We are looking at a mortgage that would stretch us for years, and everyone says it is just what you do. How do we know whether this is wise or reckless?

“Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house.”

The proverb sets an order of operations for an agrarian household: get the field productive first, then build the house. Income before structure. It is deeply unromantic advice to a young couple who would much rather have the house now, and it survives in Proverbs because the reverse order ruined people reliably. Build on a foundation that is already producing, not on one you are hoping will.

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.”

Jesus is talking to large crowds about the cost of following him, and he illustrates it with a builder who lays a foundation and then runs out of money. The mockery he describes is public and lasting. His point is not that ambitious projects are wrong, but that failing to sit down and calculate first is. Jesus treats honest arithmetic as a form of seriousness.