Bill Smith, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On December 9, 2021 By Bill Smith In Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Wisdom 1

All Hat And No Cowboy

In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.
~Proverbs 14.23

Originally, the cowboy hat was made to be functional for those who spent long days in the sun working cattle. The wide brim protected the head from the sun’s rays. Eventually, that rim was turned upward on the sides so that the swinging of a rope would not be impeded or knock the hat off. The pinch at the top of the hat made the hat easier to grip.

As with many articles of clothing, fashion followed function. People who have romantic visions about cowboy life, love country music, or like the style of headwear incorporate the cowboy hat into their wardrobe. The hat says “cowboy,” but they ain’t no cowboys. Real cowboys have a saying for this: “He’s all hat and no cowboy,” or “All hat, no cattle.” For all of you city slickers out there, this means that a person is all talk and no action.

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On December 2, 2021 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom 1

Hands On Wisdom

“The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth.”
~Proverbs 19.24

The image is a comical one. A platter of food rests in the middle of the table. If the dish to which Solomon refers is a common one for that day, it doesn’t have any sides to negotiate. It is not a bowl that one would have to reach into and pull out of. Those at the table could simply reach and retrieve food with a minimal amount of effort, scraping it to themselves if they had to. Here is this man who has exerted just enough effort to get his hand to the plate of food, buries his hand in the food, but now he has neither the will nor the energy to bring it back to his mouth. All that he needs to sustain him and bring him joy is literally at his fingertips (actually, all over his fingertips), but his torpor keeps him from it. He will starve even though everything he needs is easily accessible.

He started the whole arduous process of eating, but he didn’t have the energy to finish it. Not finishing what one starts is the way of the fool. Solomon characterizes this as having a “slack hand” in Proverbs 10.4 He puts his hand to something, he takes hold of a commitment and, therefore, a responsibility, but then he lets it go before the job is complete. Maybe he had good intentions. He made commitments. He may have even been excited at first about what he was going to do. His hand might have been the fastest to get to the dish, but he quit on the project as quickly as he started.

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On November 24, 2021 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Wisdom Like

Own It!

Once upon a time in first-century Israel, ten virgin young ladies were excited about attending a wedding. They didn’t know exactly when the bridegroom was coming, so they had to make adequate preparations for their waiting time. Five of these young ladies wisely worked diligently to prepare for any length of time that the bridegroom would delay. Whenever he came, they would be ready to go into the wedding feast. The other five young ladies foolishly didn’t work diligently but assumed everything would work itself out.

As the time of absence of the bridegroom lengthened, the inadequate preparation of the five foolish young ladies became evident. They were running out of supplies. They asked the five wise young ladies to share what they had. The five wise young ladies told them that their foolish lack of preparation put no obligations upon them to give what they had collected in their wisdom. The foolish five need to go to the market to restock.

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On November 18, 2021 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom Like

Ant Wisdom

The wisdom that Solomon desires for his son is the wisdom that works. Wisdom worked from the beginning creating and ordering the world (Pr 3.19-20; 8.22-31). As the image of Wisdom, man is a worker, creating, ordering, and bringing productivity within the creation over which God set him to rule. We are world-makers, beginning with ordering the plot of creation that is uniquely ours–our own persons–and extending that dominion to wherever God grants us responsibility and authority.

God has created and commanded us to work. As Solomon’s son is moving into his maturity, the kingly stage of his life, Solomon is concerned that he understands his responsibilities as a worker and the tempting threats he will face as he fights the post-fall creation. Sin not only made the creation outside of man resistant to his dominion activity, but sin has also twisted man as a worker. We fight the curse of sin without and within.

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On November 4, 2021 By Bill Smith In Culture, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom Like

The Salvation of Works

In all toil there is profit….
Proverbs 14.23

“Help Wanted” signs are up all over the country. Businesses are struggling, not only to find competent workers, but warm bodies who will show up. Jobs are available, but many people don’t want to work. On his November 2, 2021 show, Matt Walsh reported that three out of four unemployed able-bodied men of working age simply don’t want to work. Some of the biggest industries hit are the leisure and hospitality sectors. Vox, drawing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reports that there are 1.7 million job openings in the industries, ten percent of the entire industry, with another one million quitting. Theories concerning the loss of drive to work, especially among able-bodied men, are many. Some attribute it to low pay (although some places are paying higher wages than they ever have). Others attribute it to the government’s quantitative easing through printing money, extending and expanding unemployment benefits, and sending out stimulus checks, disincentivizing workers who make more staying home than they would at work. Walsh attributes the problem to despair and purposelessness.

A perfect storm is brewing that has been created between the factors mentioned and many more that has already and will leave devastation in its wake. But all of this gives us the opportunity to ask ourselves, “Why do we work?” If work is only about getting a paycheck and the government provides that, why shouldn’t I get on the dole like everyone else and ride this gravy train until the last stop? The sheer mechanics of God’s world tell us that this is unstainable. You have to engage in some level of work to continue to survive. Remove producers from society and soon we will be covered with a fruitless, unkempt world that will be our death.

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On October 28, 2021 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Wisdom Like

Little By Little

Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.
~Proverbs 13.11

More. Faster. These two words, especially together, could very well be the tagline for modern Western society. Companies from casinos to Amazon play on our impatience, our insatiable desires to have more at an ever-increasing pace; to have more and have it easier than ever before. Entertainment has also picked up on our boredom with the mundane, repetitive rhythms of life, our impatience with “sameness,” and seeks to titillate us with bigger and more provocative technological wizardry. It is tempting and quite easy to fall into the frenzy of the bigger-faster-more society that feeds our impatient need for novelty and wealth without work.

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On October 21, 2021 By Bill Smith In Culture, Theology Like

The “Religion” Conspiracy

I’m not a “tin foil” hat kind of guy (though I’m beginning to sympathize with Alex Jones more and more these days). I don’t believe that there are conscious, concerted, deliberate government conspiracies behind everything that goes on in our society. However, the Western church has been the victim of a well-orchestrated conspiracy from at least the sixteenth century. The philosophical and cultural seeds that began to be sown almost five hundred years ago are bearing fruit in abundance today. This conspiracy was, no doubt, orchestrated by unseen forces; not merely the kind that meet in smoke-filled backrooms, but the demonic kind that empower those principalities and powers that pull the levers in government structures. All of these powers worked together to tame the church. A church that believes that the kingdom of Christ extends over every area of human existence–individuals as well as institutions–must be subdued.

Many have tried to subdue it through persecution. We have experienced this from our earliest days as the church. The principalities and powers believed that they could stamp out our passions by exterminating the church. Some still try to do this in Muslim and communist-dominated countries. What they find is that the more that they persecute us, the more we grow. Putting Christians to death is like planting seeds: we die and then spring up thirty, sixty, and one hundred-fold.

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On October 14, 2021 By Bill Smith In Culture, Wisdom Like

Fret Not

Have you been keeping up with the news? Our country is a mess right now. We have a porous southern border with no-telling-who coming across with very few if any expectations upon them while our government puts crushing burdens on the backs of its own law-abiding citizens. Supply chains are massively disrupted because of ludicrous policies concerning COVID. Healthcare workers, pilots, and others are walking off the job because they, for a variety of reasons, refuse to submit to the vaccine mandates that are being implemented fascistically. Our recent military debacle in Afghanistan caused unnecessary casualties. The Federal Reserve is printing billions of federal reserve notes–paper money–each month, infusing it into the economy, creating inflation, and making citizens poorer. All of this is recent and is on top of the atrocities of abortion, the celebration of deviant sexual lifestyles, and all of the tolerated lawlessness of the riots in 2020. All the while we are told by our government and many in the media not to believe what we are seeing, hearing, and experiencing. It truly is the stuff of dystopian novels.

Everything from the lawlessness to the newspeak that goes on is maddening. With the inundation of news 24/7/365 and connections on social media constantly pushing the latest absurdities through our feeds, it is tempting to be caught up in a frenzy of emotions all of the time, seething about everything going on.

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On October 7, 2021 By Bill Smith In Theology, Wisdom 1

Wisdom’s Weapons

Whenever we think of safety or security, we may tend to think of being protected from anything that would disturb our comfort physically or emotionally. A generation has arisen in our society that certainly believes this. Authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt examine this obsession with what they call “safetyism” in their book The Coddling of the American Mind. Numerous examples are given from various parts of our society in which people seek the elimination of all threats, real or perceived, to what they consider their physical or emotional well-being. This is particularly true on college campuses, where historically a person goes to be challenged in order to sharpen his mind and skills. Now, we have “safe spaces” on campus. Professors who refuse to use preferred pronouns, question the legitimacy of gender fluidity, or dare confront the absurdities of Critical Theories have their careers ruined by people who are “traumatized.”

The security that God promises through Solomon in Proverbs has no resemblance to this sort of safetyism in our culture. The promise of wisdom’s security is not the promise of safety that a mother provides for an infant child, but the safety a shield and sword provide in war. Wisdom doesn’t shield you from discomfort and difficult decisions. Wisdom doesn’t protect you from challenges that will test your mettle. Wisdom is not a “safe space.” Wisdom is a weapon that protects you while you engage the world.

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On September 30, 2021 By Bill Smith In Theology, Wisdom Like

The Enemy Within

Throughout the book of Proverbs, Solomon warns his son of the enemies he will face. A few of those enemies are outside of his son. There is the perverted Band of Brothers who appear in chapter 1 and are alluded to elsewhere. They lie, steal, and pillage. They will play on the son’s God-given need to join with other men in a comradery of mission to take dominion. But their commitment to a distorted dominion makes them an enemy to be avoided. Then there is Harlot Folly who plays on the need of the son for a helper. She seduces with short-term benefits without long-term commitment and will only help him in dwelling in the abode of the dead, not in his mission to build God’s house. Her seduction is to be avoided for she is an adversary.

But there is another enemy with much more influence over our lives than the perverted Band of Brothers or Harlot Folly. This enemy resides within each of us and poses the greatest threat to our well-being. This enemy is our own hearts.

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