“Listen, my son. Accept my words, and you will live many years. I am teaching you the way of wisdom; I am guiding you on straight paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hindered; when you run, you will not stumble. Hold on to instruction; don’t let go. Guard it, for it is your life. Keep off the path of the wicked; don’t proceed on the way of evil ones. Avoid it; don’t travel on it. Turn away from it, and pass it by. For they can’t sleep unless they have done what is evil; they are robbed of sleep unless they make someone stumble. They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday. But the way of the wicked is like the darkest gloom; they don’t know what makes them stumble.” (Proverbs‬ ‭4‬:‭10‬-‭19‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

We like to learn things by experience. This is why, for instance, every chemistry class I took in college had a corresponding lab period. They didn’t just want us to hear about the way various chemicals interacted with each other. They didn’t want us to just hear about what various instruments could do. They wanted us to see and experience it for ourselves. All three of my kids went or are still going to a STEM School. The whole purpose of the curriculum is that they should be doing a whole lot of hands-on learning. This same kind of idea applies to a whole lot of different areas of life. But not all of them. There are some things that are better learned only by report. Let’s talk about one of them today.

I’ll confess: I hated labs in college. My brain just didn’t process information like that. I never could make the connection between what was happening in the test tube and what we had been talking about in class. Neither could I ever really see the practical relevance of any of the experiments we did. And it was typically so boring. I still remember the first experiment I ever did in a college lab. We set out to determine the amount of fluoride in a sample of toothpaste (and we were at least in part graded on how close our answer was to what the tube we got it out of said). The first thing we had to do was to break down the toothpaste by boiling it. Do you know how long it takes for toothpaste to actually break down in boiling water? Hours. For at least three hours I stood there at my lab bench as a sample of toothpaste boiled away over the Bunsen burner in front of me. Riveting. I hated it.

My hatred of labs made me a bit of an aberration in the chemistry department. While there were a couple of my classmates who were bound for med school and had decided to go the chemistry route instead of the more typical biology one, most of them were planning on getting a job in the industry. That meant lab work was literally going to be their job in the future. This was all exactly what they had signed up for in the beginning. I wanted to teach. They loved learning things by experience. I was most definitely the odd ball.

Yet while this kind of opposition to experience-based learning made me weird while I was pursuing my degree, when it comes to understanding evil, this is exactly what Solomon recommends. He calls us here once again to listen to what he has to say. Wisdom is only worthwhile to us if we actually listen to it and allow it to invite us into making the kind of life-adjustments that will improve our lot and smooth out our path. “Listen, my son. Accept my words…”

He’s not just calling us to listen in the abstract, though, or simply because he’s in charge. He’s inviting us to listen because he has something important to tell us to make our lives better. And look at all the reasons to listen he gives. “Accept my words, and you will live many years.” Wisdom will grant us a longer life than not. We must, of course, remember our Proverbs caveat here. Embracing a path of wisdom doesn’t mean that the brokenness of sin won’t still occasionally drop life-shortening tragedy in our laps, but all things being equal, wisdom will lead to a longer life than foolishness.

“I am teaching you the way of wisdom; I am guiding you on straight paths.” Following the way of wisdom will make our lives easier. Caveat aside, when you make wise choices, things will go better for you than when you don’t. When you are wise with your finances, your life will be easier. When you are wise in your relationships, your life will be easier. When you are wise about caring for your body, your life will be easier. When you are wise with your habits, your life will be easier. When you are wise in your career, your life will be easier. Should I go on?

The path of wisdom will grease the wheels of life so that when you really get rolling, you will be less likely to hit a snag. “When you walk, your steps will not be hindered; when you run, you will not stumble.” When you find that path, when you begin to grow in wisdom, don’t leave it for anything. “Hold on to instruction; don’t let go. Guard it, for it is your life.” There is no other path that leads to life.

Of course, in hearing something like that, there is something in us that instinctively asks, “But what if there is?” This is nothing more than the original temptation replayed yet again. “Did God really say?…” We wonder if perhaps there isn’t some other path than the one God insists that we take through life. After all, does He really know everything? Who is He to say this is the only way to get through life unscathed? Isn’t a little bit of drama and intrigue necessary to make things more interesting? A little wickedness just makes us more well-rounded. It gives us the ability to not just sympathize, but even to empathize with those who have fallen further than we are. The best learning happens through experience.

Not in this. There is nothing to be gained by becoming familiar with the path of evil. Nothing at all. There is only pain and hurt and loss and heartache. There is only frustration and fear. “Keep off the path of the wicked; don’t proceed on the way of evil ones. Avoid it; don’t travel on it. Turn away from it, and pass it by.”

Solomon really couldn’t be much clearer. We don’t want to have anything to do with that path. It won’t profit us anything. Nothing will be gained by that experience but harm. Those who walk the path of wickedness soon find themselves consumed by it. It warps our hearts and minds. We lose all the benefits of wisdom along the way. There is nothing good to be found there. About those who try to take this route, Solomon says, “For they can’t sleep unless they have done what is evil; they are robbed of sleep unless they make someone stumble. They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.”

We like to pretend that we have a choice between two paths, or even many paths, but in reality, there’s no choice at all. There is only life and everything else. And everything else isn’t life. “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday. But the way of the wicked is like the darkest gloom; they don’t know what makes them stumble.” Evil blinds our senses until we don’t know which way is morally up anymore. Why would you stumble around in the darkness when you can walk in the light?

Does this mean we should all be totally naive? Hardly. The wise are never naive. They are innocent. There’s a difference there. Those who are innocent are fully informed about the other side, they simple don’t indulge in it. We don’t need to experience evil for ourselves to understand what it is and what its outcome will be. We have the Scriptures for that. They are pretty comprehensive in terms of displaying the full slate of human wickedness and its bitter fruits. This is one place where we want to stay out of the lab and stick to the classroom. The lab has nothing for us but failure. But if we study hard in the classroom, success is the only thing we’ll find.