Rabbi Nico here.
I was reading Proverbs 14 today and came across this verse:
“The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.”
On the surface, this sounds like a “well, duh!” kind of statement, to be frank. Of course it’s wise to build a house for shelter, and of course it’s foolish to tear your own house down.
However, let’s take into consideration that there may be a little more to it than meets the eye.
First, let’s look at the word describing how the foolish person pulls her house down. The Hebrew word is “haras,” which means, “To tear down, break, or throw down.” So, this clarifies that the verse does not merely mean that a foolish person builds their house so poorly that it is as if they’ve torn it down, but truly they have torn it down.
Who would tear down their own house?
Well, in psychology it is often said that the house represents the self. One’s house is one’s personal space, a place that we can customize and make to represent us.
In high school I was in a psychology class where the teacher told us each to design a house, and she didn’t first explain that the house represented the self. After she explained that, she had us analyze each other’s houses a bit, and then told us a story about a student she’d had years ago.
This student, let’s call him “Blake,” was a hardcore goth. He wore all black, dyed his hair black, wore black makeup, spike jewelry, skull jewelry, piercings all over his face, and so on. His house was designed with a ten-foot fence with razor-wire at the top, guard dogs, sniper towers, brick walls, and all sorts of security measures to keep it safe. But at the very center there was this room made of glass, and full of beautiful glass sculptures. The metaphor was so clear to all of us in the class that the teacher didn’t need to spell it out. His attempts to look “scary” were to protect the fragile beauty that he had deep down inside.
So, what does it mean when a wise person builds their own house but a foolish person tears their own house down?
Well, wisdom is what builds us up and foolishness tears us down. We really could leave the metaphor there.
However, we can go a little deeper. Open your hearts, my friends. A lot of times it’s difficult to know if our behaviors are foolish or wise. Wisdom can be hard to discern. So, let us ask ourselves this basic question: does this action build up or tear down? If it builds up, it is most likely wisdom, and if it tears down it is most likely foolishness.
There are exceptions, of course, but these are good basic rules to follow when trying to discern wisdom from foolishness. Let us further clarify that this does not just mean “what builds ME up?” and “what tears ME down?” Because our communities, our loved ones, our families, and our friends are extensions of us. They are part of the house we are building. Few people build a house that they intend to live in completely alone.
So, let us work on building each other up rather than tearing each other down, whether that be by word or by deed. To build up someone you love is a means of building up your house. To tear down those you love is a means of tearing down one’s house.
And here’s the kicker: The L’rd COMMANDS us to love even our enemies. Thus, we cannot say, “Well, I don’t like that person, so I’m going to tear them down!” while trying to build up those we like. Tearing down people we dislike tears down the people we like as well, in the long run.
In the fictional story “The Count of Monte Cristo,” the main character Edmund Dantes gets locked in prison for crimes he did not commit. All the while that he’s in there, he plots his escape and revenge on the people who destroyed his life. When he escapes, he takes on a false persona to fool them, gets close to them, and destroy their lives. Jim Caviezel did a good job playing this character in a movie, but that movie took far too much out from the original story and missed the point.
In the book on which the movie was based, the Count of Monte Cristo hurt a great many innocent people in his quest for revenge. He destroyed the lives of people who had nothing to do with his imprisonment, and they were simply collateral damage in his personal war. Far from glorifying revenge, the book is a cautionary tale about how revenge is wrong and leads down terrible paths.
My point is not specifically about revenge, but to point out that when we wrong people, often we hurt more than just the person we intended to hurt. You may think, “This guy is a real creep, I’m going to get him fired from his job!” but he may have a wife and kids who need him to provide. Or you may think, “The CEO of this company, and all the people in charge, are terrible people, so I’m going to steal from this company to teach them a lesson!” but it may be the innocent employees who end up losing money over that. Or, if you get caught stealing, those who love you may have to suffer the consequences with you.
Sin tears down the self and it tears down the house. Let us be as diligent about exterminating it from our lives as we would be if it were termites in the walls.