money, money, money

i love me some Proverbs. i read one everyday - the chapter number of whatever day of the month it is.

it's crazy how much Proverbs talks about MONEY! Last summerish as i read through each chapter in Proverbs i wrote down every single time it talks about Money! Pages and pages and pages i filled up. 1 day i'll write about all those thoughts and what it has to say.

but this morning i just read 1 chapter. 28. because today's the 28th. and in just that short little chapter it talks about money in verses 3, 6, 8, 10, 11,16, 19, 20, 22, 25, and 27. Ridiculous. Even more than that talk about money indirectly. pretty much half the chapter.

just a little sampling some of these for fun since it's fresh on my brain:

"Better is the poor whose walk is blameless than the rich whose ways are perverse." (6) 

It's better! i wanna be in that better category. i'll take being poor and blameless any day over rich & perverse.

"Whoever increases wealth by taking interest or profit from the poor amasses it for another, who will be kind to the poor." (8) 

Sweet. 1st lesson = never exploit, take interest from, or make profit off of the poor... hmmm... seems like most of business is pretty much the opposite. i don't wanna make people hate me but isn't this pretty much what a capitalistic society is all about... taken to it's logical conclusion? i'm just sayin'... i mean, do we just skip principles like this or something?
anyway, 2nd lesson is that all those guys who are exploiting the poor aren't even gonna get all that $ in the end! they're just saving it up for the peeps who are KIND to the poor! that's some beautiful irony.
i wanna be the 2nd guy, not the 1st.

"The rich are wise in their own eyes; one who is poor and discerning sees how DELUDED they are." (11) beautiful picture of our society

"A tyrannical ruler practices extortion, but one who hates ill-gotten gain will enjoy a long reign." (16) nuff said.

"A faithful person will be richly blessed, but one eager to get rich will not go unpunished." (20)

"The STINGY are eager to get rich and are unaware that poverty awaits them." (22)

all these above are so backwards & opposite, right? opposite of how we would think and opposite of how we operate. 

try this next one on for size:

"Those who give to the poor will LACK NOTHING,

but those who close their eyes to them receive many CURSES." (27)

are you kidding me? this is so opposite. we are the opposite of this verse. we do NOT give to the poor because we think that is the way to lack nothing.

and we literally "close our eyes" to the poor... and we wonder why we're "cursed".

i already wrote a whole post on this specific verse HERE so i don't want to just repeat myself. you can go read that one.

all i'm saying is that we've got it pretty backwards when it comes to money.

what are we going to do about that?