Proverbs 17:5 ESV
Contempt for the poor is an American past-time. It’s the basic premise of the welfare state, which relies on bribing the unfortunate; it underlies the cries of ‘democracy’ which actually mean ‘do what your betters tell you to do.’ We idolize the poor, make them incapable of sin, and thus we make them also incapable of virtue. Then we turn to the rich and dehumanize them as well because the ruling principle of modern economic analysis is the evil of having more than me, attractive because of the power it grants those who promote it. This societal mockery is bad, of course, but if we stopped here we’d miss its true evil. To have contempt for the poor, for any man made in His image, is to have contempt for Him.
Mocking God is not merely foolish but the archetypal activity of the fool. David declares in Psalms 14 and 53 that, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1, 53:1). For the crime of mocking God with their lies, Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead (Acts 5:9-10). Consider too the fruit of the mockery offered by Sennacherib and his Rabshakeh to God: “And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies” (2 Kings 19:35). In the sum of history, then, “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Gal. 6:7). Mockery against God rebounds only to the destruction of the mocker.
Having seen the gravity of this mockery, how are we to purge it from ourselves? We can set our hearts apart from the ressentiment, the economic envy-turned-hatred, of modernity, but that’s only a start. To mock the man made in His image (Gen. 1:26-28) is to communicate a contempt for Him (when we’re mocking His image- but we’ll get to that in a little bit). We can mock the poor in our hearts easily both by idolizing and by degrading him: poverty is neither a proof of holiness nor a sign of vice. Certainly poverty can be connected to either holiness or vice, but as a result, not a cause.
The path to holiness here, as with the rest of the evils of our flesh, lies entirely in Christ. We must bring ourselves to humility, recognize that every gift we have, we have because God gives it to us, that every gift we keep and use, we keep and use by His constant mercy in giving it to us to keep and use. This goes for physical health, for mental ability, for skills, for talents, for material possessions. More, this is true of every man. Therefore, a man is not made great by his possessions or his physical ability; he is not made small by his poverty or his frailness. As God does not find His delight in the strength of man (Ps. 147:10), so He does not find it in man’s weakness; nor is mockery fit toward either.
What should we mock? Observe Christ. He mocked the Pharisees, calling them ‘white-washed tombs’ (Matt. 23:27). The foundation and cause of this mockery, see, was not the poverty or the riches or the athleticism or the frailty of the Pharisees: it was their sin. That links into the second half of this verse.
See, we have an impulse in us to rejoice when people we don’t like ‘get what’s coming to them.’ The temptation is to look at these people, say ‘good riddance,’ and forget that they too were made in the image of God, that their destruction is a tragedy. That doesn’t mean that we should not be glad of the downfall of the wicked. David is glad at his enemy’s downfall, quite explicitly (Psalm 35:26). The crucial element is this: to mock the sin, but to seek the salvation of the sinner; to be glad of the failure of evil, but to mourn the destruction of a man made in His image. Seek always, while hope remain, while the evil man still has life, to pray not merely for his judgement but for his reform, that by the hand of God he may be as Paul, the greatest of sinners become the greatest of saints.
Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker; he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+17%3A5&version=ESV]
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
