily requires correction. Error must be exposed so that wisdom becomes obvious. This means for man to accept wisdom, he must allow wisdom to examine him and the choices before him, showing the foolishness of the choice he really wants to make as opposed to the one that he should make. Reproof is not rebuke. Reproof is merely exposing error without judgment of character or intent. Reproof simply says, “that is wrong and this is right.” No judgment here. Yet, man cannot take criticism no matter how graciously it is delivered. So, we go on in our foolishness and suffer the consequences. To grow in wisdom takes humility and honesty. Both enable reproof.
My career in High School sports was
very short-lived. I tried out for the freshman
basketball squad and made the cut. We met
after school every day. One of the exercises
we did was shin-splints. Others call
these exercises suicide drills. There are
different names for it. Basically, we
ran to the quarter court line and back to the backline. Then turned and ran to the half-court line
and back. Then to the three-quarter line
and back. Finally, the to opposite line
and back. All that was good and fine,
but the coach gave us a pre-determined amount of time to complete this drill. We ran it as a team. If any team member did not complete the drill
in the set amount of time, the entire team did the drill over again. Needless to say, the entire team never did make
it back in the allotted time. So we ran
and ran and ran. Each time, there was
always someone lagging behind. It only
stopped when the coach could tell we were getting fatigued. I finally quit the team because of something
that happened which I could not help. We
had the ‘smoker’ on our team. That was
the cool kid (or at least he was in his own eyes) who smoked, grew his hair
really long, and was academically lazy.
He was also the class tough guy. The
coach would not allow us to laugh about anything. Not a thing.
If we bumped our knee and we were laughing out of pain, up and to the
suicide line we went. Anyway, this ‘cool’
dude was ahead of me on the lay-up drill and he was trotting to the basket, he
tripped over his own size fourteen shoe just as he was launching the shot. This caused to ball to sail onto the stage
that was about fifty feet behind the basket.
Seeing how cool he wanted to be and the wipe-out he just had, I
chuckled. That was the end of my
basketball career. I digress. Back to the suicides. I never understood why the coach would wear
us down like that until just recently, I was watching a program and a former
basketball player was advising a young man as he shot baskets. He explained that if he did suicides before
he shot, it would simulate a real game.
It would train this player to play fatigued. Well, that’s all the coach needed to do was
explain to us the insanity of suicides.
I didn’t like the reproof so I left.
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