"Where Are You Headed?"
Dr. Will Willimon
Proverbs 22:1

"A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches."

Proverbs. Short, one-sentence wisdom from everyday experience. "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." "The mouth of a loose woman is a deep pit." And today: "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold."

Frankly, I've never cared much for this sort of thing. Pick up your sox, take precautions on dates, it doesn't hurt you to be nice, if you be nice to people, they'll be nice to you. The Book of Proverbs strikes me as something akin to being stuck on a long road trip with your mother!

Petty, moralistic, often trite, though sometimes true. Some of you have just been through what we call Orientation, that week when we attempt to orient our new students. Orientation is a time when proverbial wisdom is common as kudzu, and as difficult to resist. Sit on the front row of class and professors will like you. You can complain about the UWC but we aren't going to do anything about it. Your Dean is here as your friend.

When my own son commenced college, I think the last bit of paternal wisdom I offered him was, "Always eat breakfast." Kind of sad, when you think about it, but it was the best I could do at the moment.

Old people like me love to dispense proverbial wisdom to young people like you. It makes us feel needed. It gives the impression that the accumulation of years actually teaches you something. Most of you endure our proverbs good naturedly, thinking to yourself, as you stare at us at fifty, "So this is how you got to look like you."

Lately, proverbial wisdom has been enjoying phenomenal growth. Look at the bestseller section of your local bookstore and you'll see Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Book of Virtues, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, proverbs for modern people who are too busy to think about anything in much depth.

Why proverbs now? Historically, proverbs sprout precisely during those times when culture is in chaos, when things come unglued and the old verities are questioned, when people begin to wander and don't know which way to turn (West Campus last night). Proverbs are the product of a society which loves its young enough to show them the way, to point to the path, to tell you what we have learned. Proverbs are affirmation that life has some answers, that you don't have to reinvent the wheel, morally speaking, in each generation. Proverbs point the way.

Sit down, listen to me, and I'll tell you what works in life, that's Proverbs.

Already, I can sense your disease. People at nineteen often have a short fuse for old codgers wishing to dispense proverbial wisdom. And not just because it's hard to tell anybody at nineteen anything, but also because by the time you're old enough to be at Duke, you've been around the block a couple of times, you've seen the way the world works, you've noted the gap between the way preachers say the world OUGHT to work and the way it really works and you become skeptical, cynical about the value of proverbial advice.

Show me somebody who really believes that, "All I ever really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten," and I will show you someone who should not get past the Duke Admissions office, someone who is incredibly stupid about what needs to be known. "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"? Maybe, Ben Franklin. Maybe not. The poor work longer hours than the rich. What is their gain from their toil? Health, wealth, and wisdom, or broken health, grinding poverty, and dismay.

Proverbs render a predictable, dependable, if-you-do-this-you-always-get-that world. Is that the world?

Try today's proverb on for size: "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, a favorable reputation is better than gold."

Will you buy that? Sounds like something which ought to be said in church. When you are starting out your life, and you are making your choices, trying to decide which path to take and which to avoid, choose a good name rather than a good bank account. It's better to have a good reputation than to have riches. Is that the wisdom of this world?

Form two lines at Commencement, and ask people who graduate from here, Choose one of these paths into the future. One line leads to riches, the other to a good name. Which line will be longer? Don't call it "riches," for things are usually only a means to some other end, but call one path "power," the other "a good reputation." Which line would be longer?

I know someone who, upon graduation, decided to give himself to the task of teaching in an inner-city school.

"I've wasted two years in that school," he said. "Now, I've got to face facts, move on. I've lost some of my idealism, my early naivete. I'm going to apply to law school."

Yes, face facts. Get in step with the way the world works. And the way the world works is, "Choose power, riches, things, and if there is any free time left over when you get home from the office, work on your reputation."

This summer I saw a biography of Donald Trump. Don has not chosen the path toward a good name and he's famous. They don't write biographies of people who spend their lives teaching high school chemistry. A few weeks ago, NEWSWEEK devoted an entire issue to America's new rich, the new billionaires among us. I don't recollect a really good name among them. Here were mostly people who are known, not for a good name, but rather for helping themselves to the goodies.

So when today's proverb is "Choose a good name rather than great riches," I ask you. Is this the wisdom of the world, or is it an assault on the wisdom of the world?

Is this proverb a member of the establishment? Or is it subversive of the establishment?

Must I revise my low opinion of proverbs? There are proverbs which simply assert, restate, what everyone already believes, conventional wisdom put pithily. "A woman's place is in the home."

There are also proverbs that subvert, deconstruct, assault what everyone already believes. "A woman's place is in the house, and the senate."

When I stand amid this place of power, prestige, and pomp and tell you young ones that a good name is better than all this, I see poor, drab, sensible-shoes-and a -purse proverbial wisdom in combat fatigues, with a grenade in her hand. And I say to her, "Go ahead, pull the pin."

Curiously, such subversive wisdom, wisdom which dislodges, which invites rebellion, appears most often on your T-shirts. In my classes here I've seen you use your body as a billboard to parody. "Everyone needs to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer." "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." "Never try to teach a pig to sing ­ it wastes time and annoys the pig." "The only difference between this place and the Titanic is that they had a band." Not to mention the score of T-shirts saying bad things about our sister school not too far from here.

I see these subversive parable T-shirts as your youthful attempt to thumb your nose at those who inhabit Allen Building. And it's harmless, because such proverbs cost you nothing. But try putting on your chest these words. "A good name is a better choice than great riches," and let me know how you make out during Rush. Competing with this biblical wisdom are the parables of our time: "Buy a lot of Pepsi, get a lot of stuff." "The one who has the most toys when he dies wins."

Did not Jesus tell us the proverb that it is possible for someone to gain the whole world and still lose his soul?

Proverbs frames this as a choice. A choice is being made here. Not all paths taken in life are equal. A good name is better than riches, power, and all the world has to offer.

I can tell you, from this vantage point, it is not that difficult to find riches. With a Duke degree, you can get the power and the riches with one hand tied behind your back and when you do, remember the Annual Fund. You can accumulate a rather large pile with only modest intellectual or moral resources ­ consider Don Trump.

In the past couple of weeks, I've taken note when people have proven the truth of this proverb by saying thing like, "She can be counted on, through thick and thin," or "He is a kind and generous person," or "She manages to do much good for others without telling anyone about it." These are everyday affirmations of character, of a good name. Making a killing in the market is easy to, at mid-life, just have one person say something this good about you.

Listen up. The way I figure it, of the four or five most important choices one makes it life, most of them will be made between eighteen and twenty-three, while you are here. What will you ask of life? Who would you like to look like when you are sixty-five? What will people who know you be able to say about you?

Some years ago, I was campaigning for someone to be elected to congress. The way I saw it, this man was not only successful, but he also had the right kind of politics ­ progressive, enlightened ­ politics like mine. As I approached people, asking them to support this man for congress, I was surprised when a man told me, "I would never vote for him. Fact is, I'd campaign against him. I was in college with him and know him for who he really is."

I was surprised. I knew that this man had had some domestic problems, but the believed the old liberal political proverb, Who cares what he does in the bedroom as long as he votes right on the floor of the senate, right?

I took up the critic's challenge and spoke with some of the candidate's college acquaintances and it was true. Even though it had been years since he had been with them in college, they all detested him, remembering some of his tactics with women, remembering his underhanded, grasping ways.

One of his fellow alumni said to me, "I don't care how much money he's made, how many businesses he's begun, and how big a house he's now living in, the man is a scoundrel through-and-through. If he can't be fair to his own family, how in the world we treat the voters?"

That was the end of my efforts in his behalf. He was elected, without my help, and later went to prison in an FBI sting operation against unscrupulous congressmen.

Sometimes proverbial wisdom is not only trite, mundane, and commonplace. Sometimes it's true. A good name really is to be chosen rather than great riches.