To Fear or To Desire...That is the Question- Proverbs 10:24

Why do people choose wickedness over righteousness? When I say "people" I hope you understand that I am including myself in that category. Why do we do it? The people of the Old Testament were warned continually that if they continued to choose wickedness God would destroy them as a people. The New Testament goes so far as to say that if the people of old were not spared, then "how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3) They had the Law and the Prophets; we have the One the Law and the Prophets pointed to...Jesus the Christ! Therefore, God's revelation to us has been even greater than it was to them! Why do we continue to choose wickedness!? If we believe this stuff is real, then it makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever for us to ever choose sin over righteousness again for the rest of lives!

And yet we do.

Add to those warnings the warning that even our secular scientists and clinicians offer about substance abuse, divorce, lying, and any number of "moral" issues and the question becomes painfully louder even for those who do not believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.

I would sound utterly prideful to say that I've figured it out. So I won't say that. But I will say that I believe God has spoken that answer through the writer of the book of Hebrews. And while I am all too often still choosing wrong over right in spite of the overwhelming reasons for choosing righteousness, I think I am on a path toward letting God slowly root out that slavery that holds me captive to choosing wrong.

"Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives."

- Hebrews 2:14-15

Our proverb for today says that the wicked will be overtaken by the very thing that they dread. I am sure that this can apply in more specific ways than I am applying it today, but what does anyone fear more than death!? Yes I know someone might say that people fear losing relationships more than death. They might fear losing honor more than death. They might fear plenty of things more than death...directly. But that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fact that if the time that we have here on this earth is all that we have and when we die, that's it!, then every one of us has to hold on for dear life to anything that brings us pleasure! Every one of us needs to actively pursue as much pleasure as physically possible before we die because we only get one shot to squeeze every ounce out of life before death finally steals all sources of joy from us! Who cares who gets in my way or what I have to do to achieve what I want to achieve. You take care of yourself, and I'll take care of myself. With that mentality,

I am a slave to my selfish passions---i.e. a slave to sin.

But the Hebrews writer joyfully tells us that Jesus lived a life like ours that was bound by the time limits of flesh and blood...AND HE BEAT DEATH! When he rose from the dead, Satan lost all power to keep people enslaved to selfishness because no longer can he keep people under the impression that this life is all there is.

Why do we we choose wickedness? Because we are ultimately afraid of death. And the catch 22 is that no matter how much we try to really "live" and avoid death, "what we dread will overtake us."

But aren't you glad that proverbs tend to have a second contrasting line in them.

"What the righteous desire will be granted."



Do you know what the righteous desire more than anything else? It's not righteousness in and of itself. It's not reward. It's not a good name. It's not even the mansion over the hilltop that we sing about with such gusto.  The righteous simply desire God. In fact scripture teaches us in many places that the righteous are actually made righteous by  God through faith. In other words, their faith in the fact that they will one day see God is what God uses to clean them from the inside out. Go through a checklist of heroes of faith from the Bible and from your life that you know are not simply outwardly righteous and have a wrotten attitude, but who are truly righteous. Ask them what they desire more than anything else. Whatever the words, I feel safe in guaranteeing that the underlying meaning will be similar to Paul's statement, "I want to know Christ."

The choice is simple. We can go through life fearing a loss of reputation to the point that we guard it pridefully and lose it anyway. We can fear losing the love of a spouse or child and work tirelessly to manipulate and control them into loving us back and push them away because of those efforts. We can fear losing friends to the point that we are willing to sacrifice morals and principles in order to maintain those friendships and by that very act lose all relationships that really matter to us. We can fear death and therefore be subjected to slavery...and die anyway.

Or we can desire to know Christ and let life be given to us freely.

To fear or to desire...that is the question.