Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Proverbs

[Smiling Joe]

How can a person be expected to not lean on their own understanding, if any and all information must must be filtered through our own frame of reference? If attempting to follow the Bible, you are following your own interpretation of that text. If you pray and ask God for guidance, you will act based on your interpretation of the message received. People misinterpret things every day that are written or spoken in plain English, how much more reliable can we be with divine messages or hundreds of years old dialects?

[jimwalton]

It's a proverb, like "He who hesitates is lost." That doesn't mean we should always make quick decisions, because we also have a proverb that says "Fools rush in." It's a general truth, not an absolute one. In the book of Proverbs there are plenty of places where we are encouraged to use our own understanding (just a little later in this same chapter, for instance, in 3.13).

What the proverb means is that our default is to live by our intuitions, our habits, our preferences, or anything "us"—what is natural for us or what we think is best. Instead it calls for a total reorientation of ourselves, to trust in God. Now, we all know how hard this is, because God doesn't "talk" to us the way we want, and what we think he is saying based on what thoughts come to our head are notoriously unreliable. So instead we have to trust God more than our own resources. When we trust God, we are acknowledging before Him that we don't know what the next minute will bring. Our ways, our thoughts, our intuitions, and preferences, have to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12.2). We have enough knowledge about His character and His ways that we can trust in him rather than ourselves. We know who we are in Him and where we stand. And we know that He always treats his children with love.

It doesn't mean we don't filter things through our own understanding, but that we try to learn to think as God thinks, and to live by his values and priorities as more reliable than our own. The author says virtually the same thing in v. 7: Don't be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. The wrong path, perspective, and spiritual blindness become so engrained they become convinced it’s true. This is both natural and understandable. People don’t hold to what they know to be false. They think they’re right. But not everyone is right. We have to approach knowledge as a journey, and with humility. When pride enters the picture, so does danger. We can actually become quite wise, and even know some of the mysteries of the ages (Lk. 8.16-18; 1 Cor. 13.2), but I still shouldn't think of myself more highly than I ought (Rom. 12.3). We must be on guard that God is always our reference point.