Get Wisdom

My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, have given your pledge for a stranger, if you are snared in the words of your mouth, caught in the words of your mouth, then do this, my son, and save yourself, for you have come into the hand of your neighbor: go, hasten, and plead urgently with your neighbor. Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber; save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler. — Proverbs 6:1-5

Our work ethic and our management of money reveal much about our character and our walk with God. In the first 19 verses of the sixth chapter of Proverbs, Solomon addresses this with some very practical warnings. These are not just practical warnings, however, they are warnings to preserve our souls from the pull of wickedness and folly, which, if unchecked, results in sudden judgment and irreparable brokenness, just like the warnings against adultery. In our fallen, sinful condition, we want profit without labor, generosity without sacrifice, and the appearance of goodness without the discipline of holiness.

So, Solomon issues these warnings to the son: pay careful attention to your financial management and your attitude towards work. Money’s mastery over our lives can take many forms. Here, we see it hidden in the overextension of credit and the state of self-induced poverty through laziness. In both cases, the relationship to financial management has taken a wrong turn. There’s a desire for easy money that is the beginning of the road to wickedness. Peter warns us that “whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:19). The path of wickedness begins with worshiping anything besides God. So, we should work hard to be free from the mastery of anything or anyone besides the Lord.

Putting Up Security for Others

The first topic addressed in these 19 verses is that of putting up “security” for your neighbor. Another way of saying this is giving a “pledge” for another person. Literally, this phrase is communicating the idea of pledging oneself as a guarantee for another’s debts. Putting up security for our neighbors is not something that we do a lot of in our culture. One of the the readiest examples we have in our culture is cosigning a loan. Another example is a general partner agreement. These often entail unlimited liability for the actions of the other person. Personally, I’ve never had a neighbor come up and ask me if I would secure their personal loan! However, this does happen within the context of families and businesses in our culture.

Rash Commitments

Signing an unlimited liability partnership agreement or cosigning a loan, communicates that we have the means available. We must weigh the situation carefully before we pledge our assets to someone else. There is more communicated here, however, than just co-signing on a loan.

Scholars see in these verses a warning against any kind of speculative lending, investing or gambling. The warning is against being impulsive in our generosity towards others. It is a warning against making rash commitments and promises that we do not have the power to fulfill. This is what it means when it says you been caught in the words of your mouth. Committing or contracting ourselves hastily in a way that endangers our future financial security is not wise.

Hustle to be Free

The father then lays out the plan for how to reverse this course of action if it has already happened.
Like a good coach would tell his team that is about to lose: to win, you better hustle! To have any chance being free from this commitment, of securing your financial future, you better hustle like you never have before. And you better not stop until you have achieved your goal.

In verses 3-5, he tells the son he should go quickly and humbly to the person! Plead for a release from this agreement! More than that, you should work as hard as you can to be free. The father tells him to “give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber” until he is free. He should not relax until he knows he has freed himself from this agreement and secured his financial future. The frenzied activity to set himself free should resemble that of a bird or a gazelle trapped in a snare. Its life is in danger, and it will find any way to get out!

Enron and Unlimited Liability

My background is in accounting, working as a Certified Public Accountant for around fifteen years. When I was in graduate school for accounting, the industry was reeling from the collapse of one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, Arthur Andersen. We had to sit through videos and case studies on this subject because the source of the collapse of the firm resulted from a break down in ethics in one of its offices in Texas.

Arthur Anderson was the auditor of Enron, which artificially created $100 billion in revenue through fraudulent accounting practices. As the auditor that missed this massive amount of fraud, the firm was found to be complicit. Eventually, the firm was convicted of obstruction of justice for the destruction of documents in 2002. Even though the Supreme Court reversed this conviction in 2005 due to technicalities, the damage to the reputation of the firm was too great.

With the demise of the firm, came, of course, the loss of everything the partners had worked for. Because of one partner’s mismanagement of one client in one city, every single partner in the world that was a part of this massive firm lost their lifetime’s work and investment in the firm. There were over 4,000 partners world-wide who lost their pensions and capital in the firm, which for many represented the majority of their life savings. As partners, they offered their own assets as security to another’s actions. They actually had given their pledge for a stranger. And this stranger let them down.

Debt is a Terrible Master

You may not be a partner in a large firm. Yet there are many areas of your own financial management that relate to this principle of not rashly committing yourself as a guarantee for another’s debts or making speculative financial decisions.

If you are a college student or high school student looking forward towards a college degree, you should be very careful with the amount of school loans you pledge yourself to pay off. Remember, your school is not going to help you pay these off if you cannot find a job. You are pledging yourself to pay off the money the government or bank gave them for your education. Be wise. Will the degree you earn justify the amount you plan to borrow?

If you are going to buy a home, do not get more house than you can afford. Do not pledge beyond your means. Do not ask others to sign for you if you cannot afford what you want to buy. Yes, there may be cases in which family helps each other out or lives together. Yet, in the normal course of your life, you should only borrow what you can afford to pay off.

If you are considering entering into a business agreement with another person, be very cautious and wise about how that is done, especially if it involves unlimited liability for the actions of the other person. In one of my tax law classes, I had a wise professor tell us that a business partnership is like a marriage, only it’s harder to get out of. Do not enter lightly into an agreement that represents a pledge of yourself to someone you do not know extremely well.

If you have done any of these things, today is the day to start working to set yourself free! You need to work hard to be free from another’s power because it could put you on a path that leads to wickedness in trying to fulfill obligations that are impossible for you to fulfill. Be free from unwise financial commitments so that you can be free to serve Jesus wholeheartedly!