churning lessons

(by Pastor Joe)

The Word for Today: Proverbs 30

mark this: Proverbs 30:33
"For as churning the milk produces butter,
and as twisting the nose produces blood,
so stirring up anger produces strife."

Tomorrow I am off to the farm with my family. There will be barns and crops, cows and hay. But my favorite part of the whole operation is the chance we get to make our own butter. (No , not with the old fashioned butter churn depicted above.) You see, I have a thing for butter. There is no meal, no dish, no side, no dessert where the addition of butter would be unwelcome, at least for me. Even things that may not normally need additional butter (i.e. muffins, croissants, pastries, donuts, Twinkies etc.), are that much better when complimented with buttery goodness.

And so I cannot wait until tomorrow, when we are given whipping cream in little Tupperware jars. We'll then shake to our heart's content, slowly transforming the liquid into a solid. Then, we get to spread that brand new butter over saltine crackers and enjoy. (That's the only way I ever eat saltines!)

In today's reading, our good friend Agur uses two examples, one pleasant, one not so much, to compare with the inevitable consequences of anger. It is the nature of cream, when shaken or churned, to turn into butter. It is the nature of a nose, when twisted and jostled enough, to produce blood. And it is also the nature of mankind, when stirred up by anger, to produce strife.

Strife is defined as a "vigorous or bitter conflict, discord, or antagonism; a quarrel, struggle, or clash." Not exactly fun stuff, yet it is the exact issue we experience everyday. In our streets, in our courts, in our businesses and political spheres, and even in our homes, strife rears her ugly head. (And yes it is a she, named from the Greek goddess Eris.) Strife is misery. So why in the world would we allow it?

The answer is, we don't particularly like strife, but better her than controlling our anger. But our country, and many of us are officially addicted to anger. We know nothing else. And all that anger, wrongly expressed and dealt with, accounts for a huge percentage of our world's woes.

I needn't bring up any examples, because each of us have hundreds of our own.
Certainly, not all anger is bad, after all God Himself gets angry at certain things (1). But I will be the first to admit that my bad/good anger ration is 90%/10%, at best. The bottom line is that either you control your anger or your anger controls you. There is no getting around that fact. That is why the Bible in general and Proverbs in particular warn us about the dangers of ungodly anger. We see negative example after negative example, from Cain, to Moses, to Saul, to Haman, to Herod, to the Pharisees, to Satan (2).

But what good is it to tell myself and others not to get too angry? Any such words, apart from God's power, can become what Job described as "proverbs of ashes (3)."

Ultimately, this book of Proverbs, just like the Old Covenant Law, is a mirror. It can reveal the truth of our sorry condition to us, it can tell us where we are dirty; but it does not give us any power, it cannot make us clean. We need something more than a reminder not to sin, we need the actually ability to do so. And here is exactly where the message of Jesus Christ fits in:
"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good (4)."

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(1) See Psalm 78 for an OT summary, or Mark 3:5
(2) Genesis 4:5, Numbers 20:11, 1 Samuel 18:8, Esther 3:5, Matthew 2:16, John 7:23 & Revelation 12:17
(3) Job 13:12
(4) Titus 2:11-14