Proverbs 17:8 ESV
A bribe is like a magic stone in the eyes of the one who gives it; wherever he turns he prospers.
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Proverbs is a book about wisdom, and sometimes that means recognizing the facts of life. Bribery may not be pretty, but it is a part of the world around us, a manifestation of sinful human psychology. People do things for reasons, and those reason don’t really need to be moral, righteous, or even pleasant. The “judge who neither feared God nor respected man” did right by the widow, in Luke 18:1-8, but he did so because the widow was a bother, not out of principle. Bribery, then, is a natural resort for man to use in this sinful world, a natural way to shift incentives.
Iincentives rule the world. No matter how highfalutin the ideals espoused by an institution, if it is set up with bad incentives in its structure, to reward ill action and discourage beneficence, then it will go bad in time. Enough self-interested people will act according to the incentive to drag the whole affair down.
At its base, the power of an incentive really isn’t founded in sin; it’s a fact of finite personhood. How so? Well, as people we want things. This is well and good; this God commands of us, in fact. Else the psalmist would not plead to God, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Ps. 73:25). Unlike God, too, we are drawn towards things by our desire without complete knowledge of them, without having set the parameters of the encounter in the first place- thus others can entice us, whereas God decrees everything He interacts with (1 Cor. 2:7). The issue in all this comes from the Fall of Adam: because Adam sinned, our desires now turn towards sin. Thus incentives can lead us astray by temptation, our desires no longer entirely bent towards Him and the good He gives.
Bribery has an ugly history. Exodus 23:8 sums up the issue: “[A] bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.” Isaiah 5:22-23 diagnoses further the results of this, declaring, “Woe to those… who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!” Bribery, whether by power or prestige or property, is the means of the powerful to evade the justice God demands the state enact, to victimize the weak and innocent. Nor is it only the tool of the powerful- the smallest bribe may count at times, and in modern society the individually weak can often get a collective or a more powerful patron to enact the bribery for them, promising implicitly or explicitly to the judge or the jury that their social credibility, their acceptance by the society around them, is reliant on enacting a particular social agenda, apart from justice.
For bribery proper has many cousins. If I desire to bribe a judge, money is perhaps the most direct form, but other possibilities are just as available and often more effective. I can bribe with property, with promises, with future economic opportunities, with social standing. I can threaten, too. The more social form of bribery has even the advantage of being more evasive of legal retribution. Judges are often quite vulnerable to the implicit or explicit promise of wide-spread adulation for a certain verdict, should they give it, widespread hatred if they do not, as Judge Blackmun discovered regarding Rowe v Wade.
Nor is bribery the province merely of the formal judge. Incentives are a universal part of life, and we should recognize their influence over us as well. Social incentives are common coin in everything from advertisement to political campaign. Money incentives, whether outright bribes or not, are a part of life. Politicians and judges aren’t alone, therefore. Everybody can be feel the call of a bribe. More, everybody can feel the possibility that a bribe will smooth their path- get that person on-side, get that decision made, get everything done right. We must be careful, therefore, and not by bribery be tempters unto sin (Matt. 18:7).
It is an essential and occasionally unpleasant part of the Christian life to seek an understanding of man, who is God’s image and who is sinful nevertheless. Incentives are a fundamental part of man’s experience, but they can be misused. They are misused, readily and commonly, by man and family and church and business and culture and state. We misuse them against ourselves. Yet we should not be blind to the other half of the equation. God calls us to desire Him, to love Him (Matt. 22:37), and to rejoice in what He has made (Is. 65:18). Incentives such as these can be a force for good in us, a call forward to Him and His blessings. God made even these things we so easily abuse to be for our good, as per Romans 8:28: so let us use them for our blessing, for the good of our brethren in Christ, and for His glory.
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.
