“Those who flatter their neighbors are spreading nets for their feet.”
I use to think this verse meant that those who flatter others are setting them up to fall into a trap of believing they are something pretty special. After deeper study I’ve learned that even though there is certainly an element of that in this verse more accurately it is telling us that the flatterer is actually affirming bad behavior and sin in another’s life by praising that behavior. It is the sheer act of lying to make someone feel good about their sin. To give them a sense of pride in their devious and dangerous behavior. What an awful person who would praise another’s brokenness as though it is a good thing. Deceiving and taking advantage of others is not something to be proud of. They laugh at the calamity another causes. They tell them how cool their inflicting suffering and loss on another person is. Even when another person may seem to deserve to be gotten even with it is a very dark and dangerous voice that cheers such behavior on. They may or may not realize that they are setting up that person they flatter for their own fall, to be trapped by their own sin. Once the person they were encouraging to hurt others falls they then turn on them and cheer their demise while flattering the next to perpetrate evil on that person. This is a dark and bleak insight into the cycle of sin, flattery, more sin, more flattery and finally destruction of all involved. Best to avoid that pattern and those people all together. Those who praise and flatter too much are suspect. Today offer proper praise where due and humbly accept praise offered with an eye toward God who is the only true source of all good in and around us. #BeTheEdge
“rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” Philippians 2:7 NIV
