“Wisdom is too high for a fool: he openeth not his mouth in the gate.” (Pr 24:7 AV)
The
gate was the place men gathered to converse and debate. It was like the local water cooler. In the movie Fiddler On The Roof, one of the
opening scenes is when the milkman brings his cart into the village. All the townsmen are coming for their milk and
cheese. In the process, they remain gathered and debate back and forth. Their bantering is not rude or disrespectful,
it is merely a way to gather more information or formulate what truth truly
is. In the above proverb, this practice
is in mind. However, the fool, because
of his foolishness, does not see wisdom as something he desires or can understand. So, he avoids public discourse because he
thinks those things of which others speak are above his abilities or desires. One thing to bear in mind, the book of Proverbs
constantly compares wisdom and foolishness.
However, there are varying degrees of both. The description of the fool is often seen as
a derogatory thing. However, foolishness
is natural for the sinner. It is how we
are born. It is our nature. Being that there are degrees of foolishness,
the above observation could simply be natural foolishness rather than a
deliberate one. In other words, the fool
assumes present wisdom will always be out of his reach so he doesn’t bother to
sit and learn.
As
a child, my father required us to take music lessons which he taught. He started us out on the piano and then we
went to an instrument of our choosing. I
chose the guitar. As a child, you really
are not falling in love with practice and lessons. We would rather be outside having mud wars
with our brothers or running to the park.
Or priding our bikes. Who wants
to sit and practice for half-an-hour a day when there were far more fun things
to do. This made for difficult lessons
to learn. Who cares about chords or plucking
patterns? There we sat. My father would chasten us for making chords
the wrong way. He would go over the
lesson for the day. More and more we
would learn. Much to our dismay. What I
learned years later was I had a large hole that was missing. Key structure and
construction of chords were an important part.
When friends of mine showed me the pattern, I called my dad and asked
him why he never taught this to me.
Because I really didn’t care to learn.
That was his response. The fool
does not open his mouth to gain more wisdom because he thinks it is too high
for him to understand. However, if he
were to simply apply himself and give himself more time, he can get it.
We
tend to throw up our hands when faced with something we think we will never
understand. We may never be a rocket
scientist, however, the basic principles of it can be understood to avoid being
hit by one. This is the understanding
above. Throwing up our hands in an
attempt to understand something when we do not think we can is a foolish
thing. I have three sons. When it comes to asking questions in the
classroom, two of them couldn’t be different.
One was as silent as a church mouse.
The other asked questions non-stop.
The first really didn’t need to ask.
He could figure it out on his own.
The other was a bit slower but just as intelligent. He simply needed to verbally work out. He was not a fool. He never looked at something as impossible to
understand. He learned that asking
questions and working it out was the way to come to a deeper
understanding. A fool will not. He will assume he will never understand it
and pass by it. The problem is, wisdom does
not relax or the ignorant. Ignoring what
we should know simply because we think it is above our heads will only come
back to bite us.
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