Valuable Child, Worthless King

“Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.” (Ec 4:13 AV)

 

This is an astounding verse.  A child is better than a king.  Let us remember a king has a world of experience and wisdom which the poor child does not.  Or, at the least, he has a whole different set of influences from which he drew knowledge and wisdom.  A king would, by necessity, have far more intelligence than a poor child.  But here is the kicker.  The foolish king is worse because he stopped learning.  He would no longer be admonished.  The king stopped being teachable.  Another consideration is the age comparison.  That is what really struck me.  The king, who is obviously much older than the child, is not worth as much as a child who will be corrected.  A wealthy king who has obviously had success, or he wouldn’t be a king, is not worth as much as a poor child.  One would be taught.  The other, not.

I find as people get older, they become harder to influence.  Preach to a youth rally and the altar is full.  Not so much to the seasoned saints.  There comes a time when change becomes more difficult.  We have learned that we know quite a bit compared to our younger generations.  This gives us a false sense that there is not much left to learn.  The more senior adult can also get to the point we adjust to the falsehoods we want to believe.  We have gotten comfortable with our maturity level and have learned to live with it.  Pride is another problem.  When we were younger, we were learning from others who were older and wiser.  Now, the king must take admonition from those who are of less status than he, and sometimes, from those younger and less experienced.  This requires humility, of which the king has lost all.  He will not listen to anyone. Those older and more experienced tend to lose their ability to be self-critical.  We understand our limitations and we are ok with them.  When someone tries to correct our errors, we tend to take them more personally.  We view it as a statement of worth.  Those correcting seem to be seeing us with less value than we see ourselves.  The poor child, on the other hand, has nothing to lose.  He listens and follows wise advice because he only has one direction to go.  There is also a relationship between being poor and being wise here.  Those of means tend to pass over criticism because they have been successful.  Those who are struggling tend to listen a bit better.

The application is obvious.  The saint can never get to the point that he does not learn.  He or she must never think there comes a time when there is little to be learned.  In fact, the older I get the more I realize how much I do not know.  I thought I knew a lot.  But what I don’t know far exceeds what I do know.  That is not the problem, though.  It is an admonition.  Our problem is being told that we are wrong and we need to adjust what we thought was right.  That is a hard pill to swallow.  But a pill that needs to be swallowed nonetheless.  If we are worth anything to God, teachability and humility are high on the list of must-haves.  It reminds me of a line from The Christmas Carol as the ghost of Christmas present and Scrooge are watching the Cratchetts enjoy their holiday meal.  Scrooge pities Tiny Tim and makes an off-hand remark regarding him.  The Ghost says, “In the sight of heaven, it could be you and your millions are worth less than this poor beggar’s child.”  How true that is if we do not walk in humility and teachability before the God of heaven.