4 Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man.
This is what the whole “white privilege” misses. Do you think you are born with a “good name” simply because of the color of your skin? If a person is loving and faithful they might not be too bright, but you can trust them and you will appreciate them much more than the slick, cunning scam artist, the one who is smarter than everyone else.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. 7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. 8 This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.
When my daughter was a senior in high school I was pushing her to take all the AP classes she could. One argument she had against that was that these advanced classes would bring her gpa down. I told her that we went to school to get an education. A high gpa was the reward, not the goal. As it turned out the AP classes helped her GPA because they added ten points to the grade. Since all her grades were in the 90s it pushed all those grades above 100. She was in the running for Valedictorian but told me she would never get it because the girl who was in front of her cheated. Her strategy was to always be absent on test days and then talk to kids in the class who took the test before taking the makeup. I told her that if she knew this so did everyone else and that girl would not want to be the valedictorian, she’ll do whatever it takes to get out of that. Sure enough she graduated a semester early to avoid the graduation.
9 Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; 10 then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
This is the secret to being wealthy, and I don’t mean what the “prosperity gospel” preachers preach. There is inflow and there is outflow. If you tithe to the Lord it will cause you to be very careful with your outflow, the money you spend. Ten percent represented all of the money I had for entertainment. So my time in the church is where I spent my free time, my entertainment. In the world they are parasites. There is no limit to how much they will suck out of you for entertainment. If you make sporting events your entertainment there will always be more that you can spend and the reality is they do absolutely nothing for you. Las Vegas switched up from calling their casinos industry “gambling” to “gaming”. Games are much more family friendly and acceptable. Football used to be on Sunday, then they added Monday night, and then Thursday night, and then they also play games on Saturday. It used to be all you did was watch the game, now you have fantasy football and online “leagues” where people can spend every waking minute on this vanity. Idol worship will infect you with parasites. It will turn you into a spectator. Their goal is to make merchandise of you. We need to do something with our free time, dedicate it to the Lord and all of sudden you could be a maid who winds up with a million dollars in the bank she leaves as an inheritance. Let me share my own personal experience. I was at my absolute lowest situation
financially. I would go up to the offering box and drop in $1 and that was literally a tithe for the week. But I was so happy. Where else could I go and give $1 for a week and feel like a full fledged member? I had a place to go three times a week. If it hadn’t been for this what would I have done?
11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, 12 because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.
So let’s talk about “white privilege”. I am white, grew up in a very wealthy suburb, my dad was an executive for the NY Times, and I went to the same High school as Norman Rockwell. It doesn’t get any “whiter” than that. When I was in the Boy Scouts one year my Dad was going to be the Scoutmaster, my best friend was senior patrol leader, and I was a patrol leader. Someone complained to my dad that this was unfair, the entire Troop was biased in my favor (every year there is a competition for the “premier patrol”. I had won it the two years previously, and both years I had won this I had also had the “premier scout” in my patrol). Now with my dad as Scoutmaster it seemed obviously biased in my favor. So, my dad called a meeting of the four patrol leaders prior to the start of the year. He had a pad of paper with the eight members of each of our patrols written down. He went to the first kid, name two kids in your patrol you don’t want. Did that to the second and did that to the third. He now had six names. He then asked each of those three to choose two kids from my patrol that they wanted. I was left with the eight kids that none of them wanted. At the end of the year those eight kids I had won the award for “premier patrol” and one of them won the award for “premier scout”. Every one of those kids who had been complaining had been put to an open shame. People who complain about “white privilege” are making excuses, despising the Lord’s discipline and His rebuke.
