Proverbs 30.17
“The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.”
Parents are the first authority children meet in life. Family is the first and primary place that people learn respect for authority. To reject the authority of parents is to set oneself on a dark and destructive path that will eventually end in disaster.
While the immediate message (and warning) of this proverb is to children who disrespect their parents, the larger message is to a generation of people who reject the authority not just of their parents, but of God himself as well as social institutions.
Verse 17 is an echo of verses 11-14, which you will recall began each verse with the phrase “there are,” which is a reference not to a person, but to a generation of people.
Verse 17 begins with the phrase “the eye that mocks and scorns,” which is a reference to an arrogant and rebellious mindset. It describes people who do not respect authority, who openly denounce their parents and other authority figures, who defiantly assert their will to do whatever they want, and who act in openly destructive ways toward society and themselves.
Sound familiar? We are seeing “the eye that mocks and scorns” on the news every night. The anarchists on the streets of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and other cities are people caught in the grip of “the eye that mocks and scorns.”
America was founded on the principle of ordered liberty. In order to build a free and productive society, the founders established rules of cooperation that had been developed through generations of human experience and collective reasoning. They focused on timeless principles and standards that promoted the betterment of both the individual and community. These rules of cooperation were described as “ordered liberty.” They were also described as “the social contract,” or “the civil society.”
In the civil society, the individual is recognized as more than an abstract statistic or faceless member of some group; rather, they are a unique, spiritual being with a soul and a conscience. They are free to discover their own potential and pursue their own legitimate interests. Those interests are tempered, however, by a moral order that has its foundation in the Creator and which guides all human life through the wise exercise of judgment.
For this reason, the individual in the civil society strives, although imperfectly, to be virtuous—that is, ethical, responsible, and hard-working. They reject the relativism that blurs the distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong, and seek to live and work in alignment with the principles and laws of the civil society.
The combination of ordered liberty and responsible citizenship are the heartbeat of American culture, and both are necessary for our society to work. Stop and think about that. American society was designed to operate on the basis of two pillars: ordered liberty and responsible citizens. If either of those two pillars breaks down, so does American society.
If ordered liberty breaks down, we have a problem. “Order” without liberty is tyranny.
“Liberty” without order is anarchy.
If responsible citizenship breaks down, we have a problem. People who act irresponsibly will disrupt society and its essential institutions. As I have written before, the Greek philosopher Plato made this very observation: “A city is what it is because its citizens are what they are.”
For American society to move forward successfully into the future, we must renew our commitment to the “rules of cooperation” laid out in the Constitution. We must remember the Creator. We must get much better at developing responsible citizens, and we must return to the ordered liberty of limited government guided by timeless truth. We must once again embrace the personal habits that gave birth to our nation and has guided its growth and continuous improvement.
We must beware “the eye that mocks and scorns.” We must beware people with an arrogant and rebellious mindset. We must beware people who do not respect authority, who defiantly assert their will to do whatever they want, and who act in openly destructive ways toward society and themselves.
“He who does violence to his father and chases away his mother is a son who brings shame and reproach.” (Proverbs 19.26)
