Read the Whole – Not Just the Parts
One of the most important things to note about wisdom in the book of Proverbs is that it is not made up of promises so much as principles. And yet, those principles are not meant to be isolated from one another. Proverbs is not a collection of stand-alone sayings to be pulled apart and applied selectively. It is wisdom meant to be taken as a whole.
There’s an old adage that warns us about the danger of mistaking the parts for the whole. It’s often illustrated by the story of four blind men describing an elephant. One grabs the trunk and insists the elephant is like a snake. Another feels the leg and says it’s like a tree. Another touches the side and argues it’s more like a wall. Each man is describing something true—but none of them are describing the whole reality. Their problem isn’t that they’re wrong; it’s that they’re incomplete.
That’s often how we approach Proverbs. We grab a single verse that resonates with us, feels practical, or confirms what we already believe—and we assume it tells the whole story. But Proverbs isn’t trying to describe life in fragments. It’s describing life and experience as a whole. God, in his kindness, wants to help us live meaning-filled, purposeful, God-honouring lives, and that kind of wisdom requires more than a handful of disconnected sayings.
Tim Keller helps frame this well. He writes:
“Goethe once said of languages that ‘whoever knows only one, knows none,’ and that is likely true, but it is even more true of proverbs. If one proverb says, ‘The morally good always have a good life,’ and later another says, ‘Sometimes the morally good suffer,’ we modern readers think we’ve found a contradiction. That’s because we think of proverbs either as individual stand-alone promises or commands. But usually they are neither. Each is a description of some aspect of how life works…Only taken and fitted together…do the proverbs yield a full, multidimensional picture of a particular topic.”
Keller then concludes:
“Proverbs, then, give up their meaning only cumulatively…Only all together do the proverbs bring us a wise, nuanced, theologically rich, many-faceted view of the world.”
In other words, it’s very, very important to read the whole—not just the parts.
That’s why we’re inviting you to read Proverbs with us this month. You can pick up a bookmark at the Connect Table and follow along day by day as we take in the whole counsel of this book. Not skimming for quick answers, but patiently allowing God’s wisdom to shape how we see the world, make decisions, and live faithfully. My hope is that, together, we would gain the rich and deep insight God intends through this remarkable book.
Pastor Jeremy
