Bottom down

The ancient writer offers us wisdom that you’ve probably heard before, especially since we just experienced an election cycle.

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭14:34‬ ‭NIV‬‬

It’s a wonderful verse about what can happen when a nation seeks godliness, and it’s often quoted to tell us that we need to vote in righteous people to lead us because, after all, righteous people will make our nation great and unrighteous people will drag it down.

It sounds so good, and I won’t deny that there is some truth in it, but that interpretation doesn’t pass the simple test of common sense: nothing grows from the top down.

The Hebrew word used for “exalt” is rum (yes, spelled like the drink but pronounced like room) and it has all kinds of flavors in its meaning, but the most common is “to rise, to be lifted, or to lift,” and that happens from the bottom down.

Trees don’t grow from the top down. They don’t sprout branches that float in the air until the trunk finally grows to the ground. They also don’t grow from the bottom up. A stump isn’t just set on the ground and left until the trunk and branches grow up from it.

Tress grow bottom down. The roots grow out of the bottom of the seed and create a strong base that can support all the future upward growth.

The depth supports the rest.

You and I are the base. We’re the righteous roots that will lift our nation, and when we take responsibility for the powerful role we play, we’ll see our nation lifted up in righteousness. We’ve got to stop putting the responsibility for righteousness on leaders. They are the fruit that has developed from the roots, and it takes righteous roots to produce righteous fruit.

When we grow from the bottom down, we’ll become the base of righteous people who can be used by God to raise a country, not just in righteousness, but in many ways, back to life.

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