Proverbs 14:1 ESV
The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+14%3A1&version=ESV]
Folly is much easier than wisdom; unfortunately, it has side effects: sin, self-destruction, and judgement, just to name a few. Wisdom, though it is difficult, can produce enduring legacies of virtue and prosperity (spiritual, even physical). Foolishness, meanwhile, tears down all that wisdom has built. This dichotomy should not surprise us: God is wise, and foolishness is the denial or absence of wisdom. In other words, when we imitate God’s wisdom, our imitation of His creating and upholding the world, small as it is in comparison, grows stronger; when we abhor His wisdom, our imitation of those deeds weakens, becomes rotten. Leaving God’s wisdom (and His virtue) leads to leaving the gifts (material and spiritual) which He has given us.
What is this wisdom which enables the woman in this verse to build her house, the lack of which directly destroys the foolish one’s work?
God created the world (Gen. 1). God made man in His image (Gen. 1:26). To man God gave this admonishment: the fear of the Lord God is the root of all wisdom (Prov. 9:10). These three facts lay the groundwork for wisdom’s generative abilities; together with the fact that God upholds creation’s existence (Is. 9:7) and the nature of foolishness as the inverse or denial of wisdom (Romans 1:18-19) these three facts also explain why wisdom preserves that which it creates and why foolishness destroys without capability to renew.
God created man in His image, and therefore, as the image of God, man has a capacity to create. He creates business, relationships, art, riddles, board games, construction equipment, airplanes, and a thousand other things, and he creates these things, imperfect as they are in this fallen world, because man is created in the image of the Creator. Among the primary traits of this Creator’s character, among the primary traits which God has communicated to man in His creating us, is wisdom. Wisdom, Biblically understood, is not just prudence or cunning or applied smarts. Wisdom is (for men) thinking, speaking, and living according to the character of God in virtue and diligence, with forethought and with a perpetual quest to honor Him as we take joy in His world. Wisdom is, in other words, the imitation of God’s character according to the standards He has given us (not a replica, for we are not God, but an imitation, as reflections of Him).
God upholds His creation, and therefore man, as God’s image, can preserve that which he creates, by imitating God’s character (which is wisdom). When man deviates from wisdom, becoming foolish, things start going wrong. To be foolish, after all, is to mutilate God’s image in oneself, and as I turn from imitating the God who preserves me, I cease to be able to preserve that which He has given me.
Less metaphysical reasons exist, of course: the fool can be rash, cowardly, stupid, thieving, lying, betraying, and a host of other behaviors. On those grounds, we might say that the reason the fool’s house falls down is that he didn’t put the rafters in or that the reason his family collapses is that he had an affair with his neighbor’s wife. In saying that, we’d probably be correct. In truth, both of those failings, and all their kin, are manifestations of this departure from wisdom, the means by which God either judges (Gen. 18:25) or disciplines (Rom. 8:28; Hebrews 12:10-11) the foolish one. We cannot forget the theological truth in favor of the material one, as our society so often urges us to do.
The truth that we must remember is this: God created us to create in imitation of Him through imitation of him, which is wisdom.
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.