There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: (#4) a heart that devises wicked schemes, (and #5) feet that are quick to rush into evil (Proverbs 6:16 & 18).

A cocky, young, American-educated Frenchman was working for Wall Street mammoth Goldman Sachs in the glory days of the sub-prime mortgage bubble.  At age 28, he was pulling in over two million dollars a year, and he was quickly rising the ranks of executive leadership at the firm.  His name:  Fabrice Tourre.  You may have heard of him by now.  When some of the e-mails that Tourre composed were leaked to the press, he suddenly became the villain of the sub-prime mortgage bust.  In his embarrassing e-mails, he called himself "Fabulous Fab" and typed out cute little emoticons while simultaneously boasting about the fact that he (and his firm) were making big money, even while the rest of the global economy was starting to tank, because of clever hedge funds that had been created to effectively bet against the bubble which they were helping to build.  He was, unquestionably, foolish in making the deals he made and writing the things he wrote.  But because he was young, rich, arrogant, and French -- the public wrath against "Fabulous Fab" was extra-intensified, like the collected solar power beneath magnifying glass focused to burn an ant on the sidewalk.  Because as much as the public hates hard times, they're even less tolerant of hard times that were deliberately perpetrated in an attempt to win wealth for a privileged few.  "Fabulous Fab" personifies the "heart that devises wicked schemes," and he is rightfully hated for it.

But I think it's also significant to note the second part of Proverbs 6:18 -- which villifies much of the rest of us, just as much as "Fabulous Fab," because of our "feet that are quick to rush into evil."

In the wake of the global economic meltdown of 2008-2010, I've read scores of newspaper articles and listened to dozens of radio interviews which have made it abundantly clear that an awful lot of people were moving their feet awfully quickly to jump into the same mess that was being created by greedy Wall Street tycoons.  Who were taking out all those sub-prime mortgages, which were (in many cases) knowingly foolish commitments?  Normal folks like us.  Who was looking the other direction as bank policy was rapidly shifted, to allow for further creation of these "collateralized debt obligations?"  The banks in which we invest our money, and the governments which we elected?  Who was ignoring the signs of danger on the horizons, because it allows us to live in a land of peace and prosperity and excess?  Us.  We were quick to rush into the evil that had been devised for us by Wall Street executives.  We allowed the situation to spring up because we didn't think everything through to its logical conclusion.  Of course, most of us didn't see it coming -- and perhaps we had no real way of knowing that it was coming.  But still, we're smart enough that we should have known better.  Any person looking at things with rational perspective knows that a "No Income / No Asset" mortgage is a dumb idea; but people go along with it because they get caught up in the flow of society.  They rush into the stuff that everyone else is apparently so excited about... only later to find that it's evil, devised in wickedness, and tragically flawed.

The LORD is quite a bit smarter than we are.  He knows that both the heart that devises wicked schemes and the feet that are quick to rush into evil are bad.  He hates these things; he finds them completely detestable.  But He loves us, as persons, and he calls us to a higher wisdom.  If only we'll stop and look for it.