I NEED LOVERS

I NEED LOVERS

I need lovers. There's nothing quite as exciting as a lover and when a lover comes into your life, man, oh man, they're the spice of life. The fine arts, literature, music, TV and movies demonstrate the power of the lover in our lives. Lovers change us, impact us, and nothing is ever the same once a lover enters your life.

The lover I need isn't the one the novelist writes about, not the one the movies and TV glamorize. I'm not talking about the Romeos, the Lotharios, and the Delilahs. I'm talking about the philosophers.

Say what? Philosophers? Yes, the lovers I need are philosophers. In the etymological sense of the word, "phil" is a Greek root meaning "love," and the rest of the word means "wisdom," so a philosopher is "a lover of wisdom." 

I crave friends and relatives who are out and out, certified, card-carrying passionate lovers of wisdom. I want to be with philosophers every chance I get, and when I'm not, I feel as if I'm on Mars, in another world.

This brings us to the next step: what is wisdom? There's a book that answers that question: Proverbs, a book which mentions "wisdom" almost 50 times, a book which tells me that the starting point for a philosopher (a lover of wisdom) is "the fear of the Lord" (Prov. 1:7; 9:10). 

To have a fear of the Lord is to have the proper perspective of Him. I require that the starting point for my lovers be that they have a proper perspective of God, a perspective which can only be gained from the Bible. My lovers must be philosophers who place their love of God's wisdom over money and pleasure (Prov. 16:16).

My lovers can't armchair philosophers--I want to see their passion for wisdom in action (James 1:13; 3:17-18). And when I do, I'll see gentle people, not judgmental, argumentative folks, nor pugilists spoiling for a fight. These philosophers show me "righteousness and peace," not drama.

I don't want those who've read Proverbs and said, "Thanks, but no thanks." They're one soap opera after another. Isaiah wrote about them, saying, ["they] are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, And its waters toss up refuse and mud" (Isaiah 57:20).

What have you noticed some things about Christian youth who refuse to become the philosophers I'm talking about? Look at their lives 40 years later. Look at their arms and see the needle tracks. Look at the broken lives and ruined relationships they've left in their wake; look at the people they've needlessly gashed by word and deed.

Look into their eyes and see the hollow men, men for whom life is now flat, a dull brown; the technicolor is gone. For them, zest is a bar of soap. Their eyes don't have the light of life.

Look at their resume and read of jail sentences here and there. Look at their inflated car insurance premiums or note their use of public transportation because the authorities suspended their driver's licenses. Read the police reports of injuries they caused to themselves and others because they started the ignition non compos mentis.

Look at their bodies, old before their time. Why? After thirty years of rejecting the promise of Proverbs to be "health to their bones," their bones have grown old, and are now eighty year-old bones locked in a forty-year old body. 

Look at their mental landscape--they're not as sharp as they should and used to be. They're like a fighter who's taken too many blows to body and brain, they're the punch drunk pugilist has-been who never was all he could have been who shuffles down the street, the object of pity by all who see him. 

All so avoidable. Such things didn't have to be.

I knew such a believer; he and I, the same age, went to the same school. We both were exposed to the Bible, to Proverbs. He went one way; I went the other. He was smart as a whip, an IQ way up there. 

He began to argue with the Book and with everyone who loved it, developed that angry spirit the Bible warns us against, and put a lot of things into his body he shouldn't. 

Proverbs wasn't for him. Thanks, but no thanks. He was the demographic at whom ad agencies aim their commercials during football games, trumpeting beer, women, cars, and, as always, fun. His response was an ad agency's dream come true.

I'd see him rarely, only periodically, and when I did, I noticed that, as the years went by, he began to look like the picture of Dorian Grey. The years were piling up, years he couldn't get back, even if, he, like Esau of old, "repented with tears." 

He'd made his choices, choices made in spite of the grace of God calling him back to Proverbs, back to the Bible. He had openly scorned the old Book, argued with it and others about it, closed his ears to  Wisdom's calling in the streets to come feast at her banquet (Prov. 9). He preferred to sit at the world's table.

There came a time when, after the countless calls of Wisdom, "that was all she wrote." Proverbs says that Wisdom will call only for so long a time. As the repeated refusals pile up over the years, the "dread comes like a storm, the calamity like a whirlwind, distress and anguish come . . ." Choices become irrevocable (Prov. 1:24-27).

At the end, he'd become a poster boy for the old adage: "He broke all the rules until the rules broke him."

No, thanks. I want philosophers in my life. They bless me, guide me, inspire me, and  encourage me. 

They leave grace in their wake.

I need those lovers. I suspect you need them too. 
____________________________________________________________________

Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak. A copy of his book, "Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church," is also available on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org