Unapplied wisdom is another type of folly
Commenting on Genesis 3:6, Matthew Henry says:
See here how the desire of unnecessary knowledge, under the mistaken notion of wisdom, proves hurtful and destructive to many. Our first parents, who knew so much, did not know this—that they knew enough.
At present, men—especially the younger men in the Reformed world—lack the concept of unnecessary knowledge.
Within them there is an unending and insatiable desire to know, to be in the know, and often to be known by what they know.
The great irony is that they largely don’t put to use that which they actually know. They imagine that wisdom consists in the mastery of theological facts.
This is a self-delusion.
What do you call a grossly obese diabetic man who spouts off his knowledge of diet, exercise, and health every chance he gets?
You call him a fool.
To be wise is to rightly use or exercise knowledge.
Many Christians of all shapes and sizes are information gluttons. They have intellectual diabetes. They gorge themselves on knowledge that they will never use in any meaningful way.
It’s just something to know, to say, and to discuss… usually online with other men just like them.
As gluttons destroy food, so do these men destroy knowledge, by removing its purpose: to be exercised for their own good, the good of others, and the glory of God. Pretending that entertainment is education, they even invent new contexts in which their useless knowledge becomes useful. Hence the proliferation of online forums devoted to niche topics.
But unapplied wisdom is just another type of folly.
Like the legs which are useless to the lame, so is a proverb in the mouth of fools. (Proverbs 26:7)
To give an analogy, too many men today are obsessed with learning about and accumulating tools, rather than actually using the tools they have to make things that matter. Knowing about tools and owning them doesn’t make you a carpenter, and it doesn’t make your workshop anything more than a museum.
And in reality, this is not exactly an analogy, because it is also a manifestation of the problem we are describing. It is certainly one reason behind Paul’s exhortion:
make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands (1 Thess 4:11)
Men have an instinctive attraction to working with their hands. But in the modern day, men who like to accumulate wisdom rather than use it tend to also accumulate vanity tools for themselves—often at the expense of practical tools for their wives.
If your shed is full of expensive, top-of-the-line power tools that you use once a year, and your wife is sewing curtains on a janky old sewing machine, or struggling to cook on a stove that doesn’t work, you have probably fallen into this trap.
A similar trap is men who spend a lot of money on pleasure projects with no real utility, like doing up classic cars, while neglecting the practical needs of their household.
Much of a man’s practical wisdom can be tested in how he equips his house. Does he prefer an image of manliness that revolves around the tools he (infrequently) uses—or does he prioritize the practical needs of household productivity?
There are many stay-at-home homeschooling mothers who are rightly honored for making do on a shoestring. This speaks well of them; but not necessarily of their husbands.
Men who truly value the work of their wives will ensure that their wives have the necessary equipment to get that work done efficiently and pleasurably.
Working with a sharp ax makes all the difference when chopping wood once every few months. So how do you think it feels chopping carrots every day with a cheap knife that won’t hold an edge?
(Bnonn has found the best paring knives for his kitchen are carbon steel Opinel number 8s, with their silly clip points ground down to drop points. Smokey likes them very much.)
We have seen Christian wives make do for years with bad tools, because they feel guilty about “wasting” money on a bigger stockpot, a second pressure canner, a chest freezer, or an automatic watering system. This problem becomes more pervasive among more submissive wives, for obvious reasons.
So ask your wife what she needs. Observe the bottlenecks in housekeeping that are caused by lack of tools. Maybe life would run a lot more smoothly with an eight-slice toaster, or a second vacuum cleaner for upstairs.
Bigger families need duplicates of things. If you have eight kids, it’s not enough to have sufficient bedroom space. You might also need two washing machines, two dishwashers, two breadmakers, an extra fridge.
This doesn’t mean you should fall into the trap of buying expensive things for the sake of it. There are times you can find quality without top-tier brands. A Lodge cast iron saucepan will serve you just as well as a Le Creuset, a Kenwood mixer is as sturdy and much cheaper than a KitchenAid. Don’t be a sucker—remember, if you can, buy used.
Boys brought up in the truth are particularly prone to know-it-all chatter. Truth is rigid and unyielding and is almost as good as a baseball bat for hitting people with. I have seen this happen so frequently with Christian young men that I have decided to name the phenomenon—they should be called “thunder puppies.” Jesus once rebuked His disciples because they wanted to declare celestial war, calling down fire from heaven, but yet, they did not know what spirit they were of. In the same way today, many young men preach beyond their wisdom and pronounce dogmatically beyond their years. Many young Christian men will go on and on about what they will require their (hypothetical) wives to do in this or that situation, and how they will homeschool, and what they will demand of anyone who dares interfere with their sacrosanct household. And compare this to how often they spend time talking about what they will require of themselves. In short, “thunder puppies” are too ready to boast about nonexistent accomplishments and to bring others down in the process. —Douglas Wilson, Future Men
When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. —GK Chesterton
The fruitful life requires that we first discern and then choose between the vital few and the trivial many.
One way this principle applies is in the rules you put yourself under.
When you give up on the 10 commandments, you don’t get no commandments. You get a million.
This is why we spend so much time in our book emphasizing putting yourself under God, and internalizing that you represent and reflect him.
Really coming to grips with this will utterly humble you—and give you complete confidence.
Notable: #
Talking To Cogs . . . and Mistaking Them for People › American Greatness
And a fitting followup: Evangelical Spandex at the Gym | Doug Wilson - YouTube
My friend Tamara Lich testifying at the Inquiry into the (unlawful) invocation of the Emergency Act. What she says about suicides is especially notable. How often do you hear that death toll reported?
Once More on Renowned Fool Emily Oster, and the Malign Influence of Head Girls More Generally “The problem is that traits like conscientiousness correlate not at all with raw intelligence and ability. Thus, our world has come to be steered by fleets of extremely agreeable, deeply concerned, highly productive and overly socialised Emily Osters—midwits who have very few original thoughts, and who make up for that by caring a lot about what other conformist midwits of similar status think about them.”
Talk again next week,
Bnonn & Michael