The Proverbs Rule Book for Arguments

Step 1: Don’t answer a fool according to his foolishness

                                             or you’ll be like him yourself.

Step 2: Answer a fool according to his foolishness

                                    or he’ll become wise in his own eyes.

Proverbs 26:4-5

I once saw these two proverbs listed by someone in one of those "You can't trust the Bible! It contradicts itself so much!" post. I never understood what people's problem with it was. Really I just see them as two separate steps.

My concern as I watch an argument that is happening around me is that people are rushing too quickly to Step 2. I don't mean that arrogantly because I am well aware that my weakness is that I am likely not to move on from Step 1. I don't know what the right way forward is, but I do think Christians need to ask one question first.

"Has God told me to be part of this argument?"

I think that puts me on dangerous ground because I've played my hand as a mystic. To be honest I don't know what God telling someone to be part of an argument would look like. But I think that's ok. I hope that's okay. It fits my desire to see people (myself included) assess their situation.

Why would people who believe in God want to go into "battle" if God had not said he would be with them? Why would people who believe in God refuse to go if God has said go? I think there is a long history of both these approaches and a long list of casualties from each of them.

But I also see a long history where God raises up ordinary people and equips them with skills and abilities and puts them in the right place at the right time so that no enemy can stand. While I do not want to suggest that no one has been called into this argument, I would like to see that the most reasonable thing to trust in is God and not the strength of our arguments. What he has done for those who trusted Him before us, we not trust that he can do that for us?

"Whoever is wise..."

Oh give thanks to the Lord,
                    for he is good,
                    for his steadfast love endures for ever!
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
                whom he has redeemed from trouble
        and                         gathered in from the lands,
                                                          from the east and from the west,
                                                          from the north and from the south.

He turns rivers into a desert,
              springs of water into thirsty ground,
           a fruitful land into a salty waste,
                    because of the evil of its inhabitants.
He turns a desert into pools of water,
               a parched land into springs of water.
And there he lets the hungry dwell,
and           they establish a city to live in;
                 they sow fields and plant vineyards
           and        get a fruitful yield.
        By his blessing they multiply greatly,
and                            he does not let their livestock diminish.

When they are diminished and brought low
        through oppression,
                      evil,
and                sorrow,
        he pours contempt on princes
and       makes them wander in trackless wastes;
but   he raises up the needy out of affliction
and       makes their families like flocks.
The upright see it
             and are glad,
             and all wickedness shuts its mouth.

Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things;
                             let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

Psalm 107:1-3, 33-43

Bonhoeffer Thinking about Friendship

I finished reading Letters and Papers From Prison the other day, and thought before I put it away I would write another couple of thoughts down.

I am much impressed by your remarks about friendship in this connection. As compared with marriage and the ties of kindred, friendship has no generally recognised rights, and is therefore wholly dependent on its own inherent quality. It is by no means easy to classify friendship sociologically.
Perhaps it is a subheading of culture and education, and brotherhood a subheading of the Church, and comradeship a subheading of labour and politics. Marriage, labour, the state and the Church all exist by divine decree. But what of culture and education? I don't think that can be classified under labour, tempting though that may be from many points of view. They belong not to the sphere of obedience, but to that of freedom, which surrounds all three spheres of the divine decrees. The man who is ignorant of this sphere of freedom can be a good father, citizen and worker, and even a Christian, but hardly a complete man and therefore hardly a good Christian in the widest sense of the term.
Our Protestant (not Lutheran) Prussian world has been so dominated by the divine decrees, that it has allowed this sphere of freedom to be pushed into the background. It almost looks today as though the Church alone offers any prospect for the recovery of the sphere of freedom (art, education, friendship and play, 'æsthetic existence' as Kierkegaard called it). I am convinced of the truth of this, and it would help us to a new understanding of the Middle Ages.
What man is there among us who can give himself with an easy conscience to the cultivation of music, friendship, games and happiness? Surely not ethical man, but only the Christian. Just because friendship belongs to this sphere of freedom (the freedom of the Christian man?!) it must be confidently defended against the disapproving frowns of moralism, though without claiming for it the necessitas of a divine decree, but only the necessitas of freedom! I believe that within the sphere of this freedom friendship is by far the rarest and most priceless treasure, for where else does it survive in this world of ours, dominated as it is by the three other decrees?
It cannot be compared with the blessings of the decrees, for it is sui generis [irreducible]; its relation to them is that of the cornflower to the cornfield.

Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, January 23rd 1944

The 70th Anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Execution

Today marks the 70th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death at the hands of the Nazi government. Here is something he wrote that I am enjoying thinking about today.

I was reading some Lessing the other day and came across this: "I am too proud to consider myself unlucky. Just grind your teeth and let your canoe sail where the wind and the waves take it. Enough that I have no intention of upsetting it myself." Is such an attitude to be forbidden to the Christian? Is it, for example, better for him to be soft-hearted and to surrender prematurely? Is there not a kind of self-possession which proudly grinds its teeth, but is quite different from a dour, rigid, lifeless and unthinking submission to the inevitable? I am sure we honour God more if we gratefully accept the life he gives us with all its blessings, loving it and drinking it to the full, grieving deeply and sincerely when we have belittled or thrown away any of the precious things of life (some people grumble at such behaviour and say it is bourgeois to be so weak and sensitive) than we do if we are insensitive to the blessings of life and therefore equally insensitive towards pain. Job's word, "The Lord hath given...", etc., includes that rather than excludes it, as can be seen from the speeches he makes with so much gnashing of teeth, and from their justification by God (Chapter 42:7ff.) in the face of the false, premature, pious submission of his friends.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, January 23rd 1944

Karl Barth on the Heidelberg Catechism

"The church, the Christian community, is as a human community given the honor to proclaim and spread the good news of Jesus Christ in the world. For the sake of this task there is ever a fresh need for Christian doctrine, for such a summary in which the church answers to itself for what it has to say and proclaim. Now the good news of Jesus Christ is not a dead commodity handed over to us so that we can "have" it. Beware of this capitalistic conception of Christianity in any form, old or new! The gospel must ever again be explored and sought and inquired into. It demands work, reflection, exertion. It demands faithfulness and independent investigation. The church may not avoid this effort, for its existence as church depends upon it. Doctrine is thus not its own goal. One can work at theology for theology's sake just as little as he can work at art for art's sake. Christian doctrine is rather a part of the service of the community, service to God and to neighbor. It is thus a part of the church's liturgy. In this sense we will do our work, and in this sense only can it be done. When we teach or study theology, we stand in the service of the church."

“[In the Heidelberg Catechism,] We find ourselves within the walls of the church, in the circle of the pious, and the evil world unfortunately has no part in this affair. But the name of God, his kingdom and his will, reach beyond the church and over its walls. "God so loved the world." "You are the light of the world." That is the note which must be sounded in genuinely evangelical doctrine! According to Holy Scripture, the goal of Christianity and the church is not Christianity and the church, but service in God's work and therefore also service of men. The church is the place where God is praised in such a way that others are called. We do not fundamentally disagree with the catechism if we emphasize this.”

Grace that stops mouths from speaking in sin opens them for singing praise

"So act, O Lord; so act, O merciful Lord. Command what cannot be fulfilled. Rather, command what can be fulfilled only through thy grace so that, since men are unable to fulfill it through their own strength, every mouth may be stopped, and no one may seem great to himself. Let all be little ones, and let all the world be guilty before God."

Augustine of Hippo

Love grows, perhaps the greater

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."
J.R.R. Tolkien

Recently we have seen why Christ confirms two commandments; that we love the Lord our God with all our heart mind and soul and strength. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. Love your neighbour as yourself.

When we forget our God, we no longer love our neighbour. When we forget our neighbour, we no longer love our God. Both things are going to bring a world of grief. But in this world, true love grows perhaps the greater.