Saying Twenty-Two

Proverbs 24:5-6

A wise man is strong, yes, a man of knowledge increases strength; for by wise counsel you will wage your own war, and in a multitude of counselors there is safety.

Start in scripture, grow in sweat.

In preparation for writing these chapters, I often find myself hashing out an internal debate between two men — we’ll call them Max and Trevor — the former of whom understands the book of Proverbs, and the latter of whom thinks he does. In this case, it went something like this:

[Scene: Max and Trevor are standing outside after church. Trevor is holding a chai latte; Max a sledgehammer or something.]

Max: [reading from his Bible app] “A wise man is strong.” There it is. Clear as day.

Trevor: Ah yes… spiritually strong, of course. Like Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, “when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Max: No mate. Not just spiritually. Strong. As in, can carry heavy things. Has biceps. Can push a car if it breaks down. You know—strong.

Trevor: Well, I think it’s more of a metaphor. Like, he’s strong in inner peace. I’ll bet he journals regularly.

Max: Nope. See, it says, “a man of knowledge increases strength.” Knowledge makes him stronger. Not more meditative.

Trevor: Well… yeah… but “strength” is such a fluid concept. Like, sometimes I feel strong after a good cry.

Max: Tch… hehe…

Trevor: What?

Max: Nothing.

Trevor: Like I was saying, you’ve gotta take into account emotional strength. Like, being vulnerable? That takes courage!

Max: Trevor, the next verse talks about waging war. Wars don’t usually hinge on who cried the best.

Trevor: But maybe it’s talking about spiritual warfare! You know, armour of God and all that. You realise I’m the only one quoting scripture here.

Max: *Sigh* Actually, you’re the only one running away from scripture. We can pick and choose interpretive texts all we like, but the verse in front of us remains the verse in front of us. And right here, Solomon is clearly talking about that real, tangible… er… oomf-factor.

Trevor: You’re just saying that because you can’t deal with the texts I bring up.

Max: Mate, Paul never said “put on the armour of God and skip leg day.” If we want to get technical, Paul consigned the effeminate to hell. This is the guy who got stoned and then…

Trevor: Stoned?

Max: Not in that way; with rocks — …then got up, dusted off his pants and walked back into the same city.

Trevor: I mean, I get all that. But isn’t real strength knowing when not to fight? That’s what my aunty taught me, and she was the strongest person I ever knew.

Max: Sure. But when someone breaks into your house and has your wife in a headlock, let’s hope you don’t pull a hammy trying to lift your Bible off the shelf.

Trevor: I just think the real strength is restraint. Proverbs 16 says “He who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city.”

Max: You betcha. But you’ve got to be capable of some sort of wildness before restraint means anything. There’s nothing impressive about withholding the right hook of fellowship from your annoying neighbour if the only thing you’ve ever lifted is a throw pillow.

Trevor: I feel like this is getting a bit toxic. Are you saying every Christian man has to be a powerlifter?

Max: I’m saying Solomon didn’t picture a guy in a cardigan sipping chamomile tea. He was thinking of a man who could change a tyre and lead a charge. A guy with callouses on his hands and steel in his spine.

Trevor: Honestly, I think you need to read Christ's Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the meek” it says in Matthew 5. 

Max: Blessed are the weak, did you say?

Trevor: The meek.

Max: Ah, right. Meek. A word which, in Greek, means something approximating a restrained tiger. Unfortunately, the modern “man” is all restraint and no tiger.

It is a temptation for Reformed Christian men — especially those who love their theology as cold as their beer — to treat their bodies like mere gophers for moving their brains to and from church every week. It is a still greater temptation to justify their insipidity by appealing, Trevor-style, to scriptures which tout the virtue of ‘strength’ in a non-literal sense.

Wisdom, it is true, is a spiritual virtue. But arguably the entire enterprise of Solomon’s proverbs is to bridge the divide between the spiritual and the physical. Cultivate spiritual virtue, they argue, and you will see its tangible effects flow out of your fingertips in a river of good works. This was the burden of Saying One, and it is very clear in Twenty-Two, which unashamedly draws a straight line between the two realms. To paraphrase: a man of spiritual virtue is one who has dominion over the physical world around him. He wins wars. He builds institutions. He protects his family.

Wisdom has callouses, and a weathered face. It knows the pain of hard work, and the rules for navigating a difficult life. Men who claim to be wise, whose bodies have not seen the discipline of training or strenuous labour, are actually fools in that area. How can you obey the first commandment in the Bible — to be fruitful and take dominion of the earth (Gen 1:28) — if you have not taken dominion of your own body?

Get out in the hot sun and work; go for a run; buy some dumbbells. Let your wisdom appear not just in the weight of your words, but in the broadness of your shoulders.

That said, Solomon doesn’t stop at strength:

For by wise counsel you will wage your own war, and in a multitude of counselors there is safety. (Proverbs 24:6)

In this part of the saying, he adds a prohibition on being a lone wolf. Despite how heroic such characters appear in movies, in real life they look more like corpses. Strength is not strong if alone.

Notice, however, that the war is still “your own”. Many men see mentors not as military generals, but as spiritual janitors into whose ears they may vomit every drop of emotional chaos that disturbs their hearts. Seeking counsel is not the same as outsourcing responsibility or dumping your burden on someone else’s shoulders.

A good church is full of men who have already faced dragons, who still bear the scars. Find them. Listen to them. Then wage your own war. Wisdom begins in scripture, grows in sweat, and survives in the company of wise men.

Scriptures for Comparison

Psalm 144:1

Ecclesiastes 7:19

2 Corinthians 10:4-5

Ephesians 6:10-18

Proverbs 20:18

Proverbs 11:14

1 Corinthians 16:13

Nehemiah 4:17

Proverbs 21:22