Let’s instruct people that the Bible’s promises are not magical, mechanical, or automatic. But let’s also euthanize the false and confusing reflex that communicates that, because proverbs are not mechanical, they are not “promises.” Stating the matter that way has only misled people and created worse problems than those we attempted to solve.

It’s crazy how widespread is the counsel that “proverbs aren’t promises.” It’s ridiculously common for folks to treat it as a truism that requires no defense, only an assertion or brief explanation. And that explanation seems to require Prov 26:4-5 (or Prov 22:6) as a launching point, as though invoking “answer a fool…answer not a fool” makes the truism self-evident.

Consider an Example

Case in point. Here is a nursing professor doing a wonderful thing for his church, seeking to encourage them to read the Scripture and dig more deeply into God’s glorious word. I trust that he serves faithfully in his role as a church elder and music coordinator. He wants to read God’s word well and help others read God’s word well. However, he falls pray to the unexamined truism that unintentionally undermines an entire book of the Bible desperately needed in our generation.

And notice that, in the process, he turns “proverbs aren’t promises” into a homemade proverb that makes a promise. This brilliant biblical poetry is now reduced to “principles” but not “promises,” whatever that actually means. But if these “principles” cannot be relied on to promise the truth to us, then, as Bruce Waltke put it, how could a psychologically well person ever trust what God says in this book?

And as a result, the truism’s effect is the opposite to its intended effect: It only motivates people not to read and study the Proverbs. Why spend my time here, when I can spend my time in a different book of the Bible that does promise something? A book that provides fully reliable truth I can bank on, and not just “principles” that are merely possible or likely but you can never be sure?

I can’t really blame this blogger, though, as he’s merely quoting a commentator. The problem is not that a few people think this way. The problem is that everybody holds to this tradition as handed down from the elders without really considering its consequences.

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