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 26:4-5I 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?
