I enjoy owning and using tools. I profoundly enjoy owning and using high quality tools to build and fix things. Hardly ever do I purchase tools without the lifetime guarantee offered by outstanding brands like Craftsman or Snap-on. Yes, they do cost much more than those no-name-brand tools out there, but my wife never questions the cost difference. She knows that great tools are, well, a guy sort of thing.
But wait! Do I really need a wrench that will last forever? Would I really find it impossible to repair the closet hinge with a screwdriver that will only last for another six years? Why should I care if my nineteen-dollar-drill does a great job for me today but will be a rusty relic by next year?
Actually it does make a difference. For me there is value in handling a tool that was built so well that my grandchildren will one day be able to use it. What is that value? Using high quality tool imparts these three benefits:
1. Confidence: I can apply full force to that wrench confident that it won’t bend and propel me headlong into the engine compartment of my boat.
2. Continuity: I didn’t purchase that screwdriver, my father did. In using it, I am not only repairing the closet door I am a living link in the chain of my family’s tradition of masculine mechanical competence.
3. Character: I am no dabbling dilettante. I am a professional using professional tools with a professional’s sense of purpose about my work.
In the same way I ask myself whether there is really any value in designing my life and regulating it in accordance with a Biblical world-view. After all, do I really need a tool that has been around for 3,000 years? Would it really be problematic to make life decisions guided by the latest fads and trends that will be scorned and forgotten in five years time? Why should I care if secularism’s latest foolish fashion shapes my thinking today? I can always get a new foolish fashion tomorrow quite inexpensively.
Actually, yes, we do need a tool that has been around for a long time and will continue to be around for a long time. Sculpting my life, family, and business to the shape of Biblical reality confers great benefits.
1. Confidence: I can push ahead through life’s challenges with full force and with all my will, knowing that the ideas on which I am relying have endured through time.
2. Continuity: I am not only living my life, raising my family and building my economic reality but I am also a living link in the chain that stretches from Sinai to the bright shining Tomorrow.
3. Character: Instead of merely meandering through life, I have a professional sense of purpose. All I do is imbued with my role of bringing God’s will alive.
The wealth created by the west, the art and culture, even the very manners practiced by a civil society are all products of Biblical ideas. Successful nations have emulated those traditions. That is why buses, banks, and bathrooms in Beijing and Bangkok, now look pretty much like those in Brussels and Boston. This powerful system of organizing life that has done so much for societies and cultures can do the same for our lives and our families.
I wish you a healthy, happy, and profitable 2010!
Reproduced with permission. For more info please visit www.RabbiDanielLapin.com
