485: Vice & Virtue — Prudence

Summary

Podcast Summary: The BEMA Podcast

Episode 485: Vice & Virtue — Prudence

Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Brent Billings (A), with Reid Dent (B) and Josh Bossé (C)
Theme: Exploring the virtue of Prudence—what it means, why it matters, and how it is rooted in biblical wisdom and lived out day-to-day.

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Episode Overview

This episode initiates a discussion on the cardinal virtues with a focus on Prudence. The hosts unpack the true meaning of prudence beyond its modern connotations, relating it to biblical wisdom. Using philosophical, scriptural, and literary references such as Annie Dillard, Aristotle, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, the group explores prudence/wisdom as the necessary bridge between knowledge and action—especially in the messy, context-dependent realities of everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Gravity of Wisdom (00:15–03:00)

• Reid Dent opens with a provocative excerpt from Annie Dillard’s "Teaching a Stone to Talk," stressing the awe and seriousness of invoking God's presence, highlighting the need for humility and reverence in Christian life.
  • Quote [00:15]:

    “The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. ... We should all be wearing crash helmets.” (Annie Dillard, recited by B)

  • The opening frames prudence (wisdom) as a response to the “power we so blithely invoke.”

2. Deconstructing “Prudence”—Definitions and Preconceptions (03:00–06:43)

• The hosts note how prudence has become an archaic or misunderstood word—linked to being "prude" or overly fiscally cautious, which isn't the virtue intended.
• Reid traces prudence from Latin prudentia (seeing ahead) and Aristotle's Greek phronesis (mindfulness), repositioning it as the bridge between knowledge and action.
  • Quote [05:04]:

    “For Aristotle, phronesis was like the bridge between knowledge and action. … It always starts with holding in view the ends ... which are always human flourishing.”

The Three Components of Virtuous Prudence

1. Always begins with the ends (human flourishing).
2. Deliberates good/right action for the present context (contextual, not universal).
3. Requires action—moving beyond speculation.

3. Prudence vs. Temperance and Other Virtues (07:16–08:50)

• Prudence is distinguished from temperance (“knowing when to say enough”). Wisdom as “preemptive virtue” is central because all other virtues depend on it.
  • Quote [08:50]:

    “Thinkers talk about wisdom as the preemptive virtue … the ability to discern what is good and right has to be a part and parcel to other virtues.”

4. Wisdom Literature: Contradictions and Context (10:14–18:45)

• The group explores biblical “wisdom literature” by comparing proverbs and Ecclesiastes, showing how wisdom requires discerning context rather than following rigid rules.

  • Exhibits of Tension:

    • Proverbs 3: “Trust in the Lord … he will make your paths straight.”
    • Ecclesiastes 7: “Who can straighten what he has made crooked? ... no one can discover anything about their future.”
    • *Proverbs 26:4-5—*back-to-back contradictory advice on answering fools.

  • Josh notes the "tailor-made" nature of wisdom; Reid calls this “a feature, not a bug.”

  • Quote [17:18] (on wisdom literature):

    "There is a both-and-ness, not an either-or-ness."

  • Rachel Held Evans (paraphrased) via Reid:

    “Wisdom is not about knowing what is true, but knowing when it’s true.” [18:22]

5. Barriers to Wisdom—Modern Challenges (21:26–24:56)

• The greatest enemies of wisdom are a lack of listening, echo chambers, and slow-to-learn attitudes—especially in the hyper-contextless world of social media. True wisdom is hindered by “the commitment to the truth” when it becomes binary, dogmatic, and disconnected from context.
  • Josh [23:51]:

    “Whatever makes us slow to listen or incorporate new context ... cuts us off from wisdom.”

  • Brent on seeking counter-perspectives to avoid narrow wisdom.

6. Action Is Essential (25:29–28:22)

• Wisdom must move from knowledge into concrete action and cannot be reduced to theoretical or “right” answers; what is “true” may not always be “wise,” especially if wrongly applied.
  • Quote [26:20]:

    “You can say what is true in a way that somehow becomes false.”

7. “The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom” (29:12–36:37)

• The group discusses what this oft-quoted phrase truly means: it is not about dread or a punitive God, but an awe-filled awareness of God’s presence and significance in even the mundane. It should induce humility and a teachable posture.

  • Josh [31:20]:

    “The real deep down lack of fear of the Lord is ... [that] I can get away with this.”

  • Reid [34:28]:

    “Maybe we ought to hesitate, right, to speak the name … maybe there is real wisdom in the unwillingness to speak the tetragrammaton.”

  • Wisdom begins with humility, openness to not knowing, and refusal to presume understanding of God.

8. Wisdom is Found in the Ordinary (36:37–47:12)

• Wisdom is not just for philosophers or theologians; it is supremely practical and lived out in daily “quotidian” acts—family, work, conflict, routine. Reid and Josh discuss the importance of finding awe (not naivety) in the mundane and learning how to live “well” in small things.
  • Josh offers a “small fire” metaphor from Leviticus (41:40) for sustainable, ongoing wonder.
  • Reid contrasts modern entertainment’s “epic narrative” expectations with the humble, everyday sphere where wisdom operates.

9. Hallmarks of the Wise: Teachable and Communal (47:14–49:13)

• Wisdom is never fully possessed; true wise people are always teachable (“docile”).

  • Quote [47:27]:

    “One of the primary marks of a wise person is that they know what they don’t know and are always open to learning.”

• Wisdom grows best communally—through shared discernment and correction.

10. Final Synthesis: Wisdom as Love, Wisdom as Christ (49:13–end)

• Reid connects biblical wisdom to Christ crucified, quoting Paul in 1 Corinthians:

  • Quote [53:35]:

    “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

• The episode emphasizes:

  • Wisdom is love in action.
  • Action divorced from love or context is hollow.
  • “Wisdom is if it’s the preemptor to the virtues, again, love is always the thing that all of the virtues are growing in.” [54:17]

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Key Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Annie Dillard, via Reid [00:15, 55:41]:

  • “We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. They should lash us to our pews.”

• Josh [21:26]:

  • “Anything that makes you slow to listen or pay attention to that context ... is where we can cut ourselves off from wisdom.”

• Reid [26:20]:

  • “You can say what is true in a way that somehow it becomes false.”

• Rachel Held Evans, paraphrased by Reid [18:22]:

  • “Wisdom is not about knowing what is true, but knowing when it’s true.”

• Reid [36:17]:

  • “Maybe there is real wisdom in the unwillingness to speak the tetragrammaton.”

• Paul (1 Corinthians), read by Reid [53:35]:

  • “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom ... we preach Christ crucified ... Christ the wisdom of God.”

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• 00:15–03:00 — Annie Dillard cold open; frame of reverence, danger, awe
• 03:00–06:43 — Defining Prudence; Aristotle’s phronesis; components of prudence
• 10:14–18:45 — Contradictory wisdom passages; wisdom literature survey
• 21:26–24:56 — Barriers to wisdom: echo chambers, context, listening
• 29:12–36:37 — “Fear of the Lord”; humility, not presumption
• 36:37–47:12 — Wisdom as daily, ordinary living; sustaining wonder
• 47:14–49:13 — Docility/Teachability as wisdom’s mark
• 53:35–end — Pauline summary; wisdom as Christ crucified; love as proof of wisdom

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Conclusion / Takeaways

Wisdom (prudence) is:

• The bridge between knowledge and action, requiring context-sensitive discernment.
• Animated by a humble, teachable, and reverent posture towards God and the world.
• Grown best in community, never as a solitary pursuit.
• Lived out in the everyday grit of human life, not only in high-minded philosophy.
• Completed and made meaningful by love—its fruits seen in Christlike action.

Reflection Prompt:
Rather than striving to “know the right answer,” pursue the habit of attentive, teachable humility with an eye toward fostering human flourishing—the daily art of loving and stewarding well wherever you are planted. As Annie Dillard’s words suggest: approach even Sunday mornings (and the everyday) ready for awe, humility, and transformation.

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For more, revisit Annie Dillard’s passage or Proverbs 9:10—and perhaps consider, as the hosts encourage, what it might mean to spiritually “wear a crash helmet” in your daily faith.

Transcript

[A]

This is the Behemoth Podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host Brent Billings. Today I am with Reid Dent and Josh Bossay to dive into the virtues by talking about prudence.

[B]

Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard is one of the most important books to me in my whole life. And there's an essay in it called Expedition to the Pole, which I think, just side note, should be required reading for anybody who ever thinks about going into ministry. And I'm going to share a little part to get us started. And he writes, on the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies straw hats and velvet hats to church. We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. They should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense. Or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return. The 18th century Hasidic Jews had more sense and more belief. One Hasidic slaughterer whose work required invoking the Lord bade a tearful farewell to his wife and children every morning before he set out for the slaughterhouse. He felt every morning that he would never see any of them again. For every day as he himself stood with his knife in his hand, the words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice and destroy him before he had time to utter the rest. Have mercy. Another Hasid, a rabbi, refused to promise a friend to visit him the next day. How can you ask me to make such a promise? This evening I must pray and recite. Hear O Israel, when I say these words, my soul goes out to the utmost rim of life. Perhaps I shall not die this time either. But how can I now promise to do something at a time after the prayer and in lieu of our daily beekner? Instead we have our daily Proverbs 9:10, one of the most famous verses in the Bible. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. How's that for a cold open folks?

[C]

Felt pretty hot.

[B]

Annie Dillard coming in hot. Yeah, I think about that all the time by the way. Just that we should be wearing crash helmets and we should be lashed to our pews. And the reasons for that is a cold open will become apparent in just a little bit. But first, Brent, we got to get it out of the way that we have yet another virtue. Actually. Wait, is this. Hold on. Is this the first virtue that we're talking about?

[A]

This is the first virtue, yeah.

[B]

Okay, let me rephrase that, then. First, let's get this out of the way, Brent. Well, no, it's actually in the vices, too, isn't it that for some of the vices and virtues, we just have words that we don't actually use anymore? Like, nobody says vainglory.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Nobody uses the word acedia, which Josh, we talked about.

[C]

Right. Of course.

[B]

Nobody uses the word prudence, really, for a virtue. I think prudence, at least in my mind, is related to the word prude.

[C]

Sure.

[B]

Like, you know, Yeah, a prude. Somebody who's probably overly obsessed with just behaving really properly. But I am here to tell you that prudence is not the virtue of being morally uptight. The word prudence comes from Latin, as a lot of these vice and virtue words do, prudentia, which literally just means to see ahead. It's seeing before. But, you know, I think some people think of prudent, the word prudent as being just sort of somebody who's kind of reasonably cautious about the future. Right. Like, oh, well, the prudent thing to do, and you sort of hedge. But I am also here to tell you that prudence is not the virtue of being fiscally responsible.

[C]

I was literally going to bring that up. It's always fiscal responsibility that is seared into my brain, man, that's so funny.

[B]

Well, I mean, maybe if we're back to our imperial sorts of take on virtues and vices, like one of our imperial vices might be fiscal responsibility.

[C]

There you go. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, that checks out for sure. But it is not that. That's not what we're talking about, prudence as a virtue. And I've said this before, but a lot of these come from originally from Aristotle, and then they sort of taken on by the religious tradition and modified later. But in Aristotle, he uses the word phronesis, it's the Greek word to speak of this virtue that we're talking about, which literally means mindfulness.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But again, I am here to tell you that prudence is not the virtue of just being a thinky person or being a thoughtful person. Not that being a thoughtful person is bad, but that doesn't quite encapsulate what we're trying to talk about with prudence as a virtue. So for Aristotle, phronesis was like the bridge between knowledge and action. It was the thing that connected knowledge and action. And there were kind of three parts to being a person of prudence. And I wholeheartedly am on board with all of these. So I'm not here to poo poo them. One is that it always starts being a prudent person virtuously so begins with holding in view the ends when considering the means. So if I'm considering what I need to do, I don't just do that haphazardly or impulsively. That's the word I'm looking for. But I'm considering the end, where the ends, by the way, are also. Or by the. The ends are always human flourishing. So if we're trying to get at human flourishing, what then are the means to get us there? And then. So the second part is in light of the end that I am considering being a person of prudence means that I deliberate and I deliberate on what is right, what is good specifically for this present context, knowing that, you know, it's situational, it's a local kind of decision, if that makes sense, rather than a universal one. But you're thinking about something maybe more universal as you're making that local decision. Does that track what I'm saying there?

[C]

Yeah, totally.

[B]

And then finally, like, being a prudent person of prudence means actually doing something then. So you don't just remain in that sort of mode of pontificating or speculating forever. If you get stuck there without becoming a person of action, then you're not quite all the way there. And so this is why some people may already have kind of clued into, like, wait a minute, I didn't think prudence was a virtue, but I thought wisdom was. It's just another way of calling what we mean by prudence. So the virtue of prudence is really the virtue of wisdom.

[A]

I think that's going to be really helpful. I don't know if I can make a final decision until next week's episode on Temperance, but as we've been going through these, I'm not really all that familiar with these four cardinal virtues. And not having gone and studied it myself, knowing that we were going to go through these episodes just trying to, like, what is my conception of these things without having done any outside study, I cannot keep prudence and temperance straight. Even in the scheduling email that I sent out like a couple weeks ago, I mixed up the two and thought that this was the temperance episode. So, yeah, being able to. To look at these and actually make a. A solid distinction on them is going to be helpful.

[B]

Okay, so, Prudence, we're going to. We're going to call it wisdom from here on for the rest of this episode. Okay. Which will help us keep it straight from temperance, which I don't have a great other word for, but the bama ism for temperance, spoiler alert. Is going to be the sentiment of, like, knowing when to say enough. So wisdom is what we're going to talk about today. That's a different thing. And then temperance that we're going to be talking about with Elle is going to be that. Follow me.

[A]

I mean, I still feel like they're semi interchangeable, some of these. It's like, isn't knowing when to say enough isn't that wisdom? But it's a particular kind of wisdom. I think this is like your closing item there, like finally actually doing something and not merely speculating or whatever. There's some action tied to it versus temperance, where it's like a lack of action.

[B]

Thinkers talk about wisdom as sort of the preemptive virtue that the ability to discern what is good and right is something that has to be a part and parcel to other virtues. So, like, taking a courageous action. So, like, if you have courage but you don't have wisdom, then maybe you're just like a bull in a china shop, you know, or if you are a person of justice. But again, without wisdom to inform that justice, that can just really quickly become sort of a cold calculus of retribution or, you know, any of the other virtues. So I think that's why we wanted to talk about wisdom first is because it informs, then it's a part of all of these other things. And again, as we've talked about throughout this series, like, it's an interconnected nodal web. There is not like a straight linear sequence, either through the vices or through the virtues, but people have found it helpful to talk about in this particular way. So that's why we're going to do that.

[A]

I like it.

[C]

Okay. Wisdom first.

[B]

Yeah, wisdom first.

[C]

I am the. What does. What does the Lady Wisdom say? I'm the first of God's creations or something like that?

[B]

Oh, yeah. No. In chapter eight of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom is seen as kind of a co conspirator with God in creating the universe, which is beautiful. And a fun little companion piece to, like, if you're doing a creation study from the Genesis text, like, put Proverbs 8 right there alongside of it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Before we go any further with kind of sketching out what the virtue of wisdom is, I want to bring in the text conversation here. So what is the biblical take on wisdom? And I want to just begin by doing an extremely brief survey of a small piece of the so called wisdom literature. And actually we're just pulling here from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which, Josh, your series on Gohel, it just wrapped up and was fantastic, by the way.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

You're the perfect voice for this conversation. So let's just hear a few things back to back. Okay, so Brent, I'm going to have you read a verse and then I'm going to connect it to the next one and you can read the next one. Okay. So let's start with what I'm calling exhibit A. This is our body of evidence for the biblical take on wisdom. This is from Proverbs, chapter three. I know people are going to know this one. Let's hear it, Brent.

[A]

Trust in the Lord with all your hearts and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

[B]

Love that verse. That's like been the verse on many a graduation card and present from high school. It's very valuable. I think it's a wonderful thing. And also how about this from Ecclesiastes chapter 7.

[A]

Consider what God has done. Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy. But when times are bad, consider this. God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore no one can discover anything about their future.

[B]

I would like to advocate for more people putting this in graduation cards. It is also a part of the body of wisdom literature.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So you've got trust in the Lord, acknowledge him, he'll make your paths straight. And then in Ecclesiastes, who can straighten what God has made crooked? And maybe you can't know anything about your future. Okay, so that's exhibit A when considering the virtue of wisdom. Let's move on to exhibit B and then we'll, we'll discuss after we've gone through all of the evidence. Okay, Josh, I know you're just jonesing to jump in on this. Let's go with exhibit B. Here is Proverbs, chapter two. Let's hear it, Brent.

[A]

For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it.

[B]

But so. And Also this from Ecclesiastes 7.

[A]

In this meaningless life of mine, I have seen both of these. The righteous perishing in their righteousness and the wicked living long in their wickedness.

[B]

So in Proverbs, we've got the upright living, remaining things going as they ought to. The wicked are being cut off, they're being torn away. But then Ecclesiastes is like, well, sometimes the righteous perish in their righteousness, and the wicked are the ones who live for a long time. Okay, let's hear from exhibit. See Proverbs 19. This was actually a big verse for high school read. Let's hear it.

[A]

Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.

[B]

Okay, but so, and also this from Proverbs 15.

[A]

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.

[B]

Mm, okay, so should I be making plans? Are my plans going to succeed? Are they going to be routed by the Lord's purpose? What's the relationship of those things together? And now here, exhibit D. This is kind of the classic for the exercise that I'm doing here. This is Proverbs 26, verse 4.

[A]

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.

[B]

And also this from the very next verse.

[A]

Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.

[B]

Okay. The Bible does not contradict itself.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Usually the Bible likes to put a little more space between it, but that just kind of slaps you right across the face.

[B]

Okay, so what are we seeing about wisdom here? From our body of evidence, exhibits A through D? What about wisdom? What about the nature of wisdom? What do you guys think about any of this?

[A]

Wisdom is not one size fits all, for all situations, all times, all people, whatever.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, not a one size fits all. Maybe more of a tailor made.

[C]

Yeah, I was about to say essentially the same thing. It's very context dependent. But I think another way of saying that it goes back to what you were talking about. With it, it's not just knowledge. There is a bridging, there is a reaching from that higher knowledge towards something that can be put into practice. And that applicability to your own subjective circumstances, that's also like, that's, I think, not just a limitation of like. Well, it doesn't always work this way. But no, I think what that means is that the key to wisdom is that it's helping you integrate yourself into that context in a way that makes a good path. And I feel like that, you know, double shot with Proverbs is perfect because the more you roll it around in your head, what it really comes back to is like, what does it mean to answer a fool according to his folly? Are you answering in the same way as him and becoming a fool too? Or are you really understanding his folly and giving him an answer that actually repudiates the whole foolishness? I was just reading this and asking better questions of the Bible. I was literally just reading the wisdom.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

By Marty Solomon. Sold wherever fine books are sold.

[C]

Yes. And also in that chapter in particular, many a time is read and quoted. So this was very reminiscent of what I was just reading.

[B]

One time I was with Marty when he was selling books at our campus ministry and one of the students came up and had Marty sign it. And then he was like. The student was like, will you just sign chapter five? I opened up to chapter five and I autographed one of Marty's books.

[C]

Oh, that's great.

[A]

I have had a couple of people ask me to do the same. And I signed the acknowledgments at the end.

[C]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But it was great. And I also say that because that was rolling around in my head when I was reading through it because you referenced those two verses in Proverbs 26 that create kind of a little bit like a Zen Cohen. Like, okay, there's an intentional paradox here. And it isn't actually anyone throwing their hands up in the air and just say, oh, what do you. You never know with wisdom. I don't think they're saying that. I think there's something else there to trust in. And it's that when you actually wrap your head around this stuff with wisdom, you are taking all that context to bear. That's what makes it wise.

[B]

Yeah, it's a feature, not a bug.

[C]

Yeah, it's very substance.

[B]

I think some of us have a caricature of wisdom in our head, which is that it's all about sort of knowing secret truths and the wise person is the one who understands philosophy and stuff like that. We'll actually get to that in just a little bit. But there, it's the bridged aspect of it. Like, there is something that is just very day to day or like quotidian about the way that wisdom actually works out. Because, you know, the context just. Context varies so wildly. Like this is undeniable not just from geographic region to geographic region, but sometimes from day to day. There's a both and ness, not an either or ness. And so Rachel Held Evans, rest in peace. She has a line from her book inspired that I copped when writing about wisdom at ccf, and that, I think, actually wound up in the book as well, where she says. I'm paraphrasing, not quoting directly here, but she says that wisdom is not about knowing what is true, but about knowing when it's true. And so there is this idea of tension and being able to live between two maybe disagreeing, but, like, potentially acceptable courses of action or postures or ways of being. Actually, this reminds me of. Did you guys ever see First Reformed? Oh, yeah, with Ethan Hawke.

[A]

We've talked about it, the three of us, on an episode before.

[B]

Have we? Actually, we probably talked about this very part.

[A]

I feel like we have.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. Well, I'm not going to just leave it hanging there.

[C]

But, yeah, it's either part of an episode or part of an extended unrecorded conversation before an episode.

[B]

But there's this scene where, you know, Ethan Hawke, the pastor, is meeting with a young man who's about to have a baby, and he feels a lot of turmoil about bringing a child into a world that is doomed by climate change. And he's convinced that, like, you know, the world's going to be unsustainable for living within his child's generation. And he's asking, is God going to punish us for what we've done? And Ethan Hawke just talks about how wisdom is the ability to hold in your mind two contradictory truths at the same time. And he's talking about hope and despair. And he's like, a world without despair is a world without hope. And life is the ability to hold both of those things at the same time. And so that's part of the process of wisdom is like, discerning. Like, it's not. The contradictions are not. One is false, one is true. That's a really binary way of thinking about it. But they could both be true and then what is right and good for this present context, for this present situation. And so, yeah, you know, wisdom's catchphrase is kind of like, yes, but also, or, yes, but except when. And so I think what I try to tell my students is like, in seeking wisdom, I think a lot of times for their behavior, should I do this or should I not do this? A lot of times the metric that they've been taught to evaluate by is, like, what is sin and what is not sin? And so kind of like, what's okay and not okay. And I have tried to encourage them, like, instead of thinking sin or not sin, maybe think about, like, wise and foolish. So like asking the question, would this be wise or would this be foolish? And maybe let that be your determining thing, because there are lots of situations where it gets kind of murky. So, yeah, it's the tension of not what is true, but when is true. And that's the shape that wisdom takes.

[A]

It was in an episode proper a mere six months ago, episode 454 on Ecclesiastes 3. Good Golly Kohela GOES OFF episode this.

[B]

Is just what happens to me, Brent, is that certain things get lodged into my brain and then I just. I'm like, well, that's probably what's going on here. And I'll just re quote it again and again and again. Yeah, I don't know.

[C]

That's why we keep good things around, you know, that's why we keep good art around. So it can keep, of course, keep reminding us.

[B]

Okay, so here's a question then. In light of this view of wisdom, that it's deciding not what is true, but when it's true, what are some barriers that we have to wisdom then? To actually knowing wisdom, to living in a wise way? What are some, maybe dispositions or beliefs, habits that get in the way of us being actually able to live wisely in this biblical sense?

[C]

Oh, golly, Josh.

[B]

Is like, where to start?

[C]

Yeah. You know, you could probably just say, like, being on the Internet or something quippy like that. Yeah. But genuinely, probably anything that makes you slow to listen or pay attention to that context for whatever you're talking about, because it's very easy. I think, especially in Western culture and individualism, there's. There's a way of compartmentalizing things where there can still be a lot of apparent context if you, if you dissected some, you know, Facebook comments page argument back and forth, tons of context. Right. But it's so compartmentalized inside of something else where it's very easy for it to feel like, oh, I'm paying attention to all the context. I'm attenuated to all these threads of reference and interconnectivity. But it's actually disconnected from real life or from larger, more obviously bits of context of like, hey, you're just getting mad and arguing with someone online. Like, that's, That's a context that, you know, just kind of lets the air out of all that other context that your brain might be roiling about. And so I, I think that's where, you know, that kind of false wisdom of thinking you know a lot about something, but it's like, no, you actually, you just know about this. This, you know, you're locked in, I guess, you know, people talk about it all the time. Echo chamber or. And to some extent we all have that. But I think that is on a meta level, I guess whatever makes us slow to listen or incorporate new. Not just new context, but context from different perspectives, context from different vantage points. I think that is really where we can cut ourselves off.

[B]

Brent, you got any thoughts on that?

[A]

I just like what Josh said, I think. Josh, I think you might have said slow to listen, and I assume you mean quick to listen.

[C]

No, the things that make us slow. Being slow to listen is the barrier.

[A]

I see, I see, I see. Okay. Tripped up my mind there. Yeah, I just. I agree with Josh. And do whatever you need to do to get those other perspectives. Because if you looked at a particular part of my life, like if you looked at only the podcast that I listened to, you'd be like, oh, Brent has a particular perspective. But I actually intentionally choose a lot of the podcasts that I listen to because they are different in perspective from the people that I'm around in my life, My friends, my family, whatever. It's not fun picking stuff to listen to or engage with that is so wildly different from what I might actually believe. But if I don't get that other perspective, then I'm never going to have any idea how to engage these situations in a wise way.

[B]

Well, and also remember that, as they say, wisdom is known by her children. It's not even at the end of the day, just about who is right and who is wrong, but it's ultimately about living well, being able to do what is true and good in this situation. That's going to make for flourishing. And so you can, intellectually, you can have the context, you can have the right information, but if that is not somehow producing children of the fruit of the spirit and the like, then that's not really wisdom.

[A]

Yeah. If it doesn't actually lead to action.

[B]

Right. Yeah, for sure.

[A]

I'm also struck by our set of exhibits and how none of them go into any sort of detail. This happens and then this happens. And, you know, you might run into that in these situations and probably others, but these, there are no examples. It's just sometimes it's this way, sometimes it's this way, and wisdom is figuring out the tension between them.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, you can have what is right and still have it be wrongly applied. I'm thinking about. I don't have the specific examples right now because I didn't put this in the notes. But if you listen to Job's counselors in the book of Job, like, a lot of their speech sounds extremely proverbial, like, it could have been taken straight out of the book of proverbs, right?

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And yet, I guess that part of what they're saying might be right and yet wrongly applied. Like when God shows up in the whirlwind to Job, God faults the counselors, and what he says is for not speaking what is true of me. And so you can say what is true in a way that somehow it becomes false. And I actually wonder, you know, and this is. This hits close to home for some with the Internet phenomenon that you're describing, Josh, of, you know, very polarized thinking. And we become. Some of us have a worldview that's sort of like your purpose here is to be a truth warrior and to, like, win the war on truth. But I wonder, like, how often the truth is exactly what gets in the way of wisdom, the commitment to the truth. The sort of rigid, dogmatic, overly binary sort of commitment to just what is capital T true, but gets held or deployed in a way that actually becomes quite foolish and destructive.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And it's not like I don't want people to hear what I'm not saying. So I'm not saying that, like, being wise is just like a great big exercise in, like, equivocation. It's not like there's no such thing as right or wrong. But again, to say that in the details of life, I think that, like, what's right and good, what leads to flourishing, again, shifts with the context. And again, like, actually, what comes to mind now is I was actually just talking about this with a student earlier today. Paul's writings to the people in Corinth about how to deal with, you know, something like the meat sacrifice to idols. And it's like, well, sometimes it's this, and then other times it's this other thing. And there has to be, like, a deeper guiding principle, something more fundamental than just what is right or what is quote unquote true.

[C]

Yeah. So it's like when you. When you start from, like, a commitment of. We have to, like, the commitment to truth. Not in that, like, we should back down from things that we know are true, but committing to truth in that, making a demand on, reaching complete black and white certainty on everything, even when that isn't possible. Or even when, like, with the issue of idle meat, if you do that, you're talking about, you know, cutting a community in half. And the greater wisdom is saying, okay, you Know, I guess objectively, maybe there is a right answer of whether to eat the idle meat or not. But there is something more important at stake than that truth, and that is keeping this community whole. And again, going back to when is it true? And that's huge.

[B]

I want to go back to our opening proverb following our Annie Dillard excerpt and just talk for a few minutes about what it means that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Yeah. And just get thoughts on, you know, what you think that means, what maybe you think it doesn't mean. Because I think to me, having some sense of like, what this means actually helps then shift into like, away from that sort of overly dogmatic, like, truth warrior, always right, never wrong stance, into how we actually live wisely. So, yeah. Thoughts on what it means for the fear of the Lord to be the beginning of wisdom?

[A]

I think the fear of, I mean, I don't even know, like, fear's sometimes a weird word, but I'm just thinking of how God can discern what's actually going on in my heart. So if I'm trying to be wise, but I'm actually being careless or selfish or whatever, like God's gonna know that. So my wisdom is not actually gonna be that great if those are my underlying motivations. And so being aware of that and making sure like, oh, I'm consciously here I am being intentional, I'm being kind, I'm being whatever. And then going into wisdom out of that posture versus some self serving posture.

[B]

Okay, yeah, yeah, I like that. I mean, what I hear in there is there's a kind of emphasis on attentiveness. Maybe instead of just like going on a sort of, oh, well, here's the situation. And I've heard this one before. And so I, you know, I just already know, like, what should happen. But rather, like you said, a kind of humility, kind of willingness to pay attention to the details maybe. I mean, that's not exactly what you're saying. That's kind of what a here and there.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Okay. Josh, what about you? What's your take on the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom?

[C]

Yeah, I really like this one. I mean, I think it's appropriate, like you said, to really consider, especially since we're talking about, you know, this is the beginning of wisdom. You know, when I think of, you know, fear of the Lord, I think that there is kind of a very like, you know, fiery Southern Baptist preacher idea that kind of cloaks that. And I, I don't think that's necessarily, I mean, you know, there, there is certainly a place for that understanding of that phrase. But I think here, when I think about someone who has no fear of the Lord, you know, I don't think about, you know, someone who is just like, you know, I, I'm an atheist. I don't care about this or that. I think about someone who takes advantage of the poor, who, you know, just exploits people, hurts people, and truly believes at some level, like, I can get away with this, like, not going to be any consequences for me. Like, that's, I think, the real deep down, like, total lack of fear of the Lord and flipping that around and saying, okay, so what does it mean to, you know, fear the Lord? I think it's not just, you know, being aware of potential consequences, but rather like, what is the sort of thing you're afraid of and if what you really, in your heart of hearts see as like, the biggest threat identifies the biggest failure, as what is my life going to look like to God? Like, what consequences am I bringing down to myself? For who? And again, this kind of draws us back to context. Like, God can see all the context, right? He sees things from your neighbor's point of view. And if you have not been nice to your neighbor. So to me, in a certain sense, saying fear of God is also saying fear of what? The actual totality of what my life means. If I could see all of it, not just like, oh, it's being held to this perfect divine standard and God's going to squish me, but more like, no, if God sees this, how is God going to react to me? And it's again, taking that wider view than just what's immediately nice for me. You know what I mean?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I totally know what you mean. Completely agree about. There is a certain idea of there's like a just holy God that has every right to get you. And like, when you understand that, then you will start living righteously. You know, that that shrouds the thing. And I don't think that's actually. That's what it is.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think what you're saying is exactly right. I actually, I love the way that you say, like, the totality of the life that I live, you know, how will God respond to that? I sometimes wonder if it's not just. It's the antithesis of this is not just the person who's like, well, I can do all these exploitative things and I can get away with it. Although I do think that that is absolutely not fearing The Lord.

[C]

Sure.

[B]

I also think in like, in a culture that is saturated with God talk, if like somebody who is maybe too quick to speak about God, you know.

[C]

Oh yeah, a thousand percent. Oh my gosh.

[B]

This is why I read the anti thing at the beginning because I think that it's like a gut check for me every time I read it that like I need to begin by acknowledging what I'm really talking about when I'm talking about God.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And we use the word God so frequently that I fear that it's lost its content for a lot of us and that we haven't stopped to reflect on what it is we're actually talking about. Because, you know, the next part of that verse is that knowledge of the Holy One is the beginning of understanding. And I, to me like the first real lesson in what I would call true knowledge of the Holy One is that we don't actually know anything at all. That maybe what I'm getting at is that like wisdom begins maybe by me as God's beloved first of all. So like I'm assured, you know, in that like I am the beloved of God and that God is my beloved. But like maybe we ought to hesitate, right, to speak the name. Like maybe there is real wisdom in the unwillingness to speak the tetragrammaton, you know.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Which is to say like what we're talking about is sort of the, it's like the holy mystery at the heart of all things. And to speak of that presumably should induce some kind of trembling, you know, which is to say, like, should induce some kind of humble second guessing, which is to say, I think maybe a little catch in the voice if you are going to step out and speak of God. And I'm pointing my finger at myself here. And this is to all preachers everywhere, definitely, if you presume or step out to speak for God.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Probably just a little bit of fear and trembling of like again, this is like a very, I think a wisdom posture of like I am trying to speak of what I know and also at the same time acknowledging that I don't, I don't really know, you know, and from there that's where wisdom, that's where wisdom comes.

[C]

That also reminds me of the other, the other proverb about the beginning of wisdom, which is go acquire wisdom. It's like, you know, I need more of this.

[B]

Yeah, that it's both something that you gotta go, you gotta work for, you know, you gotta dig for it. And yet also like it's something that begins with that acknowledgment of. Yeah, I mean, that reminds me of the Job bit too, at the very middle of the book, where if some people talk about the book of Job being sort of a chiastic structure, and in the very center is this long speech that says, you know, people, they dig all the way under the mountains for it, they look everywhere, but it is only with God. And so even the way you get wisdom itself is paradoxical, where you have to search, you have to inquire. But like the old philosophical adage, like the more you know, the more you don't know. So what's interesting to me then, in getting back to our conversation about the lived outness of wisdom, is that wisdom I'm really highlighting maybe what we've already said, but that wisdom only begins there in that place of holy mystery at the heart of all things fear and trembling. But the mountaintop meditating sage, you know, sort of just head in the clouds, that's only really a caricature. That's part of the picture of wisdom. When I preached on this once at ccf, it just occurred to me that when you get to proverbs, the whole tone, the whole subject matter, it's really different from a lot of what else is in the scripture, where like, you know, in, in Torah you have a lot of epic narrative stuff. You have a lot of the concern being broad and communal and systemic, you know, about how we worship God and what does it mean to be a nation of people, you know, and these bigger questions about how we're going to treat various people within our community. And there's this broad sweep from Egypt and out of Egypt and into the wilderness and beyond. And then you get to Proverbs and you start hearing words like spendthrift and dolt and sluggard and quarreling. It just becomes very daily and domestic and it becomes very much about like, how do you do your job, how do you treat your family, what do you do with your money, how do you communicate with other people, how do you express your emotions? And so I guess the spirit behind the proverbs is that like what happens in your sort of family unit along the way from Egypt to the promised land, that like how we live in the moment to moment is actually incredibly meaningful and is worth paying a lot of attention to. And so like, I guess to bring us back to Annie's thing, you know, if we are going to be sufficiently sensible of the conditions, that is that, you know, crash helmets and all that, we still like being sensible of that, have to learn then to Live. And it's really important that we learn how to live at the church service with the lady in the velvet hat. And what happens if she's, like, talking too loud during the sermon? And, like, how I handle that is actually a matter that is not just meaningless. Even if it's, as I said before, quotidian or just the stuff of daily stuff, it still actually is quite important. And very much is this sort of arena that wisdom gets played out in.

[C]

And that's so reminiscent, talking about you referencing Job earlier, like the. All of after God, you know, deals with Job's friends when he's talking to Job about the ongoing work of sustaining creation, as it were. And this is not something I noticed until I read Alter's translation of it. So, as always, big props to Alter, especially on Job. But God keeps using euphemisms of doing daily chores. That's how he describes making the sun come up. I had to go fetch water and bring it back and clean this and clean that. And God's talking about all these things that are so much bigger than you are just quotidian to me. I feel like, you know, the fact that we look at those things with awe and wonder and we can see the meaning in them, even though it's like, oh, yeah, just a, you know, ball of gas that it looks like it's coming up. Yeah. Wow, that's an interesting little illusion there. No, it's actually just, you know, different balls of different stuff spinning around. But we can still have that sense of wonder. And. Oh, man, I'm feeling a little hush. I wonder if I. I wonder if having. Maintaining that sense of wonder, but not the kind of wonder that's like, naive bumpkin y, like, wow, gosh, I literally have never seen this before. But this kind of measured wonder. This. Do you mind if I do a little rabbit trail?

[B]

No, not at all. Love your rabbit trails. Let's go.

[C]

So there's. I don't have any of the details for this, but it's in Leviticus if anyone wants to dig into this. So there's certain times in the Torah where the scribes will write a letter very big or very small, like very noticeably big or small.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And there is one place in Leviticus where it talks about this, and I believe it's talking about the Tamid offering, the day and night offering. And it talks about the priests keeping the fire lit 24 7. And one of the letters in that word for the. The flaring of the fire is written small. And the rabbis say this is because you need to keep your fire small because if you're always trying to have a big bonfire on the altar, you're going to burn yourself out. And it needs to be kept at a lower, slow burn so that you can actually have a lit altar all the time. So that, you know, anytime someone needs to come and bring a sacrifice, you're ready. There's always this connection. And I feel like that is the right, I guess, ratio of trying to maintain wonder in your life. Because you can't be. We talk about it in movies. There's the trope of the Manic Pixie dream girl or this character that's just so suffused with wonder that they seem literally manic. It seems like there might be something wrong with them, but, man, they have such a magical way of looking at the world. And the reality is, you know, if you're that kind of person, you know, if you. If you are trying to become the Manic Pixie or look like that, that's not really a healthy. Well, for most people. I don't want to speak universally, but that's a hard pace to maintain. And having a measured, grounded, but, you know, perpetual sense of wonder of like, oh, yeah, and there's God here, too. Oh, yeah. And there's like. I feel like that is really allows that quotidian quality of wisdom to not be a detraction, to be an awareness of, like, oh, no. This quotidian stuff is the heartbeat of everything else. It's what makes Sabbath meaningful, which is what makes this. There is no distinction.

[B]

That was a great rabbit trail. And you mentioned movies, so I had this thought, too. I think the MCU and its offspring have kind of ruined us a little bit. And what I mean is that if something about our expectations or broader view is conditioned by the kind of things we're taking in, then when it's like, we want only the great big epic narrative kind of stuff, you know, that's like, everything is about the fate of the universe or it's boring, you know. And, like, when I were watching, there's this old. I think it's a Dutch movie called Ordet, which that word, I think, just means prayer, but it's like, just about a family on a farm, and everything is just. It takes place in a little farmhouse and it's just them living their lives and what a lot of people would call really boring, but which actually, it has a spectacular sort of turn and climax at the end. But most of the movie, I think a lot of people couldn't get through because we're like, where is Iron man flying around and where is Thor coming in with his hammer? And like, how big is the spaceship gonna be? And if it's. It has to keep getting bigger and bigger, you know.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And maybe, maybe an analog here is that in the Christian life there are some parts of Christian culture where everything is always about the sort of grand sweeping salvation narrative, you know, and it's all about just going back to like Jesus forgiving sins. And I'm not, don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that this is like not a thing that we should reflect on. But if everything is always about like that, that sort of part of the Christian story at its most grandest scale, then a lot can get left in the lurch when it comes to the actual day to day. And this what it means to live wisely, you know, within the context of the four walls of your house, where like cosmic salvation is actually not what's on the agenda or needing to be sort of meted out at this very moment. I mean, so like a way that I said it is, you know, wisdom. It begins with the fear of the Lord, as Proverbs says, but it ends with navigating things like your family's screen time. And wisdom ends with dealing with your dog's neighbor that or your dog's neighbor, your neighbor's dog that won't stop barking. Or like when you just cannot fathom why your kids coach is coaching the team the way they're coaching it, you know, and a million other things. That's where wisdom ends. And so like, I think the holistic view of wisdom is like the ability to view both like what is big and also what is small. And like, how do you. And again, this is back to the Aristotle thing of like, how do you actually connect these two things, like what we know, what we believe and, and then what we have to do in the day to day. And I suspect that for some people there is a sense that the Christian faith that they have learned doesn't actually offer a lot in the way of the down in the dirt day to day maybe other than just like a sort of set of scruples or like a moral code that should be followed at all times. And I think that that's not as good as we can do with our pursuit of wisdom.

[C]

Oh, for sure. Yeah, that's a great point.

[B]

Aquinas, he said that the wise are docile, and docile to us is a word that I think is maybe a little bit pejorative. It's like you're passive, you're weak.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But the Latin root of docile is docere, which just means to teach. And so in other words, like, one of the primary marks of a wise person is that they know what they don't know and that they are always open to learning and they're teachable. That's what docile means, is you are teachable. And one of the books I was reading, the Cardinal and the Deadly, which I've referenced before, the author points out, then what this means is that if inherent to being a wise person is that you're always teachable, then that means that the cultivation of wisdom in a life is a work that is never finished. You never reach a point where you're like, ah, now I have all wisdom, now I am wise. Because built into, baked into the very quality of being wise is an always, ever open teachableness to what you don't know. I hope that that gives a picture of what the wisdom as a virtue is.

[A]

Yeah. I feel like I'm going back in my mind to the people that I've looked to as wise or even the Bible as wisdom, and how I've sought an answer and there's no immediate, clear answer. And I'm like, ah, why, why can't you just tell me? Because that's not what wisdom is.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. And wisdom knows that giving that to you would be selling you short.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Would, Right. Would be easier for everyone in the short term. But like, no, we need. It's. It's like when you, you know, like, man, we have to have a tough conversation and I'm going to have to be the one to force it because, you know, it's. It's not easy, it's not fun, but it will be better to have talked about it than not.

[B]

You know, I think it's interesting that of the, of the virtues. And again, it's not like the Bible lays out, like, here are the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues, but like, of the virtues that we have in those traditions that wisdom is the one in the scripture that is anthropomorphized. It's turned into that it's personified as a woman or just as anything at all. But in this case, it is a woman for extended periods of time in the wisdom books. And I think what that means, to your point, Brent, is if I am trying to have wisdom, and if wisdom is like a woman that I am supposed to be relating to, then the idea that it's like, well, Just give me the answer. Doesn't really compute. I mean, think about it. If, like, you have a dance partner, you know, it's like learning to do steps together or. One of the books I was reading was talking about wisdom as it's akin to jazz improvisation, where there is a set of rules that you have to know, but then being able to actually live wisely comes in the way that, like, a jazz musician is able to, you know, creatively and intelligently improvise. It's not just a matter of, like, playing whatever you want. Like, there's a deep knowledge going on, but that allows you to kind of play with that and go outside of that. And that there's not, like, the right thing. But again, like, what is the good thing? What is the wise thing? And that really is only found out by the experience of putting one foot in front of the other and doing it and living that way. The art of living. Well, as I've said, wisdom is. Is very much like a trial and error on the job kind of thing. And I think this is, again, like, a lot of the. These things are best lived out communally, where we're discerning together and we have people who can speak to us and speak into what they see in our lives. And to say, yeah, that maybe seemed like that went really well, or that didn't work out too good. And to be able to push us together towards wise living, if what a virtuous life is about is not just being like some moral exemplar, but is actually about, like, bearing the image of God, then I think what God wants, what God is aiming for us in terms of this virtue, is to be just people who bear the image well. And if bearing the image is a matter of stewarding creation, it's a matter of stewarding society. It's even a matter, I think, of stewarding our own lives. Wisdom is a matter of stewarding it well on God's behalf. And to do this well is going to require, like, discerning a thousand things a month. And especially I feel this as, like, in my own life. It manifests just as parenting and managing kids and raising them, you know, and it's like, I don't. I was told a certain conventional wisdom that's like, you gotta be consistent. The same behavior should get the same response so that there's no confusion. And for me, I just found that. That actually that at so many times required me to violate my conscience or what seemed to be the wise thing. I was like, well, maybe in this context, it's this. But in this other context it changes. And anyway, so it's, it's. We're always deciding in a discerning I guess and trying to not be a people who just sort of dogmatically pre decide and then live life on autopilot according to some simplistic code of like this is what it is to be the follower of Jesus or to be the Christian. And that, that wisdom, I think what it means to bear the image is to reflect on the image that we're bearing, I guess, which is to say again, Annie Dillard reverence for the mystery and to keep in mind that like the ends that God has for us, that God hopes for us is, well, human flourishing. But things like shalom, what makes for shalom, what makes for restoration, what makes for flourishing. That's what God is ultimately aiming for with wisdom. It's not just about being smart people who know things, but about who steward well the things that God has given us to steward. And finally, I'm going to give the last word here to Paul, Paul of you know, the New Testament, who said this in First Corinthians. Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe, Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, Christ the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. In other words, what I feel compelled to say is that ultimately wisdom is Christ crucified. Which is to say that if I can fathom all mysteries and if I know everything, and if I have all wisdom but I do not love, as Paul said later in Corinthians, then I have nothing. Which is exactly what it says in my notes. Wisdom is if it's the preemptor to the virtues again, love is always the thing that all of the virtues are growing in. And if it is the love that is demonstrated that we emulate in Christ crucified, then you know, it will be a wise thing. But if it's a wise thing that is not rooted in that, then it will just be. It will be empty, it will be hollow. It'll be folly in the end. And that's my last word on wisdom. And also we're supposed to have self examination questions and I don't have any. Is that appropriate for the wisdom thing? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. It is what it is.

[C]

The beginning of self examination is fear God.

[B]

Yeah. Here's what I would say for anybody who's really hungry for self examination questions. Go back to the very beginning of this episode and listen to that Annie Dillard portion again. And then may God do as God wills with, you know, that portion for self reflection and for God reflection and go in peace.

[A]

Why make them go back when I could just read it again?

[B]

You want to?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Heck yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah, you do it.

[A]

Brent, on the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies straw hats and velvet hats to church. We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. They should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake some day and take offense. Or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return. The 18th century Hasidic Jews had more sense and more belief. One Hasidic slaughterer whose work required invoking the Lord bade a tearful farewell to his wife and children every morning before he set out for the slaughterhouse. He felt every morning that he would never see any of them again. For every day as he himself stood with his knife in his hand, the words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice and destroy him before he had time to utter the rest. Have mercy. Another Hasid, a rabbi, refused to promise a friend to visit him the next day. How can you ask me to make such a promise? This evening I must pray and recite. Hear, O Israel, when I say these words, my soul goes out to the utmost rim of life. Perhaps I shall not die this time either. But how can I now promise to do something at a time after the prayer?

[B]

Brent, you read that so beautifully.

[A]

I thought the same thing about you. Oh, I was nervous about people being able to compare our two readings.

[B]

No, I think they're both going to go hand in hand and be perfect. So Everybody, if you send me a photo of yourself wearing, like, a motorcycle helmet, sitting in a Sunday service, I will do something for you. I will. I don't know what, but if anybody who is listening sends me a picture of themselves doing that. And I mean actually in the service, not just like, you gotta. You gotta be honest. You can't just be, like, pre service when everybody's sitting around talking. I was acting like a goofball. I'm saying, like, pastor is preaching, and you got the helmet on, like, you're straight out of Daft Punk listening. Then I will do something for you. That's my final word on this episode.

[A]

Okay. Okay. How do people send it? What's your preferred method of reception?

[B]

I do have an Instagram account now, so people can just find me by my name.

[A]

Nice. All right, so get ahold of Reid on Instagram. And if you need to know anything else about what we're doing, you can go to baymaudiscipleship.com you can use the contact page if you want to get in touch with somebody else besides Reid. Reid, of course, on Instagram. Thank you to everyone who make what we do possible. We continue to be honored. We continue to wrestle with these things together with you, and it is our joy to do that. So thank you for joining us this week on the Behemoth podcast. We'll talk to you again soon.

[B]

That was great. Now we can talk about movies. I need to stop this.