Proverbs 8

Proverbs 8:13 To fear the Lord is to hate evil; hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. Whenever I read anything in scripture that says to fear the Lord, I still have a feeling that I don't understand that phrase to the depth that it entails. Here it says it is the same as hating evil. For those of you that know me, you already know that I have a pretty even temperament. But there are some things that still irk me to the boiling point: traffic is certainly number one, but then also spending money when it doesn't make sense to, and having people touch my feet. If someone was polling me on the street, I'm afraid that EVIL probably wound' have made my list of the things that I hate. I guess that I have some things to work on then. Now considering an example of one of the things that I do hate, traffic, I take great strides to make sure that I minimize the time I spend in traffic each day by rolling out of bed at ungodly hours of the morning to beat the other cars onto the road, checking freeway congestion to make sure that I take the route which will save me 5 minutes off of my trip, and yes, I'm the guy (sometimes) who changes lanes (safely of course) to try to stay in the lane that is always moving the fastest. (I never said that I was perfect). Honestly that's quite a bit of effort. But when it comes to evil, I don't observe myself going to the same pains to create the avoidance. So maybe I don't hate evil enough? After all it's about respecting the Lord and aligning myself with His ways, and since He hates evil, then I probably need to learn how to do the same. Hate is a strong word, but it seems to fit into proverbs well because it invokes the idea of strong avoidance even from a distance. By creating a hate for evil within me, I hopefully can be able to keep it at a further and further distance. That all comes back to the behavioral elements that verse 13 listed: pride, arrogance, and perverse speech. Hating it enough, I'll start to intentionally avoid pride and arrogance. I already know that pride and arrogance quickly destroy you from the inside and that perverse speech is nothing more than a verbal mess. so Proverbs is telling me to identify the places where I have had evil behavior and to quickly develop a hatred for them so that I can place those behaviors as far away as possible. I doing this I will be fearing and respecting the Lord. -Bob