Trust in the Lᴏʀᴅ. [Pr 3.5-7]

Proverbs 3.5-7 KJV

5Trust in the LORD with all thine heart;

and lean not unto thine own understanding.

6In all thy ways acknowledge him,

and he shall direct thy paths.

7Be not wise in thine own eyes:

fear the LORD, and depart from evil.

 

Too often this passage is interpreted to mean, “Turn off your brain, and just trust God.”

Which is entirely wrong. These verses are found in Proverbs, in the Old Testament’s wisdom literature, and the whole point of wisdom literature is to remind us to turn on our brains. To make wise, thoughtful, informed decisions instead of instinctive, emotion-driven, gut-level, stupid ones. Stop following your impulses and start using your head.

Part of the problem is that word “heart” in verse 5, and what people think it means, versus what it actually means. The ancients believed humans think with our hearts. Not feel; that’s a medieval idea, and the ancients believed we felt with our guts. But because people nowadays assume “What does your heart tell you?” means what do your emotions tell you, we read that idea back into the bible—where it doesn’t belong!—and think “trusting in the LORD with all my heart” means all our feelings. Not our minds. Not our intellect. Just the feels.

And yep, this is how we fall right back into instinctive, emotion-driven, gut-level, stupid decisions. We go right back to not being wise. But God wants us to be wise. He didn’t make your brain solely so you could memorize pop lyrics, remember who was angry at whom in what reality show, and the multiplication tables you never use anymore because now you can ask Siri what 20 percent off $19.95 is. Use your head to follow him better.

Don’t depend only on your own brain.

The reason for Proverbs to offer us this advice? Because humans are creatures of extremes. Wise people will start to get the foolish idea that we’re meant to figure out all our problems on our own, without any advice, aid, or input from God. And that’d be monumentally dumb. Why not turn for help to the wisest being in the universe?

For that matter, the mightiest being in the universe. If you want the impossible done, God does the impossible for fun. I’ve known scientists who struggle with the idea God performs miracles, because they define “miracle” as something which breaks the laws of nature—and most miracles actually don’t break natural laws; they’re more about God’s impeccable timing. In the case of wise scientists, they’ve been trained to revere natural laws so much, sometimes it’s hard to imagine God violating them. But we’d violate them if we could; it’s that very old wish to violate the laws of gravity which got us to build flying machines. And if God wants to make axeheads float, or walk on water himself, of course he can if he so chooses. We’ll find it impossible to explain how he did that, but we gotta trust God’s clever and mighty enough to pull it off.

And sometimes he’s gonna tell us to do such things. Like Jesus telling Simon Peter to step out of the boat. Or the LORD telling Gideon ben Joash to attack an army of thousands with only 300 men. Or tell the 99-year-old Abraham ben Terah that his 89-year-old bride would give birth. Or tell 12 students to start passing out five loaves and two fish; it oughta be plenty of food for a crowd of 5,000.

Or that we might die, but he’ll raise us and we’ll live forever in a kingdom with him.

Sometimes God tells us things way beyond what we’ve experienced. Way beyond what we can imagine. Way beyond what makes any sense to us. He wants us to use our heads, of course. But whenever there appears to be a conflict between his word and our heads, he expects us to trust him. Not turn our brains off; not despair at the idea of ever understanding what he’s up to; often he’s happy to show us. But he wants us to trust him. That’s the important thing.

Wisdom and knowledge are great and useful things. Never get the idea they’re not. Some Christians treat them as irrelevant; usually because these particular Christians lack both wisdom and knowledge, and feel it’s easier to make fun of it than strive for it. But wisdom and knowledge, despite their usefulness, have to be submitted to God. Strive for them. But when God tells us to do, or believe, the impossible—well, what do we trust more? Our intellect, or our Lord?

That’s what’s so useful about this memory verse. Stick it in your brain. When God nudges you—or shoves you—towards the impossible, keep it in mind: Sometimes God’s thinking is beyond our ability to keep up. Still, we must trust him with all our hearts—and when he tells us to step out of the boat, we do it.