Proverbs 1:21: My ex-girlfriend, the spy

“at the head of the noisy streets she [Wisdom] cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:”
-Proverbs 1:21

I had a really strange dream several years ago about an ex-girlfriend. I had not seen this person in many years, but I had a dream where I happened upon her on the street somewhere. We had lunch, and I dropped her off at her house. This house of hers was only a garage and two rooms: her bedroom and a room where she kept all of her berets. There were hundreds of them, all of the walls and cabinets.

If you’re wondering, no, I never saw her wear a beret in real life.

I talked some more, and I left, only to be cornered down the street by a group of CIA agents, who told me that this ex-girlfriend of mine was a Russian spy. Would I help them gather proof against her?

I was torn in my dream on whether to help them. After all, this woman and I had really hit it off, and that seems a lot more important than national security (thus was my thinking in the dream). I left these agents and walked around the town, thinking things through.

And it was then that I woke up. It took me some time, maybe a half hour, to fully understand that it had been a dream. It seemed so real to me then.

But it doesn’t seem real at all. The woman had a room dedicated to berets in a two-room house! The same house from which she was stealing all of America’s secrets! It was completely unbelievable! The truth began to dawn within me, and I really felt stupid for ever believing this silly scenario was the truth.

I felt the same way becoming a Christian. It was like I was waking from a dream, and I felt rather silly for believing all those things I had before.

We are so skilled in believing what we want to. We are so good at telling ourselves things so long that we believe they are true. Like Stuart Smalley, we look ourselves straight in the eye and lie to tell ourselves that we are on the right path.

You want proof? Go outside and ask this question of the people you meet: “Are you a good person?” Most, if not all, will say yes. And yet these are people who lie every day, who lust after the good-looking woman at work, who cut corners at work, who explode in anger regularly, who cut others down to get ahead, who neglect their families so they can spend more time at work to get more money, and who will yell and scream when calling some customer service line to get what they want.

And then they look themselves in the eye and say, “I am a good person.”

Baloney.

Habakkuk tells us about others who are fooling themselves in ridiculous ways: “What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols! Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake; to a silent stone, Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it” (2:18-19).

How silly is the person who builds his own idol and then worships it? And yet we do it every day. We make our own idols to solve our problems. We are lonely? A girlfriend becomes an idol we worship, someone to whom we sacrifice time, money, and effort. We want money? Work becomes the idol. In a bad marriage? Divorce is somehow the thing that will solve all your problems. Like to eat? A really great sandwich becomes a idol, something for which you sacrifice, something you pursue. We all worship something; the only question is “What do you worship?”

We work so hard on this, checking every dank corner for a savior, when Wisdom is standing right in front of us.

When truth sets in, you begin to wonder how you ever believed the falsehood. When I became a Christian, I looked back on my life and realized that God had His hand in every moment of my life, and I looked right through Him.

Christ came to earth, to stand amongst us, and we killed Him for it. That’s how intent we are in ignoring the God who loves us so much. And yet, even that was not the end, because Jesus rose from the dead, and He is alive today, still willing to be our Savior, our true and perfect Savior.

Repent of those old ways. Stop and look at what Christ has done for you. He is willing to forgive all of it, all of the wrong you have done, and welcome you home. He stands before you, in plain sight. There is no secret to finding Him, for He has sought you first. Only turn from the world and fix your eyes upon Him.