No Time to Be Dumb
No Time to Be Dumb: Letters to Teenage Girls
By: Rachel Jankovic
“You can’t afford the time that stupid sin will take. There is no time to have the dumb years… The longer you stretch things out, the more of your life you are wasting.”
Apparently I’m on a kick of reading books with ‘dumb’ in the title, having recently finished Big Dumb Eyes and also just discovering the book The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World that I haven’t read but would love some information about.
One of my goals in life is to ‘not be dumb’ so these books all help in different ways I guess.
But seriously this review has been challenging to write. I feel more like (read: I am) one of the old church ladies than the teenagers it’s written for.
I’ve really liked the other Jankovic books that I’ve read and appreciate her very matter-of-fact way of communicating. She doesn’t shy away from speaking hard truths.
However, I’m struggling to discern how this book will come across to teenagers. I’ve talked some with friends who have teenage daughters and so as we discuss I may end up adjusting this review to offer better insights that will help parents decide if this book is a good fit for their daughters.
Jankovic has four teenagers. I’m pretty sure this book grew out of the many conversations and dilemmas that arose with her own kids, so I believe this book to be coming from a place of authenticity with questions and conflicts prevalent for teens today.
Some of the topics include: modesty, peer pressure, emotions, repentance, body image, boys, envy, and more.
The quote I put at the beginning of this review is somewhat the heart of the book that is then fleshed out in the various chapters about different sins you may get distracted by.
She uses the analogy of a brightly lit hallway you’re walking down but you see these dark and mysterious looking doors as you go. Being lured into these dark places are the times we get caught up in and distracted by sin.
She admonishes: “Whatever reason for your desire to wander off, fight it and fight it with all you have. Because once you take a turn down a dark corridor, it can take a very long time to get back out of there. It doesn’t matter how petty the sin is— it is big enough to fight.”
There is a feeling of invincibility that most teenagers have. Plus an added sense of rebellion to authority and being told what to do. (I say this from personal experience in multiple ways.) When you’re in high school or college or heading off into the world, you haven’t gotten old enough to realize everything you don’t know. You think you have a pretty good idea of what’s ahead of you and what your limits are— and you for sure aren’t going to make the same mistakes as your parents.
The ‘no time to be dumb’ title is a bit provocative because no one wants to be called dumb, but I do think it’s a worthy endeavor to try to explain to teenagers how dumb sin takes more of them then they realize. That fighting sin, even little sin they think is a harmless ‘I just want to try it out of curiosity’ can still really hurt them or others in the present or their future self or spouse.
Will teenagers reading this book respond to that? I’m not sure. I’m guessing it will be a mixed bag of reactions. Would I have listened as a teenager? I would like to think I would.
She does make a point to encourage the girls not to write-off all the church ladies and their wisdom because they were all once teenagers too.
Even if you don’t agree with everything she says in this book, I think there is still a lot of good information for teenagers to think about. Perhaps this is a good book for a teenage girl to read with a mom or mentor of some kind. It may work in a girls group setting if led by an adult. Which leads me to….
The presentation of the information is in the form of letters— an aunt to her niece. Her niece is leading a group of peers in a Bible study of sorts and so the letters are the aunt’s way of helping her navigate tricky topics or situations that come up as the group is working together to strive toward godliness.
I do think the conversational and informal way the letters are written is a compelling style for younger readers to stay engaged in because it could easily be a letter written to them. They are short and easy to read.
However, I do wonder if the context of a student-led peer group isn’t a helpful tool for some of these topics. Especially when discussing topics that are not super clear cut like modesty. I worry that with teenage girls who are already very immersed in comparison and judgment and gossip, discussing these things could create tensions or conflict in relationships or a spirit of self-righteousness.
I like the idea of my daughter having a peer who wants to follow Christ and to help keep each other accountable, but the larger that group of ‘accountability’ gets, the more complicated that looks in reality.
Kindness or Flattery?
I do agree with Jankovic’s point that kindness and love are not defined by the absence of conflict and that we need to be okay with some awkwardness or being willing to point out things that are not okay.
We can’t be afraid of conflict; that’s part of how things get normalized that should not.
This kinda ties into the topic of flattery. I thought it was a really interesting connection she makes between flattery of friends and that of men:
“When you start training each other to need flattery, you start thinking that flattery is niceness. You start thinking that kindness is people falling all over themselves about your outfit or your haircut or how unbelievably talented you are. You start expecting a lot of petting and admiration. You can actually take a pretty secure girl with loving parents and a wonderful life and make her desperate to hear lies. This kind of thing is incredibly common on social media— social media can serve as a gateway drug to the habit of lying to each other… completely inflated overblown and unrealistic comments…”
Not only does this acceptance of ‘this is how you respond to a compliment’ behavior diminishes true kindness, it makes you vulnerable to accept this kind of ‘kindness’ (flattery) from men who use it for dishonorable means. We don’t want to be girls and women who are lured in by flattery but are won by honest, reasonable, rational ways of expressing their love.
After talking about flattery she connected it to physical touch and how friendships between girls can develop a lot of physical touch like sitting on each others’ laps or constantly touching each other’s hair or rubbing each other’s backs or snuggling. I remember a time in college where a few of my friendships had been like this.
And then I got married and looking back I’m not sure why. Of course everyone desires intimacy with someone but there are better ways to handle that desire. Adult friends aren’t constantly touching each other or sitting on laps— we’ve discovered other ways to cultivate appropriate intimacy.
“The physical relationship you will someday share with your husband is so important (in so many ways), and there is no reason to add baggage or confusion to it in advance… Whatever awkwardness it takes to get and maintain appropriate boundaries is worth it. Once you stir up and awaken physical love, it is hard to control. You’ve created an appetite with no wise or lawful way to satisfy it.”
For a lot of the topics discussed in the book, she’s targeting that feeling we get where we go ‘Hm. Why are we doing this? This doesn’t seem right’ but no one wants to cause disruption or feel awkward and we justify it that ‘it’s not a big deal; it’s harmless; I won’t rock the boat over it’ and then all of a sudden it’s ‘normal’ and we still don’t know why we do it.
I think that’s an important part of this book— it’s not Rachel trying to be God and prescribe specific behaviors. It’s her bringing things to the surface and asking the reader to reflect honestly on the behavior, the thought, the idea, the message and look to Christ. Is it good? Is it true? Is it lovely? Is it right?
It’s true that we often ignore our ulterior motives— there’s nothing wrong with this shirt! It’s just a shirt! But is it, though? With so many things if we are honest with ourselves we KNOW what we’re doing. We KNOW if something is right or wrong. We KNOW our doublemind. She’s saying- ‘stop pretending and think about it. Don’t be dumb. Be honest and be discerning. It’s worth it.’
Other Good Quotes
“Having different skills is like being able to communicate in different languages. It gives you a much broader range of tools to work with as you go about the real work of your life.”
“I tell my daughters that they are not allowed to say things that close doors on their future selves… you won’t go around saying ‘I can’t’ and mentally consigning yourself to a life of inability”
“Do not despise the standards that any godly young man ought to have simply because your heart wants to be the object of his desire.”
“Faithfulness usually does not feel like anything great— and this is one of the reasons that women need to be resilient and strong— yes because we are told to do what feels great. We chase what feels brave and strong and good. But sometimes what we need to do doesn’t feel great. But our feelings about what we are doing are not the measurement of value or worth or goodness.”
“When Mom treats her work like drudgery, everyone feels it as exactly that, but when she is full of joy, it seems like everything she does is an encouragement.”
“There are a lot of people that want you to feel completely free to be a selfish, petty monster— not because they actually care that you are ‘seen and heard,’ or that you get the credit you think you deserve, or that you ‘boldly take up space,’ etc., but rather because they REALLY CARE that you not be strong enough to be a danger to their world. Encouraging selfishness is a great way to do that. If you’re addicted to the world’s praise or encouragement or affirmation, you’ll be harmless enough and very easy to control.”
Homemaking?
One drive of the book is this idea of homemaking and learning skills. It’s this aspect that might lose some of the teen readers. While I desired to be a wife and mother someday, I’m not sure learning how to make a home was a top priority for me in middle school and high school.
She includes a list of ideas of skills to learn (with the assumption that you’re already learning other types of skills with schoolwork) but there weren’t a lot that resonated with me, even as an adult: I don’t want to make a roasted chicken or a quiche. I cross stitch and I paint but I’m not into knitting.
She gives the disclaimer that these are just ideas, mark it up, cross off and add to it, she just encourages readers to take the time to learn a useful skill, have a hobby, be an interesting person.
To this, I say- yes! There are so many things I don’t have time for now as an adult and mother of three. Things I want to learn or things I wished I had spent more time learning better when I was younger and carefree. Teenagers don’t understand the opportunities they have and maybe they won’t even when we tell them, but I think it’s worth trying to spur them on to invest their time in learning skills rather than scrolling their phones.
I do wonder if cell phones and social media have made people less interesting. What do they have to talk about if their time is spent glued to the screen and their hands are idle. What do they have to show for the day?
Jankovic and her sister, Rebekah Merkle, both use their platform to advocate for elevating homemaking. Not even that women should be stay-at-home moms but that the attitude toward ‘making a home’ should be honored instead of dismissed.
Women valuing their work and pursuing excellence in it “shouldn’t be filed under the category of ‘not working.’” This isn’t a pulling down of women in the corporate world, but boosting up the work of women in the home.
What, then, is homemaking? This book perhaps seems to be setting forth a definition of that, but I think there is more freedom here than the reader will most likely at first derive here.
I wonder if this idea might be distracting or confusing for the target audience.
I do think what’s on page 116-117 is a good reminder, though, that the home is a battleground that the enemy wants women to ‘disappear’ from. To invest in the home and find joy in work done in the home brings glory to God and thwarts the strategies of the devil.
The Critiques
The bottom of page 78 mentions kids raised in daycare and public school “while their mothers prioritized their careers” and I probably shouldn’t take this completely out of the context, and I’m not trying to make much of it but I did wonder if this was a dig at public schools?
I think she would say it’s not a dig at public schools but is a comment directed toward a generation of mothers who desired to invest all their time and energy into their work instead of in teaching and investing in their kids— which you can do even if they attend public school and even if you work outside the home. The emphasis is on your attitude and if, wherever you are, you are pointed toward home or away from home.
I agree with another reviewer that it was TMI on the knitting tips. I’m sure there are readers who are interested in that, and if it were tips on painting water colors without turning your paper into a watery soupy mess, I’d be eating it up. But I don’t care about knitting. This is probably one of those things where you can just pass over it and not let it ruin the book for you, but you don’t have to love knitting; it’s okay to move on.
Another reviewer thought the section on porn was too short. And that’s probably true. The chapter called that is only a couple pages. I do think pornography, which is way more prevalent for boys, is increasing for girls and probably should be talked about more. Especially when so much of the internet is basically porn but somehow allowed and somehow allowed to just pop up on all kinds of apps for no particular reason. It feels impossible to avoid.
To this I would say, yes, we do need to talk more with our daughters about that. This was never meant to be an exhaustive book about every topic. Use it as a launching point and go beyond the book in areas you feel like your teenager needs.
There are several reviewers who hate the book because of its fundamentalist theology. Primarily the roles of husband and wife. [Read ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God by J.I. Packer to delve into why the word fundamentalism has baggage and what proper theology should be]
Now I’m not here to defend their father, Douglas Wilson, or his church, and there are definitely ways that men have wrongly used Scripture to try to dominate or control women. It should be said that the proper reading of Scripture does not allow for this.
No this book is not a treatise on ‘how to find the best husband’ or an exposition on the applicable Bible passages, but I don’t understand the reviewers who are offended by the way Rachel presents a wife’s relationship to her husband. There are actually things in here encouraging girls to stand up for themselves against boys that make them uncomfortable. She says to find a husband that doesn’t push you into things but leads you.
Because of the context and length of the book I think there has to be some leniency on what is or is not clarified or disclaimered as if this is the complete entirety of what Rachel believes about the husband/wife relationship.
I read the book and saw an encouragement to teenage girls to pursue Christ in everything, even if it puts you in an awkward position. I didn’t read it as a prescriptive checklist to be the best version of yourself.
I do think more caution should have been used in terms of what girls should be saying to each other in regards to all of these things and being ‘accountable’ to one another, for sure. Probably disagree the most with her on that point.
I’m not even offended by her tone though I’m not surprised that some are. I think that’s part of what she is pushing against— this idea that strength in truth is rude or offensive and the ultimate thing we could do in our lives is ‘be kind.’ She’s always had a bold, no-nonsense style of writing not to be harsh but to exhort and inspire us to rise above the ‘comfortable’ and the ‘feel good’ and live the holy and sacrificial but better way that is in Christ.
Recommendation
Overall, I think this is a good discussion-starter book that a mom or mentor should read with the teenage girls in their life. There is a lot of good information and encouragement in here that young women should hear and think about even if it’s a bolder voice than they may be used to.
It’s likely you won’t agree with everything she says, but it’s a good launching point to figure out the areas your particular teenage girl may need to flesh out more.
The heart of the book is about pursuing Christ and growing in wisdom and discernment in a culture that wants us to fall in line with ‘the norm.’
I’m not the target audience and I don’t have a teenage daughter, so I’m still gathering feedback from other moms who have read this with their daughters and finding out what they thought of it. If I get new information that I feel is important for other readers/women to know as far as who should be reading or recommending this book, I will add updates to this review.
**Received a copy via Canon Press in exchange for an honest review**
This book just released in May, 2025. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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