Building our Generation
Reflections on Proverbs 14:1
The Wise Woman builds her house but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands. Proverbs 14:1
This verse has had a tucked in tight place in my heart that has borne me along in the ebb and flow of my life. The extraordinary and unexpected picture it paints sticks to the brain: it is a stark saying full of promise and warning.
The Old Testament Proverbs is of the genre of ancient wisdom literature, and must be read as such or else we could draw some pretty weird conclusions!
Proverbs are sayings that capture truth in memorable figures of speech. The Old Testament Proverbs often set before the reader a path to be taken and a path to be avoided. They do not hold much nuance or complexity, nor are they prescriptive “thou shalts”, but descriptive of the ways the world normally goes for the “wise” and the “foolish.” They are intended as goads to the conscience, to provoke or avoid certain behaviors and actions. As King Solomon writes at the outset, his proverbs are “for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.” Proverbs 1:2
A vivid word picture plus the use of antithesis aids learning and memory by setting extreme opposites beside each other: Wise women build households, foolish foolish women tear them down.
Not all proverbs are gendered, but this one is, and it communicates the power women have to bless and create or curse and destroy. Unfortunately, the verse has been subjected to a lot of spinning and enculturation that lays extra biblical burdens on women in the name of being “biblical.” A narrow interpretation of this verse has been shaped into a discipleship tool that requires women to fit into a man-made mold of evangelical traditions. For example, it assumes the nuclear family (two parents plus kids) with a stay at home wife and mom is the only structure to raise children “biblically.”1 This approach fails to account for the complexities of life in a fallen work which often dictates something different than such a narrow conception for faithful, godly women.
I have spent time in China and alongside Chinese friends in the States through which I learned and unlearned many things. For one thing, it also changed the way I read the Bible. It helped me to see that ideas I once held as “biblical” were often the result of being born in a particular place and time.
The writings of our Old and New Testaments were collected and canonized by Christians across several centuries and lands with the Divine intent to make them universally applicable, as the spiritual Kingdom of God is not tied to one nation or generation.
It takes work and the illumination of the Holy Spirit to understand the text without the trappings of one culture in place and time. It also takes work to apply the principles without forcing them to fit our dearly held traditions, or knowledge gaps of global history that lie outside of one’s direct experience. For example, books on “church history,” often leave out what was happening in Ethiopia, or other non-white histories and cultures. See Vince Bantu’s book A Multitude of All Peoples: Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity.
Turning back to the Proverbs 14:1, let’s look at the words written in its original language
In the original language of the Old Testament, the word “house” is translated from the Hebrew word “bayith.” Bayith refers to a dwelling place, a habitation, home, or a generation of people. For example, bayith describes a house that a person is born into, a house that is entered, the wombs of the household of Abraham, God’s house, and a mother’s household. The Hebrew word also refers to a jail, court, or prison.
To get beyond the roof and four walls idea to a more universal application, we can think of the domain: a place of activity. Historically and globally, homes and households are busy places of communal rest, feasting, industry, and economy that supports the household. It is the place where people primarily reside, where others also reside with us, gather with us at the place we find ourselves: homeless encampment, military barracks, or shop, no matter how simple or grand. Home, as the saying goes, is the place you hang your hat.
So pulling together these pieces, we see that a wise woman builds her dwelling place. She uses her generative resources of knowledge, strength, fertility, and ingenuity to construct a dwelling place for generations. Households and dwelling places are built to be sound, lasting, a place of nourishment and a place of refuge from evil. It is a place of gathering and belonging, relationship and community. Building adds to, it gives, and it fortifies.
A foolish woman in this verse does just the opposite. She literally tears down her dwelling place, her household, her generation and breaks it into pieces. She doesn’t delegate its destruction, she does it with her very own hands. Tearing down as an end to itself takes, dissolves and disperses the household, and it impoverishes.
Proverbs 14:1 describes the action of both women as intentional and personal. There is effort, exertion, will and intent. The building or tearing down is an embodiment of the builder and the destroyer. They are naming actions: Builder, Destroyer.
The question, then, becomes: what is our relationship to our household? Do we build, or do we tear down, or is there a middle ground of neither or both? We can ask: what is the overall outcome of our participation in our households, especially according to those who know us best?
We tear down our households by religious hypocrisy.
D.A. Carson writes
“…The worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.”
When we prioritize maintaining an outward glow of godliness before others while simultaneously freely practicing rage and violence we tear down our homes. When our households are marked by coldness and malice while pretending we have a happy home, we tear down our dwelling places.
When we freely slander the same people our children also see us smiling at, we communicate hypocrisy. When our parenting is focused on our children appearing acceptable and impressive to the outward gaze, while covering cruelty, we tear down our house. When we excuse our family’s “eccentricities,” but revile against another family’s choices, we create little legalists who later will see more clearly what was going on. A place where children are not protected, where harsh, loveless retaliation is disguised as enforcing biblical authority, we tear down our generation.
We can turn a blind eye, shut down, and talk over testimonies of injustice and suffering. We can whitewash memories and legacies while our children secretly tell a different story. When we are never wrong, never ask forgiveness, never accept accountability or any outside counsel, we reject the gospel and the testimony of Christ, and we will reap what we have sown.
Church going and bible reading does not cover us.
Let’s broaden the idea of the religious hypocrisy of individual households to look at an example of generations of religious hypocrisy to see how Proverbs 14:1 applies to one as well as to many. I want to briefly talk about the impact of the violence of slavery that was embedded in a white evangelical Christian culture.2
Recently I’ve been considering a piece of history that has been highlighted in Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers’ book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. A body of research does away with the assumption that white women were passive and powerless in the slave trade when in fact they were active participants in it. It highlights the fact that a significant percentage of enslavers in the United States were women. The enslaved were given as wedding presents, inherited as property, given to white women’s children as gifts and playthings. Women who did these things also filled the churches each Sunday, Bible in hand. These women tore down their own households and generations with their very own hands.
Human beings who should have benefitted from every right these United States were founded upon were dehumanized in every way. It has grieved me how so many speaking for Evangelical Christians resent any reference to the historical record that recalls how slavery (and later the Black Codes) was institutionalized, legally enforced, and sanctioned by the main protestant denominations that strenuously worked to keep the institution alive. Church goers and bible readers forbade the enslaved to marry, learn to read, gather for worship, keep their children, or retain any sexual purity that was only reserved for white women.
“If I could be allowed to live like a Christian, I should be glad,” Harriet Ann Jacobs told the man who considered her his property. “No wonder the slaves sing, — -Ole Satan’s church is here below/ Up to God’s free church I hope to go.”
Some may say “but look at all the good we still did, the things dreamt and accomplished, the things built and achieved.” No truly good thing should be set aside, as long as we are mindful of the multitudes of unpaid labor of the enslaved that empowered and enriched generations of white people then and now. Faithfulness to Christ demands an honest account of things.
Today, we try to have this conversation, but are demanded to stop being divisive, woke, marxist, or communist. Instead, be a peacemaker, they say. Well I say that when we refuse to see or acknowledge our violent legacy of institutionalized slavery we are not ready to be peacemakers. Our houses are torn down.
Dynasty, Philanthropy and Respectability as diversion.
Those considered great in our culture don’t have households, they have Dynasties. The Sackler name was famous for vast philanthropic projects across the globe. These are the same Sacklers that created OxyContin, promoted as a powerful painkiller that was also safe and non addictive. They built enormous wealth on that lie, and have now been exposed as responsible for generations of murder and the misery of millions, while using their wealth as an attempt to cover their evil. The Sackler Dynasty is a reminder that celebrity, influence, and “good works” can never hide the vandalism of human souls. There will always be a reckoning eventually.
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 1 Timothy 6:10
Many have testified and traced out the story of the rising Evangelical Dynasty. (Read the cultural history of Kristin Kobes Du Mez’ Jesus and John Wayne.) We are witnessing a great reckoning among evangelicals for generations of abuse covered by an appearance of orthodoxy and greatness. We are uncovering a generation of harm by harsh standards and traditions that continue to benefit those in power but not “the least of these.”
This generations bears witness to the harm women have caused by their participating, benefitting, and covering up the bullying and abuse. Their houses have been torn down by their own hands.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Matthew 23:27–28
However, I stubbornly believe mercy and repair is always possible. There is always a next chapter extended to us: during the consequences, during the guilt, and during the shame.
It is righteous to consider people’s testimonies of injustice and the outcomes of generations of violence and disenfranchisement. It is righteous to take responsibility for our actions, to welcome accountability and to offer restitution to the ones who were harmed. It is here where we rebuild.
We build our houses with mercy and generosity.
Meanings are rooted in all the ways God shows himself to be in scriptures. Loving God and loving one another sums up all of the ways and words of God. Building a household, therefore, is an action and intention rooted in love. It is as expansive and as generous as the Lord himself.
We can build our house through countless acts of kindness.
We can be mothers to many that we did not physically bear, extending our household to those who need a place of belonging. We can build dwelling places for the new comer, the elderly, immigrants, or young people that tend to gather around us.
There are single women, childless women, who open their doors to lonely and wounded people. There are aunties, mentors, friends to the friendless, who are building their households and leaving a legacy of love and belonging.
There are grandmothers who raise the neighborhood, aunties those without biological children who are mothers to nieces, nephews and their best friend’s children, women who run orphanages, who build foster and group homes. Incarcerated women who gather together and build a community of love and kindness.
There are those who flee violence, who are homeless with many cares, who sustain and nurture those with them who look to her for strength and belonging. There are women who open their arms to communities who are bound together for survival. They built their dwelling places amidst displacement and abandonment.
Creativity, resourcefulness, ingenuity, and mission.
Those who build possess a special way of seeing the negative space, or carving out space for humanity in inhumane situations. I think of Corrie Ten Boom’s legacy told in the book The Hiding Place in which their household was a place of refuge and survival from the Nazis, and even when the household was dispersed, it continued in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Corrie and her sister created a community among the forgotten, tortured, starved, and condemned to die.
A thousand acts of mercy.
In the New Testament book of Acts we learn about a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. When she died, some disciples heard that Peter was nearby and they sent two men to him with the request “Please come to us without delay.”
When Peter arrived, “All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made white she was with them.”
I often imagine this beautiful and stirring scene of grief for all the dear women who had twice suffered loss, and how they eagerly showed Peter proof of Tabitha’s love to them, probably forgotten by many.
Peter prayed and told her to get up. She did. Many believed in the Lord. She had built her household with her own hands by a thousand quiet non-impressive acts of mercy that probably went unnoticed by the great but did not go unnoticed by her household of faith, who pleaded for her release from death. Tabitha returned to continue building her house.
All these women build their households in love.
What name does our household give us?
Here are the translated Hebrew names of different houses or places in the Old Testament remarkable in the vivid pictures they paint:
The Place of the lioness, a leopard, and the depression, the House of a creative one, the House of God or Baal, House of apples, a rock, of binding, of quiet, recompense, the desert, Terebinth of the house of favor and Place of the vineyard.
What is the name of your house, your dwelling place of influence and care, your place of activity? Is anyone sheltered, do they know they belong, and are they nourished by our presence? What name does your house give you?
The good news is that the gospel promises that every moment is an opportunity to begin again, no matter how great the burdens of our failures and destructive choices because with God, all things are possible. He is in the business of changing names.
Grace and peace.
I am not speaking of the benefits of a two-parent home, but the enforcement of it in churches.
I direct the readers to this historical account of the white evangelical American church’s obsession with keeping the system of slavery intact for economic gain.
