Why is the assumed reader of Proverbs a young man?
Youth is the golden period of life, and every well-spent moment will be like good seed planted in an auspicious season.
Eliza Cook
There is a saying, commonly referred to as an “old Chinese proverb,” that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago and the second best time is today. When it comes to seeking wisdom, the two points in time are closer together the younger you are.
If you’re a young man, you’re near the optimal moment.
Seeking wisdom is the duty of all Christians of every age and station in life, but it is especially important for those who become aware of this duty in their youth. Start now and become a more faithful, reliable, capable adult. For what it’s worth you will probably be a much happier person.
Consider the Biblical theme of oversleeping. It is identified as a kind of sloth in Proverbs, warned against in Jesus parables, and treated similarly in the epistles. In all four Gospels, the failure to support Jesus in his hour of trial is highlighted by the failure of Peter, James, and John to stay awake.
So consider oversleeping as representative of many other kinds of folly. If one learns to wake up on time to get things done as a sixteen-year-old, one will be far more productive during the next decade than someone who learns to do it at the age of twenty-six. I’m not referring to the monetary income from being a reliable worker for a longer period of time. That may be significant in some cases but there are other issues. If a person is sleeping away hours of his life (or, what is the same thing, staying up late partying or playing video games), he is missing an opportunity to work on himself in other areas.
It is possible to be wise in various ways, yet foolish in one area. But it is more common for foolishness to spread. A person who oversleeps because he’s staying out too late is likely to try to earn just enough money to finance his late-night recreations because anything more would cost him some of those recreations. Every time he has an emergency he will be forced to beg for help or go into debt. Working on developing wisdom in areas relating to diligent labor or savings will not even be in his awareness. One behavioral problem precludes him from even thinking about any other habits to develop that would be productive.
And what about the person who still has a problem with sleep when he’s thirty-six years old? By that time, he has probably realized how much his bad habit has cost him. For just that reason he may be more resistant to changing his behavior. If he simply imposes some disciplines on himself to break the bad habit and start a better one then he would have to acknowledge the fact that he has robbed himself and anyone who depends on him for decades. Many people would rather believe they’re the victims of a genetic disorder that keeps them asleep rather than believe they cost themselves so much by being passive about a bad habit.
When you continue in a habit for a long time it usually gets harder to break. In fact, the destructive behavior even seems normal to a person under its power, and those lacking that habit seems strange to him. For that reason alone, the younger you are the greater the opportunity you have to avoid bad habits and build good ones.
Obviously, people in every age, when they finally listen to the claims of wisdom, will be better off if they begin the work to rid themselves of foolishness. But starting later will make the process more difficult, and a person will have more regrets to deal with. Being discouraged by past foolishness is no reason to continue in it. It is irrational to waste time thinking about how much time you have wasted. The proper and reasonable response is to get busy with what time you have remaining! But it is easy to allow discouragement to kill your motivation to escape foolishness.
If you are young, you have a chance to avoid all that self-inflicted loss of morale.
BUILDING A BETTER MAN
To consider all this another way, we all know that parents who are wise and conscientious can train children so they can be more productive and effective adults. “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). But if it is to a person’s benefit to be parented wisely and faithfully, it is also to his benefit to be thankful for his parents’ work and cooperative with them rather than resistant and resentful. He will be better off if he has a wise attitude towards his parents early in his life rather than realizing their value later.
Wise Christian parents raise their children with a goal in view: to equip them to become wise Christian adults. At first, a child is too immature to imagine that outcome. It doesn’t seem real to him and he doesn’t know enough to even picture in his mind what “being grown up” would be like. But as he grows that changes, partly because he gets closer to adulthood and partly because he sees how he is unlike the younger child he once was. He realizes that he is changing and can partially extrapolate what changes lie ahead. At that point, the child (or young man) starts to actively help or hinder his godly parents in their project to train him to be a better man.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways, writes the Apostle Paul” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Being a child is fine for a child, but if you are starting to think about your future—what you will do, how you will live, who you will become—then you are on the threshold of adulthood. It’s time to intentionally work towards wisdom. You will never have this opportunity again.
Whether you realize it or not, what you are doing when you are young is building the man you will be. Build according to God’s blueprint from the start! An adult can repent, but he has the added hardship of having to demolish what he built wrong—break his foolish habits as well as adopt wiser behaviors. How much better to start before you have had a chance to develop a flawed character!
You are only young once. Pursue wisdom now! Don’t wait.
Get wisdom; get insight;
Proverbs 4:5-9 (ESV)
do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.
The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever you get, get insight.
Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.
She will place on your head a graceful garland;
she will bestow on you a beautiful crown
