“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 1611)
Growing Dominion, Part 13
Sometimes metaphors run away with us. We are the children of God, and Jesus tells us that we must become as little children in order to enter the kingdom. There are important truths here. But it is equally important for us to distinguish child-like-ness, which Scripture requires of us, and childishness, which it forbids. The Bible teaches us that folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and that folly is not what Christ was summoning us to. “Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men” (1 Cor. 14:20). When it comes to the arts of sin, we are to be like children. But in understanding, we are to pursue maturity.
One of the foolish characteristics of children is that they want what they want, and the fact that it is not to be had does not console them. They want another candy and the fact that we are “all out” does not make them any less inclined to cry about it. But as a wise man investigates the world around him (it being the glory of a king to search out a matter), one of the characteristics of wisdom is that of a willingness to be shown wrong. Although there are many abuses of this in modernity, this is the central strength of what has come to be known as the scientific method. Everyone investigating the world formulates silly hypotheses as they do so. The difference between the wise man and the fool is not to be found there. The difference is that the wise man is willing to find that out.