Young men are hungry for guidance about how to be men. Some turn to Jordan Peterson, with his Jungian evolutionary psychology; others to the red-pill manosphere. While there may be valuable ideas to glean from these unbelieving sources, I will not be turning my sons to them. Instead, we will be reading and studying Mark Horne’s Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men.
Horne’s book is not a commentary on Proverbs, but an application of principles derived from the Bible’s wisdom books. Nor is it exclusively based on Proverbs: Horne helps himself to texts from the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and many other books.
As is clear from the title, Horne’s book is concerned with wisdom. This also means that he is urging us not to look for vending machine-style feedback but to learn how the world works, how human beings are constituted. It is a process, and Horne prepares his readers to work that process: “If God responded to our deeds in a quick and direct way, human beings would never become wise. Such an environment is only appropriate for very young children.”
Wisdom is found in maturity and dominion; these are what men are made for. This involves the lifelong project of cultivating one’s own abilities, mastering one’s vices, and learning how to relate to other people in a way that leads to success. “If a person is sleeping away hours of his life—or, what is the same thing, staying up late partying or playing video games—he is missing an opportunity to work on himself in other areas.” Horne, like Proverbs, exhorts men to prioritize their dominion over themselves. This involves gaining the upper hand over one’s own bad habits: the wicked man “serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” (Augustine)
This is a struggle, not a matter of automaticity: “Remember, one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control (Gal. 5:25)… The fact that self-control is on the list proves that good fruit doesn’t simply ‘flow’ out of anyone.” It requires training. Horne counsels his readers to avoid the sort of foolish machismo that characterizes performative masculinity, e.g. buying firearms when you ought to be saving money and building skills. The goal is dominion, the exercise of godly lordship over the creation.
Two chapters are devoted to the discipline of controlling one’s tongue. Horne is a master of modernizing Biblical imagery to bring it home to us in a new way: “Your mouth is a pistol at your hip and a shotgun over your shoulder that you are never allowed to put in a gun safe. You are armed at all times.” He applies Biblical counsel about avoiding the habit of destructive speech in ways that pierce to the root of that particular sin: “The reason people continue to talk in ways that hurt them (and others) is because they have grown attached to the habit. It is exhilarating to belittle others; it makes you feel special.” Those of us who have sinned with the tongue (or keyboard) will experience a salutary conviction in reading Horne’s words.
This sort of insight is on nearly every page. I was struck by Horne’s diagnosis of how actors reciting scripted lines on sitcoms give us a false ideal of rapier wit: “a system of writing, memorization, and rehearsal is used in our culture to promote an ideal of how people should talk to one another in a quick, witty manner.” By contrast, in the Bible, knowing the right thing to say is considered hard. “When Jesus told his disciples they would have to speak for him, he promised them supernatural aid.” There is a congruence between popular culture’s false portrayals of wit and its false portrayals of sex: in both instances, there is the mirage of a shortcut, a promise of an ego-boosting enjoyment of unearned pleasure, but the whole thing is actually a sham.
Horne offers similarly perceptive comments on questions of debt, money-management, sloth, and fitting oneself to be a husband. Throughout, his exhortations are delivered with striking and perceptive exegesis of Scripture, often juxtaposing verses that I had never compared before. If you are a disciple of Jesus, seeking to please Him by the exercise of self-discipline and responsibility, or if you have sons whom you want to guide so that they will walk in this path, I heartily recommend this short book.
