Better #3 - Public Good
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks to find principles, particulars, and precautions from throughout the book of Proverbs to help do good for the public over our own selves.
Message Transcript
Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for just each person who's gathered this weekend, and we ask that you would speak to us. Lord, I pray that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. When I was in third grade, we moved to a new town. When we got to the new town, we moved into this duplex and this little kind of neighborhood. I don't remember exactly why, but my dad and my mom seemed to be gone a fair amount, especially that first summer that we lived there. It was me and my older sister who were home alone a lot during the day. There was a little convenience store that was across a busy road, but to get to it, you had to go through these woods. These woods were not huge woods, but when you're in third grade, they seemed big enough.
Inside the woods, there were often these kids who would be hanging out who were older than me. If I wanted to go to the store, which you would do because the only entertainment in those days was to go get baseball cards or football cards or something like that and bring them home, you had to go past these kids. These kids would threaten to take your money or whatever else you had. They would stand there, and they would smoke cigarettes, and it was like this big intimidating thing that you had to go past if you wanted to get to the store. Then, you had to pass them again on your way home. I remember that for some reason they didn't really hassle me a whole lot. I came to find out later that my older sister had threatened them, that if they ever hassled me, she would take them out, but at the time I didn't totally understand that.
I would just go back and forth, but I was always scared when the moment would come. There was one day that I was going up there to this store, and they had caught another kid who was probably about my age, and they were hassling this kid to give his money. He didn't want to give his money. I remember still walking up to this scene and thinking, "Do I stop and say something or do I keep my little relationship that's very comfortable where I just go past and they don't hassle me?" I wish I could say that I had the courage to stand up for the other little boy, but I didn't. What I did is I went by on the side, went and got my baseball cards, came back, and went right past it because I chose in that moment to say I would rather keep what I have for me than risk it for somebody else.
Peter Singer, who is a professor, he's been at Princeton, New York University, some other places, one of the more well-known modern moral ethicists, philosophers. He postulated this at one point. He said, "If you had just bought a brand new dress or a brand new suit, and it cost you $300, and you were walking home with your new item of clothing on and you saw somebody drowning, a kid, drowning in a pond, would you risk your new suit to go into the pond to save the child?" He says almost everybody would say, "Yes, of course I would. I wouldn't just walk by." Once you say that, he gets you because his follow up is, "Well, there are people dying all over the world, and $300 could save them," and yet we choose not to take our $300 and use it to help people experience something that would potentially change their lives, saved their lives.
Well, today we're going to look at a theme that's in Proverbs that you might not expect, but it is full, the Proverbs is full of this theme. It runs throughout. This is the theme that it's better to live for the public good than to choose self-preservation. Here's where we see this. One verse you already heard read, Proverbs chapter 11 verses 10 and 11. Just listen to these words again, "When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices. When the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy. Through the blessings of the upright, a city is exalted, but by the malice of the wicked, it will be destroyed." Then Proverbs 29 verse seven says this, "The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern."
Today we're going to consider this idea that it's better to live for the public good than it is to choose self-preservation. We're going to do it by talking about the principle that we see in Proverbs, in those verses and in other verses. We're going to talk about the particulars, and then we're going to talk about some precautions around this. Here's the principle really, and that is that it is better, as I said, to live for the public good than to live for self-preservation, but a good way to think about this is by the definition of the word righteous. You heard that word righteous, and I don't know what picture that conjures up for you. Most of the time in our modern world when we hear that word, we think about self-righteous and it doesn't leave us with a good feeling because we hear that word and we think somebody who's righteous thinks too highly of themselves. They're not compassionate to all people, but in the Bible, the word righteous is used in at least two different ways.
One way is to speak of personal morality, and then a second way is used of somebody who lives for the public good. Now, there's another category, which is probably the most important category. This is in the New Testament where we get the idea of imputed righteousness, which means righteousness that we get not because of what we do, but because of what Christ has done. In the Old Testament, often the idea of righteousness is tied to this idea of somebody who lives a personally moral life or somebody who lives for the public good. Bruce Waltke, who is a renowned Old Testament scholar, wrote a great commentary on Proverbs, has several volumes on just the meaning of Hebrew words. He defines righteousness in the book of Proverbs this way and in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, meaning Psalms, Proverbs, and some of the books that are right around that.
He says this, "That somebody who's righteous in the book of Proverbs is willing to disadvantage themselves for the good of the community, but somebody who's wicked in Proverbs," he says, "is somebody who's willing to disadvantage the community for the good of themselves." That's a pretty striking definition. Let me read again Proverbs 11:10 and 11, "When the righteous prosper..." Now, let me just put his definition in there. When somebody who's willing to disadvantage themselves for the good of the community prospers, the city rejoices. To rejoice here means to have a triumphant shout when the battle is won. When the people who disadvantage themselves for the good of the community, everybody shouts for joy, but when the wicked perish or when the people who disadvantage the community, excuse me, for the good of themselves perish, there are shouts of joy. That's a pretty strong statement.
Here's what Jonathan Edwards, who is one of the early American Christian theologians, writers that we have said this, "Christian love disposes a person to be public-spirited. A man of right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views, but is greatly concerned for the good of the community of which he lives and especially the city in which he resides." What does this mean or how does this really impact us? Here's how another author put it. Speaking of Proverbs 10 and 11, he said, "This verse means that if a group of people in a city are truly living righteously as Proverbs defines it, they will be such a benefit to the public good of the whole city that the entire populace will exalt, feeling that their prosperity is a victory for everyone." That leads to the question, "How can a group of people live like this?"
This author continues, "We can infer how they would be doing this from the rest of Proverbs. Their relationships would be marked by justice and fair dealing. In business, they would be known to be smart but not ruthless, to be people of high integrity. In civic life, they would be the most generous and philanthropic with their assets, the most concern for the poor and the immigrants to be lifted out of poverty. The neighborhoods in which they live would thrive, be great places to live, not only for those who have the same faith. In politics, they would never be vicious. If their community were attacked, they would never retaliate but would respond with forgiveness. They would also be known as peacemakers, doing everything they could to broker relationships and maintain peace among various communities and groups within the city. Finally, the strength of their families would be evident to all."
Now, I don't know if I can read that and say, oh, that is all that it means to be righteous, but it's a good starting point. The principle here is really very simple, and that is what Proverbs teaches over and over again is that somebody who is righteous, not only is somebody who's concerned about their own private morality, but that there are people who say, "I will live for the public good even if it costs me. I'll disadvantage myself for the good of the community in which I live." That's part of what it means to be righteous. Now let's look at the particulars, and there are a lot of verses. Again, as I've said, I think each week you could probably pick 20, 30 different verses easily that address this theme. Let me just choose a few that are typical.
First, Proverbs chapter six verse 16 and 17 says this, "There are six things that the Lord hates. Seven are detestable to him. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood," that's the one we'll focus on, "a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community." What does it mean to shed innocent blood? Well, it means to disregard basic human rights and needs, basically. Certainly, it means literally to shed blood, but when we're talking about the things that the Lord hates, when it appears in this list, what it's referring to is somebody who's willing to say, "I can either personally take advantage of somebody's disadvantage so that I gain, and I can in the process disregard human rights and needs."
That is part of a way in which we can choose to be somebody who's either righteous or is concerned most about our own personal well-being. I love how The Book of Common Prayer's confession uses this, that this idea. It says, "Lord, we confess the things we have done in the things we have left undone." You see, sometimes it isn't the things that we actively do, but it's the things that we ignore or the things that we say, "I can live with this." One of the questions that a righteous person will ask is not just, "Is this the cheapest possible product that I can get?" but, "Was this this product secured in a way that cared for the basic human needs and rights of the people who helped to produce it?" Now, certainly in economic theory, and it's true, that people take jobs that make sense to them. Sweatshop in some other part of the world may be somebody's best economic opportunity, but it doesn't mean that just because it's their best economic opportunity that you supporting that or me supporting that is all good.
Sometimes we may say we want to support people by buying that product, but still be concerned about the conditions in which that product was produced and the way in which that company treats people. Here's the second thing that we see. This is in Proverbs 10:10. Here's what it says. I'll read 10 and 11. It says, "Whoever winks maliciously causes grief, and a chattering fool comes to ruin. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence." Now, again, take Bruce Waltke's definition here. In verse 11, if you said the mouth of the righteous, the mouth of the person who disadvantages themselves for the good of the community, is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence or the mouth of the person who disadvantages the community for the good of themselves conceals violence.
This idea of winking in verse 10 is really the idea of approval or a privacy or aid or help. The New Living Translation translates verse 10 this way, and it's based on the Septuagint, but it says this, "People who wink at wrong cause trouble." What I believe that this is referring to is not just avoiding the shedding of innocent blood or the participation in something that ignores the basic human rights and needs of others, but this is also talking about the opportunity to speak up and stand for the oppressed. There are a myriad of situations that we come across. It could be me as my third grade self riding past the group of people who are tormenting another little boy, but there are times where to wink may not be a physical wink, but what it may be is it may be a time where you say, "You know what? I'm just going to let this go," when you may be the only person in the place to say, "Not today, not while I'm sitting here, not while I'm watching this."
Part of being righteous as Proverbs defines it as being willing to say, "Even in a place where it costs me something, I'm willing to stand up for people who don't have a voice. I'm not going to simply turn a blind eye. I'm not going to wink at it, but I am going to be a person who's willing to say something." Here's another passage. Proverbs chapter 24 verses 23 and 24 and 25 says this, "To show partiality and judging is not good. Whoever says to the guilty, 'You are innocent,' will be cursed by people and denounced by nations, but it will go well with those who convict the guilty, and rich blessing will come on them." Again, this is talking really about being people who are not just willing to say something in individual acts of injustice, but willing to say, "I'm going to work for the justice and the good of people all around me."
A little earlier in this passage, it says this, this Proverbs 24 verses 10 and following. It says, "If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength? Rescue those who are being led to death. Hold back those staggering towards slaughter." Then it says this, verse 12 , "But if you say, 'But we knew nothing about this,' does not he who weighs the hearts perceive it?" What Proverbs says is that you and I can't simply say we're ignorant about the issues of injustice that go on around us. You know, I'm just old enough that Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is coming, was debated when I was young. By that, what I mean is it wasn't seen as as it should be a national holiday. I don't remember exactly when it came to be a national holiday, but here's what I remember. I remember some of the adults in my life, teachers and maybe some extended family and people like that, talking about why this shouldn't be a national holiday because he was a communist sympathizer.
Now, my point isn't to to dig up whether or not you think Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist sympathizer, but my point is this. As a nation, we've set aside this day to recognize somebody who said there is a systemic problem with the way that one race treats another race in this country, and we want to do something about it. We don't want to just sit back. Maybe tomorrow if your kids are off school or you have a day off because of this day, rather than just saying, "Cool, I have a day off. It's a time to look at rainy, cruddy weather for a day," you can say, "That's a life that according to Proverbs, at least in this instance, was righteous." Now again, people will say, "Well, he was a womanizer. He was this."
The point of Proverbs is what did he do? He disadvantaged himself for the good of the community in which he lived because he said, "I'm not going to just let this go by, unchecked, unspoken about." Here's one more just as we're talking about these particulars, Proverbs chapter 14 verse 31. There are many verses that address this topic. It says this, "Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." Another Proverb says that, "He who gives to the poor lends to God." The idea here is resourcing the under-resourced, taking what you have, if you have an abundance, and saying, "I can use it for people who don't have enough." In Matthew 25, Jesus gives a story about this very idea, and he's talking about how at the end people will be divided into the sheeps and the goats, and the sheep being the illusion here or the metaphor for the people who will be in his fold and the goats, those who will be outside.
He says that the people who have done to the least of these, who've given a cup of water, who visited the prisoners, who basically said, "I'm taking something that I have and giving it to other people," he says, "These will be my people." It's Jesus' way of saying in essence what Proverbs says because he says, "As much as you've done it unto the least of these, you've done it unto me," is what Jesus says there. What that means is that the Bible takes the dignity of human beings so seriously, that to do an act of goodness, kindness, generosity to somebody is the same as doing it to God. That's what Jesus is saying. What's really striking about that, that passage, to me, Matthew 25, is that what it says is not you have to figure out how to solve the world's problems before you do anything. It says if somebody was hungry, you gave them something to drink. If they're hungry, you gave him something to eat. If they're thirsty, you gave him something to drink.
It wasn't you figured out how to irrigate crops and solve everything. It's just saying you did something that was simple and tangible and immediate that allowed people to be in a place where they had. Now, certainly we could talk about the significance of trying to address systemic issues and not simply doing alms giving, and actually I'm going to talk about that in just a moment, but what Jesus says, what Proverbs says, is that part of being righteous is saying, "If I have more than I need, that I don't simply keep it for myself. I'm willing to disadvantage myself for the good of others." Here's one more verse, and this isn't really about the ways that we live out this principle, but it's about what happens if we do. Proverbs 11 verses 24 and 25, "One person gives freely yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will himself or herself be refreshed."
What that's saying is this, and that is that if you become a person who says, "I am going to at times use my influence to help other people who are oppressed. I'm going to work against systemic issues of injustice. I'm going to take some of my resources and use them for people who are under-resourced," if if that's true for you, what this says is that you will receive even more and that you yourself will be refreshed. That's what that says. In other words, the promise of God is not just to say you do this and you will be depleted, but he's saying the more that you can be public-spirited, live for the public good, actually the more you'll find yourself having what you need. The more you preserve yourself, the less you in many ways will have. Let me move from the principle.
We just talked about some of the particulars, and now let's just talk about a few precautions because it would be easy at this point to simply say, "Okay, so what I need to do is make sure that if I ride past a group of kids that are picking on another kid that I stop. Right?" or, "If I find a kid in a pond and I have a new suit on, jump in," or, "I just need to give a little more money away." Here's what 2 Thessalonians three verse 10 says. It says, "For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule. The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat." Now, we're not in Proverbs here. We're in the New Testament, but there's a precaution when it comes to the way in which we participate in saying, "I want to help people." That is if somebody's unwilling to do for themselves what they're capable of doing, the Bible says very clearly that we need to be careful in that instance because we're not actually doing good if we help that person.
I had a friend give me a book, a couple of friends give me a book earlier, or I guess it was last year. It was called The Shrewd Samaritan. The book is a book that takes the story of the good Samaritan in Luke 10 and the story of the shrewd steward in Luke 16 and says that the ideal is to be shrewd in our being a good Samaritan. In other words, to say, "How do I use the resources I have and not produce more harm?" At one point of the book, this author comes to a point where he gives a chart, and I have the chart here. I'm going to leave this up for a moment because you may like it. You may not. I found this helpful. Here's what this chart really does, and that is it asks a couple key questions. Tight at the top, it starts with, "Does my gift meet real needs?" On the left side, you go out, and it says yes. The right side, it goes out and says no.
In other words, sometimes what we can do is we can give something to somebody that doesn't meet a real need. If you go off to the right in the no, it says, "Does this undermine the market or make people basically dependent on us?" If we say yes to that, then it says that that's destructive giving. If we say no to the second question, then it's ineffective giving. Certainly, if we try to give something that doesn't meet a real need, it's ineffective and can even become destructive if it creates dependence. Here's where this really gets significant because most people would say, "I don't want to give to something that's not a real need." If you say, "Yes. Does my gift meet a real need?" then what you ask is, "Does this increase somebody's motivation? Yes or no?" If you answer the question yes all the way on the left, then it says, "Does it equip them with skills and tools basically to continue to meet their own needs?"
Then, if you answered the question yes, that's the most effective giving, but if you answer that no, then it's an ineffective giving. Then, if you go back just to the question, "Does this increase their motivation?" you answer it no, then, "Does it decrease motivation?" then no leads to alms giving, and yes leads to destructive giving. Now I realize that's a lot of content. That's why we left it up there for a few moments. If you want to draw that, you can, but here's what he's driving at, and that is that sometimes in the effort to say, "I want to be the kind of person who disadvantages myself for the good of the community," you can do something that doesn't actually help other people. You can actually do the very opposite of what you think you're doing because what you can do is you can create dependence. You can create a situation where people are living saying, "I need something from you."
Another newer friend of mine gave me a book recently called Toxic Charity. This author argues basically in this book for the idea of saying that it's possible that our giving is sometimes more about us than it is about the people that we're giving to. In other words, we give because we want to feel good and feel like we're a righteous person rather than to actually help that person along the way. When that is true for us, then what we're doing is we are in essence choosing to say, "I'm acting in a way that isn't really about other people. It's about me." This author says in this book that if we give once, we elicit appreciation, speaking especially of people who are in poverty or third world countries. If we give twice, we create anticipation. We give three times, we create expectation. Four times, it becomes entitlement. Five times, we establish dependency.
Now certainly, there can be repeat giving that isn't about dependency, but the point of this and the point of 2 Thessalonians 3:10 is to say it's important to think not just about saying, "Well since there's a principle and there's some practices, I just do it," but to think about how what we do in the world actually brings about advantage. I saw another thing that somebody wrote talking about the difference between being a coach and being somebody who is really just an agent of empowering people, not necessarily for their good, but saying, "I will create a dependency." In other words, "Can I coach somebody, help them, or do I simply take them on a journey?" Now, you may say, "Okay, so now I'm confused. Do I give or don't I give?" At least that would be a little bit of where maybe I would come to. The answer is ultimately it isn't as simple as just saying, "I give, and therefore I'm righteous," because this isn't just about giving.
This is about a mindset that says, "Am I willing to be somebody who will disadvantage myself for the good of other people or am I somebody who will disadvantage other people for my good?" That's what this is about. Tim Keller said this in his book Every Good Endeavor. It's about work. He said this, "I want to make it clear," because the reason I quote from this book about work, this in many ways goes beyond just what we give. This goes to how we work because if your work is helping people have jobs, income, if it's helping bring services to the world, that's part of what I would call the creation mandate that God said to Adam and Eve in the garden, "I want you to go into the world and be fruitful and multiply." In other words, "I want you to make things thrive." Sometimes we think of God's work as only being things that are "spiritual," but God's work is all of the work that we do that helps human flourishing.
This is what Tim Keller says, "I want to make it clear at this point that no one can live out of entirely pure impulse to serve the interests of other people at all times. Even the most loving, morally beautiful people fall prey to motives of self-interest, fear, and glory-seeking. The DNA of self-centeredness and competitive pride are at work deep in each of us." Here's what he is saying, and that is none of us are righteous all the time by the definition of Proverbs because even when we do something good, a lot of times there's a self-centered notion in it, in that we do something and we want people to see it and think that we're one of the good people who does good things rather than saying, "I'm willing to really do something that truly disadvantages myself." You may say, "Well, okay, so then how is it that we can really live in a place where we can be righteous?"
Well, here's what I believe pushes us here. See, there's only one who is really righteous. This is why we need the imputed righteousness that I talked about earlier, and that is what we need to do if we want to be willing to disadvantage ourselves for the good of other people is not simply tell ourselves that that's what I should do because that's what a righteous person does, because what we will do then is we may do it for a while and then we'll get tired of it or we may do it out of guilt or out of fear or out of some other motivation, and it will be shallow. What we need to do instead is we need to see the one who is truly righteous and how he disadvantaged himself for us and be so enthralled, so full of worship for him that we say, "This is the way I want to live."
Here's what Philippians two says. In verse five and following, it says this, "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being the very nature God, did not consider equality with God, something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even to death on a cross." Here's what this is saying. Jesus disadvantaged himself for the of people, you and me. If we get that and if it's personal, then that becomes the strength and the source of worship to say, "I want to be the kind of person who can say it's better to live for the public good than for my self-preservation." You see, if we don't live in that reality, if we don't understand that the power of that substitution of what we would call theologically imputed righteousness, that Jesus has done for us what we can do then, then what we will do is we may do things that are for the public good.
Even that will sometimes be out of self-interest because what we'll be doing is saying, "I want to be the kind of person that's thought of as living for the public good." When we see that we are the ones who Jesus sacrificed for, meaning we recognize our sin, our need for a Savior and his work on our behalf, then we can say, "I can be public-spirited," when Jonathan Edwards said that the Christian will be a person who lives with a public spirit, because we know that then our righteousness is coming from what Jesus has already done on our behalf. Today, just as we're here, you and I can take a step into this relationship with Jesus, not by saying, "I'm going to try harder," but by recognizing that in many ways we will choose self-interest over the public good and recognizing that that's exactly why Jesus had to die.
Here's the truth. I mentioned the Peter Singer story at the beginning. That story is so convicting precisely because every time that you or I spend $300 on something that's a little bit superfluous, it means that what we're doing is we're saying, "I choose that over saving somebody else's life physically." We don't like to think about that because it feels convicting, but here's what that's pointing to, and that is our need for a Savior. No one will follow that to a T because you would end up living in a different whole sphere. That's kind of the point of what Jesus has done for us. He takes what we can't do, which is live perfectly, righteously, and he goes to the cross, and he says, "Now for those of you who haven't lived perfectly and righteously, I've disadvantaged myself for your good." Celebrate it and turn around and say, "How can I choose to live for the public good rather than just my own self interest?"
Father, we thank you for a chance to gather this weekend. Father, I ask that as we're gathered and as challenging as this topic is, that you would help each one of us to recognize ultimately our need for a Savior, a substitute, because, Lord, I know that as many times as I may choose to act in a way that's compassionate or to resource or to turn away from the things that are challenging in our world, that I still fall short and I need your Son. God, I pray even in these moments that every person who's here and in Butler, in the Strip District, the chapel would acknowledge the same thing and come to your Son for cover, for righteousness. Lord, I pray that that wouldn't be the end of our story, but instead we would live to be people who say we really do care, not just about our own ends, but about the ends of the whole that are around us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great evening.
