Is it Proverbs 26:4 or Proverbs 26:5?
by Stephan Joubert One of the movies from my youth that had a great impression on me is Fiddler on the Roof. Maybe you also saw it? Anyway, the main character in the movie is a wise Jewish man who constantly wrestled between tradition and the realities of his own day. He found himself constantly between “on the one hand” and “on the other hand.” Two truths simultaneously hit his life from early to late. On the one hand, he knows it’s a good thing that his one daughter marries someone that they themselves have chosen, as Jewish “matchmaking” traditions determined. On the other hand, he knows that the demands of the time and the heart of his child ask that she be permitted to choose the man of her dreams. Two simultaneous truths that can only be addressed by a life of wisdom. The route of Proverbs is becoming increasingly necessary in our day, that very one of Proverbs 26:4-5. Listen to the words of verse 4: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.” But then verse 5 shares an opposite wisdom: “Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.” When do you follow the wisdom of Proverbs 26:4 and when do you follow that of Proverbs 26:5? Well: i. There’s not a recipe that slavishly works every time to answer for all the complexities of life. Religious clichés like: “I have received Scripture,” or “The Lord showed me,” sound pious, but research shows that the choices many people make in the light of such comments are exactly the same as the choice they wanted to make from the beginning. In other words, every time God merely agrees with their own desires! ii. Wisdom works with other viewpoints than those believers normally work with. For example, Proverbs never says that you must pray until you have received an answer. Or just read your Bible regularly. Or go to church more often. There’s nothing wrong with these spiritual disciplines. Everything but! Yet most people who consider Proverbs as one of their favorite books in the Bible miss the point that a church and the practice of these spiritual disciplines are absent. Wisdom according to Proverbs entails that we choose every day to fear God and to live thoughtfully and carefully. Wisdom is serving the Lord in that one and only real life. iii. According to Proverbs, wisdom is also to live humbly among other people. It’s to count your words. It’s to think about what the implications of your words will be. Wisdom is also to have a heart for the poor, and to have a sexually pure life. It’s to work hard and diligent. Wisdom is a well-lived life in God’s presence. Within this framework, as it is spelled out in Proverbs 1-31, our lives are played out. Within these route indicators we need to choose anew in every situation whether we listen to Proverbs 26:4 or Proverbs 26:5. Oh, and after that we accept responsibility for our choices!